Scent is icing on the cake!
A garden full of unusual plants and a big collection of fruit and vegetables in Alnwick, Northumberland.
It’s difficult to believe the year’s gone full circle again, but here we are browsing a pile of 2019 catalogues in warm surroundings, to see what further delights, beyond the main seed order, can be introduced to the garden by way of fruits, veg or ornamentals.
The garden also has an air of déjà vu, blackbirds having stripped both hollies bare of the berries that hung in large clusters at the beginning of November. Three years ago, we tried to save two branches on each heavilyladen tree to preserve a few sprigs of berried variegated and green holly for indoor decoration and wreaths. The tightly-bound, fine mesh covering worked but was so unsightly. It also felt mean depriving the birds of a possible lifeline in winter, when we spend all year trying to encourage their presence, so we haven’t repeated the project.
We’ve had frosts recently and the pond is frozen over but work continues outdoors, albeit in shorter sessions. One of these jobs came last week as three mature shrubs still needed pruning; Weigela ‘Florida Variegata’, escallonia ‘Edinensis’ and Spiraea billardii. By the time dead, diseased, damaged and weak growths had been removed, height reduced and prunings chopped up for composting, a hot drink indoors beckoned!
In the greenhouse, the vines and peach have shed their leaves. The former is ready for pruning back to short, stubby spurs, and the latter already has buds that’ll bloom in February. Thank goodness for the colourful, hardy perennials that come into their own just as our spirits need lifting. Stems of cornus in red and pale green, alongside whitebarked birch, are mingling with golden conifers and an assortment of golden and silver variegated shrubs in this garden. That some bear fragrant flowers is simply the icing on the cake. A rare ‘Robin’ we’ve nursed for two years isn’t a bird, but one of Judy’s scent-leaved pelargonium collection. It flowered for the first time just before Christmas and the colour was true to its name!