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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: nerine

November blooms

15 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

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Tags

blackcurrant sage, calendula, marigolds, Mexican sage, nerine, November flowers, pinks, tagetes, tangerine sage, viburnum, winter flowers

Flowers are getting a little thin on the ground lately.

Not that there’s no colour around: quite the opposite. My lovely ginkgo tree has lit up the garden like a butter-yellow lantern; the oaks and hazels have turned coppery brown and there are white pearls (Symphoricarpos) and red rubies (holly, viburnum and hawthorn) gleaming in all the hedgerows.

It’s a bit of an in-between month: the last of the summer’s flowers lingering ragged as 5am party girls and the winter’s blooms only just beginning to peep.
gbbd1

This is about the only flower from my Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ intact at the moment: the rest are having an off day, rather unappetisingly draped around with half-dead leaves. I’m hoping they’ll fall soon to leave the flowers unblemished again: it blooms constantly all winter long, releasing a gentle perfume you just catch on the air from time to time.
gbbd2

But I prefer to wait till later, when it’s properly cold, for my winter flowers. Right now it’s the hangovers from summer which I’m enjoying the most: those flowers so resolute, so stalwart, so undaunted by piffling things like weather that they just keep coming for as long as they can.

gbbd3

The marigolds – both Calendula and French marigolds (Tagetes – above) have been indefatigable this year. I’ve had calendula running right through my veg garden like a cheery wave: any empty patch I had going spare, any edge unadorned turned a summer yellow and orange. And they’re still going strong now. I have left the ones in the veg garden to set seed in the hope that they’ll come back next year.

The French marigolds too, sown in a propagator in February, have been better than in many a year: these are in the greenhouse, under the tomatoes. I couldn’t bear to pull them out as they were looking so pretty – so they’ll just have to prettify the winter salads I’m about to plant in here instead, until the first frosts arrive at least.
gbbd3a

The sages have been huge and prolifically flowery this year too. This one is tangerine sage, a more scarlet shade than my other big Mexican sage, blackcurrant sage – more of a magenta pink. Both are like neon lights at this time of year: I adore them and keep meaning to take cuttings but always get distracted at the proper time. One day I’ll manage it. In the meantime I’ll have to lift this and the other sage to bring in under cover for a frost-free winter: when I’ve got the cuttings going, though, I shall risk both outside. With borderline hardy plants like Mexican sages I find the more mature you can get them, the more likely they are to survive a winter outdoors: though you’ve still got to keep your fingers crossed for a kind season.
gbbd4

Must plant these out: my little violas, some for a client, some for my pots which line the steps down from the front gate.
gbbd5

And this little pink is another summer hangover: you can’t keep a good pink down, and this one is particularly sweet and dainty. They’re tougher than they look though: there are buds a-plenty still here and they’ll keep flowering till the frost gets them.
gbbd6

The undoubted star of the show however, the one which makes me smile every time I walk past, is my increasingly glorious Nerine sarniensis. I have clearly found it the conditions it likes: a winter in a frost-free greenhouse, then summer outdoors half-forgotten at the bottom of a cold frame. Do not pot on, do not feed; do not, in fact give it any care at all. In return for your neglect, it bursts into enthusiastic flower at the beginning of November and looks utterly breathtaking for weeks. Sometimes plants can be downright contrary. But when they look this lovely, you forgive them anything.

New year – new blog

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

cyclamen, January, January flowers, mahonia, nerine, New Year, viburnum

Sunrise on a new year

Sunrise on a new year

Hello again, and a very happy 2013 to all.

I do hope this year will be a bit of an improvement on last year’s – with eyepopping statistics just about to be announced, no doubt informing us – as if we needed the rubber stamp – that 2012 was indeed the wettest since records began. The evidence here is all around: the Levels are under water, and driving over the Salisbury Plains to my Mum’s house after Christmas was like driving through Waterworld.

Still, in the spirit of New things, I’ve got a shiny new blog to unveil today: I’ve been tinkering around a bit as I’d got a little jaded with Blogger, and a bit annoyed by the fact that my URL didn’t fit my blog’s title. It still doesn’t match but at least it’s now relevant and doesn’t secretly annoy the wonderful and admirable Wellywoman. So I made the well-worn trek across to WordPress and here I am.

(please don’t look at the rest of the website just yet: I am a baby where website building is concerned and Do Not Know What I Am Doing so it’s rather rubbish while I’m fiddling about figuring out the answers to various niggly little difficulties).

Anyway, to celebrate January 1st I thought I’d start a little annual challenge, based on a competition I used to enter (and come last in, every year) with the Surrey branch of Plant Heritage – an organisation worth undergoing ritual humiliation for every January if it raises a few pennies to save some long-lost garden cultivar from oblivion.

We had a little form to fill in, on which you listed every plant in flower on January 1st. Mine was a very, very short list: in fact I claimed the prize for the shortest list pretty much every year I was there. The best I heard about was a stoic 28: I can only sit back and admire in wonder at such wintery prowess.

So here’s your challenge. Since it’s now dark outside I won’t stick to Jan 1st, but during this week pop out and count how many flowers are out in your garden, and let us know about them. There is a virtual bunch of (winter and highly scented) flowers for the winner, plus a major allocation of smug points.

Here’s my list: just four, though beauties all. General verdict: could do better, I think. If I’m still here I’ll repeat the exercise this time next year (giving us all time to plant a few more January gems in the meantime).

Cyclamen coum

Cyclamen coum

janflowers_nerine

Nerine sarniensis ‘Blanchefleur’

janflowers_mahonia

Mahonia japonica

janflowers_viburnum

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’

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