Why did my magnolia flower out of season?
Diana Hudson, by email
Stefan says: Your Magnolia stellata flowered, quite normally, in late February, but then produced another solitary flower in late June. You wonder what is going on.
The short answer is that we just don’t know why these things happen, given that flowering is a combination of many factors, including temperature and, most importantly, day length. But while temperature can be explained by an abnormally hot spell, a heatwave even, day length always follows a standard pattern throughout the year. If we had an explanation for everything, life in the garden would be far less interesting!