An alpine spring

A couple of posts ago, I wrote that snow in March never lasts long. I was wrong. Slowly, slowly, it is now starting to melt, but is still a foot or so deep in the shady parts of the garden where it drifted in the strong easterly wind.

Where the daffodils break through the snow, the sun-warmed air reaches into the hole they have made and melts the snow round each plant. Spiky bulb leaves do this, but flatter slow growing plants, such as cushion saxifrages, must wait. My scree bed lies under a cold blanket, except where a rabbit has passed – the sun widening out its tracks, so that it looks as if a gigantic Easter bunny has visited.

Since I constantly moan about warm, wet, winters and premature warmth in March, I’m actually happy with all this. It’s exactly what alpine plants need. Of course it is frustrating not to be barrowing compost and splitting blue poppy plants and all the other jobs that are now queuing up, but because of the cold and the snow, it’s less likely that May frosts will wipe out all the young growth, as happened last year.

And, where the snow melts, the early primulas rush into flower. Here is p.sonchifolia, breaking out of its resting bud and eagerly putting out its blooms before bothering to grow a stem. As you see, the leaves have suffered badly from frost. It’s an irony that many high-altitude primulas can be easily frost-damaged – the snow cover in their native mountains normally keeps them safe. Unfortunately, in Scotland the snow melted before the frosts were past. Such is life.

From here to Chelsea…

This morning, this was the state of the bed where I grow most of my Primula Inverewe:

A few weeks ago, I had an e-mail from Stella Rankin at Kevock,  asking for as many Inverewe as I could provide, since she had agreed to supply Nigel Dunnett for his show garden at Chelsea this year. The new growth on the primulas was scarcely through the ground at the time, but during the brief spell of dry weather we had, I managed to lift and split every clump here, and came up with 150 offshoots. Luckily, p.Inverewe clumps can be disentangled easily, unlike other of the candelabra tribe. I stuck the offshoots into liquid mud in groups of ten. Then the snow descended….

Picking the primulas back out of the icy mud was not a task to relish. But if they are going to be in flower for Chelsea, they are going to need warmth, and love. And they are not going to get much of either in the frozen wastes of Central Scotland. So I rushed them into Kevock, much as one rushes an urgent bag of blood plasma.

It takes a certain professional ability to see from the present to the future to be thrilled by a box of icy mud with a few green leaves sticking out of it. But Stella rose to occasion, and I got a hug for my pains.

Professional nurseries are bleak places in winter. Odd to think that in a few months, all these bare tables will be covered with flowering plants ready to be despatched southwards to London to give the crowds something to gasp at.  Personally, I’ll sit back and admire my primulas on the TV  at the Gardeners’ world Chelsea special. They look better in a proper garden, anyway.

You never know what’s going to happen..

A year ago, on March 4th to be precise,  Spring had arrived:

This year, It hasn’t:

Barely a week ago, I was manuring the raspberries, weeding the herbaceous borders, making plans to get compost onto the primulas. And now there are six inches of snow, and gardening life grinds to a halt. I don’t mind at all as it happens – I’d far rather have a late spring than one where everything rushes into growth and then is shrivelled by May frosts, as happened last year.

The snow came in on the east wind in heavy showers – battleship grey clouds trailing white streamers. When they hit, the garden disappeared – white vortices spiralling in the backdrafts, the blackbirds abandoning their food and hunching down in the meagre shelter of the cotoneaster bushes.

The showers passed; the sun emerged; it was almost warm. At least, with snow in March, you know it won’t stay for very long. So it’s possible to enjoy the look of the garden in the last of its winter covering.

As I feared…

Even for a garden caught at the edge of competing weather systems, the reversal from summer to winter over the past ten days has been spectacular. Hot sun and shirt-sleeves a week ago; driving snow and thick gloves on Tuesday. Follow that with seven degrees of frost on Wednesday night – and the devastation is complete:Apart from the inevitable frustration that goes with seeing the spring colour wiped out overnight, it’s interesting to see what is robust enough to withstand the extremes of climate. Alpine plants, on the whole, rapidly bounce back, while many herbaceous plants such as delphiniums and peonies pull themselves together again with a resigned shrug. It’s mostly the rhododendron tribe that suffers – presumably because once the frost has gone from the lower slopes of their mountainous native habitats, they don’t expect to see it back. Which is why they flourish on the frost-free west coast of Scotland, but struggle here.Some plants just get on with life. Primula rosea (again), enjoys the flood that follows the snow melt:And the tougher shrubs are unaffected. The catkins on salix hastata wehrhahnii always look good at this time of year.You often find this sold as a ‘dwarf’ willow – but it’s more a medium-sized shrub, quite capable of growing to five or six feet if you let it. It’s an extremely useful space filler, very attractive in its bowed growth habit, and with pretty, fluffly young foliage. Cuttings taken in autumn root like weeds, so you never need purchase more than one plant. The only thing to watch out for is an infestation of willow beetle – plants can be stripped of their leaves very rapidly.

Update on Veronica wormskjoldii: In this post, I queried whether I had the correct name for this summer-flowing creeping plant. The nursery that sold it to me now agrees that whatever it is, it is not wormskjoldii. Wrongly-named plants which are passed from grower to grower and sold on to gardeners are a real irritant (I constantly see wrongly-named primulas for sale). Few nurseries appear to have the time or inclination to verify the names of their stock. Short term, it may not matter, but in the long term it leads to confusion. I’ll try to get the Edinburgh botanics to identify the veronica and report back. Meanwhile, I see Google has put my photograph into its image bank…..does anyone know how I can get it removed?

The second of Winter

The birds were right. More snow fell overnight, and heavy showers were still drifting in as it grew light, the sun struggling to make any impact:A flock of rooks settled in the bare top of a beech tree to wait out the storm:As the shower passed, the sun reappeared, and the garden was transformed, with the azaleas bearing clusters of fresh white blossomWhile, above the mill dam, a swampy mess of broken scrub willow now looked like spun sugar, setting off the black water of the burn:It’s snowing again now as it grows dark. The horribleness of driving in snow, clearing snow, drying snow-covered clothes, is offset by the beauty of it  – although I can tire, even of that…