Looking back can help us look ahead. For Gärtner, 2022 was a mix of heaven and hell better rest in peace. Will it be the new normal? Here are some of my lessons from it. They tend me to even out this year’s bets.
Do you remember the torrential rains of late winter and spring 2022? It’s been a miserable time to be a crocus in a British garden, but the few days of sunshine at the end of January confirmed the excellence of good old Crocus tommasinianus. It is the crocus with flowers of light lilac that are held like narrow pins when they first appear.
Its small bulbs have the advantage of being unattractive to squirrels, badgers and mice, and will spread fairly quickly by seed if their dying stems are not mowed by mid-May. Its color isn’t the most striking of the crocus family, but the more of a garden it is in my zoo, the more I admire it.
Last year was my first year growing a fine blue squill, Scilla bifolia. It has staying power, I realized when I noticed it growing in the coarse grass along a road near Blenheim Park, from which it had evidently escaped. I can’t imagine how I missed it for so long. It is another spring bulb that persists and propagates through seed. If it reappears this March I will mark it for propagation from now on as it is undisturbed by rain and is an offset for crocuses whose blooms collapse in a year of persistent wetness.
From early March, the gardens were adorned with flowers from mild, sunny weather and one of the loveliest spring seasons. Camellias were great and reminded Londoners why they need to find space for them.
Magnolias were fertile © Marianne Majerus
Once again, magnolias were early, prolific, and wonderfully beautiful. Thank you to everyone who has sent lovely photos of them, whether it be the large historical specimens at Borde Hill in Sussex or the younger ones flowering in your own gardens. Recent mild sources have validated an old lesson: Plant a magnolia as a priority when starting a new garden. Long-term bets should be planted first.
In mid-April, London was looking positively Mediterranean with climbing roses already in bloom. Peonies also bloomed weeks ahead of schedule. Irises and lilacs were outstanding. A common question is whether this early flowering matters and whether there is something to enjoy later. Somehow late summer never leaves us without flowers: the seasons coincide again and most roses have a second bloom anyway. So I’m not worried.
My highlight in May was a visit to Branklyn Garden in Perth to celebrate the final year of expert Jim Jermyn’s role as property manager for the National Trust for Scotland. Blue Himalayan poppies, rare paraquilegia, the most beautiful pulsatillas: they were all there and more, plants of my dreams from the years of my rock gardening youth.
Plants tanned and vacillated between my breakfast and tea. I couldn’t bear to watch
Visit the garden this year while the legacy of Jermyn and his team is still strong. I came home humiliated and set about weeding every inch of my own Alps to meet Branklyn’s standards. A visit can be an inspiration: it has greatly improved my beds of mountain plants.
In early June, the bush roses were wonderful, the third year in a row that I have been carried away by their abundance. The lesson here is simple: When starting a new garden, make roses a priority too. They don’t have to be in separate rose beds. They mix and match in borders or stand alone if you choose one of the larger shrub varieties.
With beds, on the other hand, I missed a vertical element, the upright factor that is essential to a well-thought-out garden design. My thimbles have shrunk in recent years, so I plan to increase them this year, especially the white ones, which show up so beautifully in the twilight in early June.
On June 25th I fled towards Cambridge to escape that triennial night of danger to my Oxford College garden, its memorial ball. I remember anxiously checking the weather reports to see if it was raining and the guests might have turned the lawn to mud. They didn’t, but I never thought it would hardly rain for the next 10 weeks.
Peonies bloomed early © Clive Nichols Garden Pictures
Blue poppies in Branklyn Garden, Perth, Scotland © Brian and Nina Chapple/National Trust for Scotland
Temperatures reached extreme highs, lawns turned brown and dahlias did not thrive. Most of my vegetables failed, except zucchini, winner in that driest year, 1976. I was tired of battered sliced zucchini, even as directed in one of my cooking bibles, the River Cafe Cook Book Easy, whose recipe for it is first class.
Is this hideous summer the new pattern? Who knows what climate change will bring to Britain at the micro level? A second wave of brutal heat, nearly 40C, then arrived on August 12. For the first time ever, I wondered why I garden so assiduously: plants were browning and vacillated between my breakfast and tea. I couldn’t bear to watch.
Bets on the future must be balanced. Choose more plants with silver or gray leaves that help the plants retain water, and support them with plants with taproots that reach well below the surface of the soil. Verbascum, oriental poppies and the excellent Campanula lactiflora are the mainstays here.
I’ll also focus on sages, most of which even indulge in pots on a sun-kissed patio on a hot day. They were the winners of 2022, while lobelia and fuchsia hated the weather as much as I did.
I feared a dry September in 1976 as well. It was not to be: Heavy downpours ended the long drought. They energized the gardens which made for as beautiful September, October and early November as I can remember.
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Lawns came back to green life, a lesson for novices who think the only way to save them is by watering in the summer. Dahlias achieved late splendor. Apples bore fruit in abundance. All the winners of the autumn were particularly beautiful, the blue monkshood, the multi-blooming roses and the many types of daisies. Is there a pattern here? I continue to balance this bet and plan for the new November mild weather.
Or so it seemed. Then came the December week with brutal cold weather that dropped to -10C in my garden and made the late flowers on Viburnum look like a polluted mess. It was a timely reminder that British gardening is not entering a new era where minimally hardy banana plants and other exotics will change the face of winter. A quick, sharp nudge still erases them. While rebalancing my late fall bets, I don’t expect succulent agaves and most ginger plants or hedychia to be reliable mainstays.
What a rollercoaster ride we had: never give up, never settle for stability. Balance your decisions against the worst and best in each direction. These are lessons informed investors will recognize: too few of us live up to them in advance.
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