In early spring, hellebores and daphnes held centre stage. Hellebore.orientalis with flowers ranging from butter yellow through to deep maroon, H. niger did not flower so well this year, but well enough to appreciate a few of those gorgeous white, golden centered blooms. These early spring plants always raise my spirit just at the right time, after all those long dark dreary of winter, you feel things are finally on the move.
Daphne. mezereum flowered outstandingly well, making the air around quite heavy with its distinctive scent. D. blagayana as usual put on a good show, this little daphne is a very good natured evergreen woodlander from eastern Europe, a prostate grower with beautiful cream-white flowers with that familiar daphne scent! One newcomer to the garden, D. jezoensis from Russia is to say the least a little gem! This daphne is fully dormant during the summer and loses all its leaves, it awakes in late summer/autumn and holds its breath right through winter until early spring when it begins to flower; the real surprise then is revealed -- its superb butter-yellow flowers, again surrounded by a heavenly scent.
Clematis and roses have performed well this summer, to pick a couple of shining examples - Clematis.viticella "Etoile Violette" was a huge mound of deep purple for weeks on end; this plant is grown through a very vigorous Berberis. thunbergii, so it has plenty of support.
On the roses front, two plants spring immediately to mind, firstly, R. filipes "Kifsgate." This plant is in its fifth year now and grows up a twenty year old Alder tree (A.glutinosa). The show has been truly spectacular, a huge waterfall of white blooms. This is not a plant for the faint hearted! It needs plenty of space and a sturdy support, and not least a regular pruning regime to help keep it within bounds! Finally, one of the David Austin roses, "Leander" stands out. This rose is grown here as a climber and what a worthwhile plant it is, too. It has two good flushes of bloom, June and then September; the flowers, of course are in the "old rose" style and are a particularly lovely shade of apricot having a fruity scent. For some reason, Austin roses have come in for some criticism of late, but for me they fit the bill perfectly, gardening as a lot of us do in small gardens, they are on the whole very compact and most importantly disease free, a plus in anybody's book.
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