Garden at the beginning of February 2014

Not a great deal different from last month, really on the bigger picture. It's still been really mild and rather wet still.

However, take a closer look and things are really moving on. The hellebore has several flowers on it now.

The snowdrops are flowering. 

In the cold frame the half-hardy fuchsias are still flowering(!).

And the cyclamen have emerged, as well as the first sign of the tulips in the containers.

Even the campanula is flowering.

And the first crocuses.

Spring definitely seems to be on the way, but it is only the beginning of February so a lot of winter could still happen!

Days out: Wisley

Last year I joined the Royal Horticultural Society, which not only provides great gardening advice via their website and publications, but also offers lots of beautiful gardens to visit.

Last weekend the OH and I decided to have a day out to Wisley, the RHS garden in Surrey. There was a "Butterflies in the glasshouse" event on, which meant some parts were very crowded, but it was easy to get away from it all. This is the lake by the glasshouse.

And the view up one of the herbaceous borders towards fruit hill. 

 

It's quite a contrast with this photo I took in July, the same borders from the other direction:

 In the winter garden snowdrops were appearing - it's been so mild they're early this year.

In one of the alpine houses crocuses and cyclamen were in bloom.

We went to the vegetable plot area to have a look. This is set up as examples of different types of gardening. This side is the same size as a half allotment plot, to give an idea of what can be done on an allotment.

The winter crops were in, including some sprouts with an amusing name.

The earliest varieties of rhubarb were beginning to appear.

This is the red and purple vegetables bed, which I thought was a great idea if you have the room!

And finally some Cornus sanguinea 'Midwinter fire' full of glorious colour.

Big Garden Birdwatch 2014

I've done the Big Garden Birdwatch for the last couple of years, with varying degress of success - why do all the birds vanish just as soon as you settle down to watch for them?!

This year's total:

Blackbird: 2
Great tit: 2
Robin: 2
Wood pigeon: 1
Magpie: 1
Long-tailed tit: 2

So, an improvement on 2012 in terms of bird numbers and varieties. But where are all the dunnocks which usually hang around in the garden?!

Garden January 2014

Remember Garden at the beginning of the month? I did that for over a year, ending a year ago, when I kept forgetting to take the pictures at the beginning of the month. You can see my past pictures on my photostream. I like using it as a way of seeing how the garden has developed, and how much work has already been done. In comparison, this is January 2012 and January 2011, when it really did look bare.

It's hard to take garden pictures at this time of year without the low sun making huge shadows. Everything's looking bare, but apart from all the flooding, it's incredibly mild. We've only had a couple of frosts, and they haven't been bad ones.

There's still some colour in the garden. These are a couple of primulas I bought at the church Christmas fayre in December. They're brightening up the container I can see from the kitchen window.

This is a winter flowering clematis ("Wisley Cream") which I bought in the summer, on a trip to the Royal Horticultural Society gardens at Wisley. You can see some of the other plants I bought then in a different post, but I never got round to blogging about the visit itself! I wanted to get more winter flowering plants in the garden to provide nectar all year round for insects.

Then the containers I potted up in the Autumn, with winter-flowering pansies and violas.

And bulbs already beginning to push through - you can tell how mild it's been.

Inside the house, this is the hippeastrum that Mum gave us for Christmas, now with four huge flowers at the same time!

Before Christmas I put two of the forced hyacinths on the mantelpiece. Our living room is quite dark, and there is a window at either end of the room, so the flowers have grown towards the light, but in opposite directions. Amusingly one appears to be trying to biff the knitted me on the head, and the other one the photographic me!