Garden Blogger's Blooms Day March 2014

Another 15th of the month and a chance to show what's flowering in my Plymouth garden for Garden Blogger's Blooms Day.

We've had a very wet, but also quite mild winter.  That, combined with some fine, sunny and - for the time of year - quite warm weather has really brought out some early spring flowers.  Even my Magnolia 'Raspberry Ice' has been hurried into opening its buds - though the main display is still a few days away.  Even the few flowers that are open look better against a bright blue sky after the leaden heavens that have been commoner this year.

Magnolia 'Raspberry Ice'

Stars of the show are the camellias.  Rather than just show closeups of the flowers I thought I'd show them in context this time round.  This is 'Donation' in the front garden, part of a mixed planting of Phormium 'Tricolor' and Rhododendron 'Wilbrit'.

By the front door 'St Ewe' overtops my ever increasing shrub of the variegated Pieris 'Flaming Silver', also in flower at this time of year.

In the rear garden 'Cornish Snow' is putting on its usual show of single white flowers, petals crumpled as though they had only just got up.

Camellia 'Cornish Snow'

'Anticipation', also in the rear garden, is not making much of a show this year.  So, I'll have to break my promise and just show a single bloom.

Camellia 'Anticipation'

At ground level I remembered to cut my epimediums back this year.  Often I forget and the first flowers emerge among the wreckage of last years rather tatty leaves.  There is only one in flower at the moment - but it's very welcome.

Epimedium x versicolor 'Sulphureum'

Clematis cirrhosa 'Freckles', my multi hued collection of semi wild primroses, and Ranunculus ficaria 'Brazen Hussy' are showing one or two flowers but are not as interesting as the ones above.  However three bulbs are producing some additional colour.

Pale blue Muscari armenaicum 'Valerie Finnis' I much prefer to the commonplace dark blue grape hyacinth that seems to be in every garden around me.  It's just beginning to open.  Another few days and it will be in full flower.

Muscari 'Valerie Finnis'

Erythronium 'Pagoda' has flowered early this year.  It's normally the beginning of April.  Slow to increase, eventually I'll have a large clump.  I hope.

Erythronium 'Pagoda'

Finally, I mentioned last year that my plant of the South African corm, Chasmanthe bicolor, had flowered for the first time in a few years.  It's done even better this year.  I potted some of my corms up into a large tub and there are flowers emerging on a good many of the individual plants.  Half-hardy, this one, the foliage being winter green and requiring mild conditions to get  through.  Unusual rather than spectacular, the individual flowers with their purple stamens are still very interesting and a pretty thing to finish off on.

Chasmanthe bicolor

As always, click the pictures to embiggen.

As ever, my thanks to May Dreams Gardens for hosting the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day meme.  Head over there to see what's flowering in many more gardens round the world. 

On cold and camellias

We've just had a - hopefully brief - cold snap.  Down to -7C according to the sensor in Maria's car last Friday morning.  It's the first serious frost of the winter but has hit just when the camellias are coming into their full display.

I've got six in the garden and, successively, they give me colour from November to April.  The season starts with a Camellia sasanqua variety (I've lost the label but I think it's Shishi Gashira).  It's trained against a west facing wall and is now in semi shade so doesn't flower as freely as it should.  Even so, the relatively small, deep pink, semi double flowers are a welcome sight in November and December.  This one usually manages to avoid the flower damage a period of frost can bring.  But others are not so lucky.

Camellia sasanqua variety

Camellia 'Cornish Snow' I've blogged about before but this winter it started flowering in November and has carried on as the days have got colder.  Because we haven't had a sub zero frost until late last week the flowers have remained undamaged and really have brightened the darker months of December and January. 

Camellia 'Cornish Snow'

Which brings me to the ones that have just begun their flowering season.  These are all varieties of Camellia x williamsii, offspring of the many times repeated C.saluenensis / C.japonica cross that has yielded hundreds of free flowering, hardy and very desirable camellias since it was first tried at Caerhays (a famous Cornish garden) in 1923.

'St Ewe' was the first in flower, just after Christmas.  It has perfect single flowers and a long season from January to April with me.  Like all the C. x williamsii hybrids it has the invaluable ability to shed dead and frosted flowers of it's own accord.  The buds are frost resistant.  The flowers are not.  We get short periods of freezing weather so, inevitably, some flowers get frosted.  With the x williamsii varieties these will soon drop to be replaced by the next set of buds.  With other camellias - notably C.japonica - the dead flowers hang on and on - the bush becomes very unsightly.

Camellia 'St Ewe'

Next off the blocks this year was 'Donation', one of the best known of all camellias.  Hardly surprising.  The combination of prolific flowering and attractive blooms is attractive to anyone with the required acid soil.  The neat shrub form - though it can certainly grow large in time - provides additional attraction throughout the year.

Camellia x williamsii 'Donation'

The final one to flower is the heavily doubled 'Anticipation'.  My shrub is about 8ft / 2.5 metres high after 14 years and flowers profusely, brightening the late winter/early spring days.

Camellia x williamsii 'Anticipation'

Superb camellias and well worth the space the occupy in my small garden.

But the season doesn't stop here.  In a month the fat buds of my single Camellia japonica  variety will be open to produce absolutely formal semi double pink flowers.  It was sold to me as a variety it's definitely not.  I think it may be 'Magnoliaeflora' but I can't be certain.  Whatever it is, its small flowers are a definite adornment although a single night's frost can cover the bush with blossoms gone to brown decay.

Camellia japonica - a white semi double, possibly Magnoliaeflora'

Even out of flower camellias look good with their simple, glossy evergreen leaves and neat habits.  But, even with the continued risk of frost and snow, now is their season and now is their true delight to be seen.  I'll be visiting local gardens over the next couple of months and they will be in full flower, a beautiful start to the new year.

Camellia 'Cornish Snow'

I like Camellias.  I've got 6 crammed into a fairly small garden and, after 10 or more years in the ground, they are all fairly substantial.  With my C.sasanqua  variety starting the season in late Autumn and the others flowering in late winter through to mid spring I've got a lot of colour at difficult times of the year.  Even in summer their glossy evergreen leaves are an attractive backdrop.  But only one of the six goes that little bit further and adds interest with bronzed young foliage.  That one is 'Cornish Snow'.

Camellia 'Cornish Snow' early spring flowers

Camellia 'Cornish Snow' early summer foliage

The effect is subtle, I admit, but no less attractive.  One parent is C.cuspidata, another bronzed foliage camellia, and the inheritance comes through strongly in the rather open shape of the shrub and it's slightly lax habit. The influence of C.saluenensis, the other parent and, when crossed with C.japonica, the parent of the fabulous x williamsii hybrids, is not as much in evidence.


It's now about 8ft in height and nearly as much across after about a dozen years in the ground but lets enough light through it's airy structure that it doesn't cast the same shade as other camellias.  I'm glad I bought it - and I'm glad it's happy with me.