I have returned to British reality with a cold hard bump. In Pakistan I have been admiring dahlias and marigolds in flower under cloudless blue skies. In Britain there has been frost on the lawn and cloud: dahlias are a distant prospect.
At least it has been a marvellous year for snowdrops. They began to flower profusely in mid January and were then prolonged as if in a fridge by bouts of frost and cold wind. I returned to find them as good as they had been four weeks before, Galanthus S Arnott to the fore, the named snowdrop which is most worth its price for busy gardeners: it multiplies, even in grass, and is always free flowering. Witch hazels too have been chilled into four weeks of flowering and the marvellous winter-flowering cherry has been unstoppable.
Beyond these high points it has been a chastening winter. I have a general view that British gardens and stock markets move in correlation. In markets flighty companies, perhaps with a future, have now been massacred and basic values have re-emerged. In gardens too, fast-growing flighty performers have been killed off.
In cities the damage has been less: in my daughter’s warm London garden the myrtles are enviably alive. In my cold country acres, forget myrtles. The death toll has been its highest ever. I have lost rosemaries, hebes, ceanothus and much else I will mourn in a moment. This column is one of sympathy with country gardeners, including those who moved there in the wake of the pandemic.
Why all the deaths? Compared with the winters of 1962-63 or 1981-82, this one has not been excruciating. I think the deaths in the garden were compounded by a lack of snow and by renewed bouts of cold just when plants were recovering from the previous one. In early to mid-December, -12C of frost hit my garden night after night, far earlier than ever in the 1980s and 1990s. This proto-freeze was eerily reminiscent of the one in 2017: will it be a pattern in Britain as the climate alters?
It hit plants that had been enjoying the long warm autumn and a November that was a gardener’s delight. The mild prelude made it even more of a shock to them. Fortunately a warm blanket of snow came with it, but it was most unwelcome even so.
My winter bellwethers are parahebes, those low-growing evergreen shrubs that carry showers of blue or white flowers in early summer. During the great heat of July and August their green leaves scorched and already turned brown. In December they went brown again just as they had recovered and shown new life. January and February then finished them off.
In late January the frost returned without the snow to moderate it. It killed off the white-flowered parahebe called Avalanche and then killed Porlock, its hardier pale-blue-flowered brother. As they have graced the main entrance to my house for the past seven years, I feared the worst. Inspection shows that the fear was justified. Replacements have to be sourced immediately.
My ceanothus of all ages are dead. I have wasted three years on them, having planted them in those lovely warm days during the first lockdown, that gardeners’ paradise in 2020. I will try again but will stray no further than Autumnal Blue, one of the hardiest. They grow fast but do not transplant well as big plants. In my older age they are not things to lose totally.
In the first lockdown I also planted alluring cistuses. In that sunny warm March it was hard to believe that an old-fashioned frost would ever trouble them again. From the fine gardens at Kiftsgate Court in Gloucestershire, I bought two good bushes of the white-flowered, sticky-leaved Cistus palhinhae, one that grows well without protection on Kiftsgate garden’s steep banks. They revelled in winter 2021-22, one so mild that it did not even kill the pelargoniums I had failed to move indoors from their summer pots.
Now they are dead, leaving me to wonder whether it is ever worth replacing them. At most I will risk Cistus cyprius, one which is harder to find as it is harder to propagate but is hardier than many others.
I grow flowery penstemons for late summer and I know that there are gradations of hardiness among them. White Snowstorm, dark purple-black Raven and red Myddelton Gem are not reliable, but I use scarlet Firebird as my banker and reckon to chance the others. This year even Firebird is totally brown. I will leave it for a few weeks as penstemons sometimes regenerate from the base but I am not hopeful. I have never lost Firebirds before.
Hebes are a disaster area. I avoid the bigger-leaved evergreens as I know they will often fail in winter but what about the smaller-leaved evergreens, including my favourite Nicola’s Blush? It is the one with masses of pale pink and white little flowers, often twice a year including late autumn. I have had fine bushes of it blushing happily for 15 years but they look dead all over. I will wait on the off chance of regrowth from below ground but I am not hopeful.
For even longer I have loved a lovely taller pink one, Hebe Watson’s Pink, another plant only available from the excellent plant stall at Kiftsgate garden. There, it has always been hardy. It is now dead to ground level.
I well remember 1982. After the bitter winter many shrubs did not look alive until late May. The first test to try is whether the stems show any inner green when you scrape a bit or cut into them with secateurs. If they do they will probably revive: exceptions are shrubby potentillas and cistuses, which can look brown inside but still be alive. If the top growth is all dead, penstemons, hebes and so forth will sometimes reshoot from below ground level, so leave all the dead top growth for the moment and reassess progress or not in early May.
I doubt if white-flowered gauras or any of the hardyish fuchsias will reappear then from below ground. It is wiser to buy replacements now if you see them on sale. They will have been bought up by May, for sure.
Wait, watch and expect the worst. I have grave misgivings about less hardy varieties of agapanthus and have written off marginal verbenas and myrtles. Dieramas, those beauties with grassy leaves and arching stems of flower, are harder to judge. The grassy leaves often go brown in winter but fresh green growth remerges: I will wait and see. I have more hopes of well-chosen pokers, members of the kniphofia family. They have lost all their grassy top growth but look as if they will shoot anew.
Looking at last year’s photos, I can see how my garden in late June looked particularly lovely because it was full of plants I could never have risked in the 1980s. It was like a 2021 portfolio full of tech stocks. It is now thrown back on old staples, phloxes, pulmonarias, hellebores, magnolias and prunus trees.
It is a necessary lesson for newish gardeners, especially those gained in 2020’s lockdowns. The boundaries of hardiness have not permanently shifted, however much the general climate warms. Short sharp shocks sort out the over optimistic. Enjoy past photos, put them behind you and replant as soon as a loss is certain. Deaths are opportunities.
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