The Garden in January
Kari-Astri Davies is rediscovering gardening books, enjoying winter scent and hoping for plentiful potatoes
“The woods yet leafless; where to chilling airs Your green and pencil’d blossoms, trembling, wave”
Charlotte smith, ‘Snowdrops’
Last January, I wrote about the sort of weather I would like for the year ahead. The clement but not too warm March I wanted did not happen. Here, we dropped to -10°C at some points during the winter. I also hoped for a sunnier August, but despite the blistering heat of the preceding two months, it lived up to its generally greyer pattern of the last few years. So I shall keep my weather wishes for this coming year to myself.
All in the name
I am currently reacquainting myself with gardening books which have not been opened for years. One such is A Flower for Every Day, by Margery Fish. For January, she mentions the Giant Snowdrop Company, which is credited with reigniting ‘galanthomania’. In the winter of 1947, Brigadier and Mrs Mathias bought what had been the Gloucestershire garden of Walter Butt, he of the eponymous winter flowering Iris unguicularis. The following February, the garden erupted with snowdrops, in particular ‘Sam Arnott’, and the Giant Snowdrop Company was born. The nursery closed in 1968, but its snowdrop legacy lives on. Like Sam Arnott, who was a 19th century Scottish cleric, many snowdrops carry the names of their ‘finders’, a passing-on of personal floral histories. Last year, I finally bagged ‘Godfrey Owen’ in the Avon Bulbs end of season sale. This snowdrop has more outer and inner petals than a normal snowdrop, six of each in fact, giving the flowers a crinoline effect. A Galanthus elwesii cross, it was found in a churchyard by Margaret Owen and named for her late husband. Margaret was a formidable plantswoman who hosted annual snowdrop parties for hardcore galanthophiles at her garden, The Patch. With regret, I shall not be investing in ‘Margaret Owen’ as, at £70 per bulb, it is out of my budget. Incidentally, H J Elwes originally found the broad glaucous-leaved G. elwesii in Turkey in 1874 and helped introduce ‘Sam Arnott’. Colesbourne Park, his garden in Gloucestershire, remains a famous snowdrop destination.
Winter scent
A couple of years ago, I planted a run of Sarcococca confusa along the back of a raised bed to give partial evergreen winter screening from the road, and winter scent. From approximately mid January onwards, on warm days, the scent from the little tufts of off-white flowers drifts down the pathway alongside it. This non-suckering, small-leaved sweet box is starting to slowly ‘hedge up’. I am nibbling away at the front growth after it has flowered, to push it further into the less hospitable hazel and privet at its back. A shrub that Margery Fish mentions for its January flowers is chimonanthus, or wintersweet. She favoured C. praecox ‘Luteus’, although in garden writer Stephen
Lacey’s opinion, it is not as strongly scented as C. praecox. I have two C. praecox planted in the garden, both yet to flower. I wait with anticipation. In summer, it makes an inconspicuous background sort of shrub, but in winter, the greenish-yellow, red-centered, succulent-like flowers open on bare branches, giving out a delicious fragrance. I will make the most of it by bringing sprigs into the house.
Time for change
Potatoes were not a huge success in 2018. Planted in the shadiest bed in the three-year rotation, they did not get watered often enough during the hot, dry summer. Last year’s selection were ‘Pink Fir Apple’, ‘Belle de Fontenay’, and ‘Vitelotte’, which was new to me. ‘Vitelotte’ are deep purple, and as an alternative name, Chinese truffle potato, suggests, truffle-like. Nuggets of potato emerged from the ground as I dug in, but the yield was not very plentiful. Amazingly though, when cooked, they hold their purple colour. Sometimes, when the floury flesh meets water, it leaches to the most amazing aqua colour. This year, potatoes are going into a sunnier bed, so I hope for better things. I have not grown ‘Linzer Delikatess’ for a long while, so I have chosen this early maturing Austrian salad variety alongside favourites ‘Belle de Fontenay’ and ‘Pink Fir Apple’.
Kari-Astri Davies started gardening in her twenties with pots of roses, geraniums and sweet peas on a parapet five storeys up in central London. She’s now on her fifth garden, this time in the Wiltshire countryside. Inspiration includes her plant-mad parents, as well as Dan Pearson, Beth Chatto, Keith Wiley and the Rix & Phillips plant books. Kari describes her approach as impulsive, meaning not everything is done by the book.
“What I say is that, if a man really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow”
A A Milne