Hope follows a winter of damaging storms for far north garden
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Gardening on the Edge by Diana Wayland
We have had a dreadful winter. Constantly wet, and windy even for here on our headland. Named storms, gales and strong winds also came in from an unaccustomed winter direction. Usually north-west, this winter they were east, south-east and south-westerly, damaging plants normally sheltered from the winter gales.
We normally get a lot of rain during autumn and winter, but this year it was almost continuous. The only break we got was when it snowed – heavy, blizzard conditions, which fortunately did not last too long here.
Most of my plants are herbaceous, and underground during the winter storms. The shrubs I grow are those that can survive here: Rosa rugosa, osiers, Brachyglottis Sunshine, fuchsia, escallonia, gorse. These have coped better than the herbaceous, much of which do not like the excess rain we had this winter.
As spring began to raise its cautious head over the parapet, I started checks to see what plants had managed to withstand the constant wet and relentless winds. I was encouraged to find that most plants do appear to have survived in the herb garden, the woodland garden and herbaceous border.
But there have been some losses. Not a single overwintering foxglove remains in the woodland garden. There are four or five in a more sheltered bed that I will need to plant back in there if I want my foxgloves to continue, and hope that some of last year’s seed will germinate later.
I appear to have lost my herb garden gingermint, which so valiantly weathered the soggy January in 2023 but, despite my increasing the drainage in that bed during the summer, could not withstand three solid months of continuous rain.
There were delights that thrilled me, too. In early March I was so happy to see that the Anemone blanda, blue anemones, that were an impulse buy last April, had weathered the storms and were coming up and in bud.
Then, a week later, I found that a rabbit had penetrated some 12ft from the field behind our garden, despite our rabbit-proofing, and burrowed to come up in the spring grotto, destroying almost all of the anemones with its soil excavations. Three tiny plants remain. I check them every day.
Another joy is my Corydalis bulbosa. A friend gave me a tiny bit one spring, and it is gradually increasing. Its pink flowers will delight me into April and then it will disappear completely until next year.
Something as well as rabbits has also burrowed up from said field into my raised beds and relocated the Tulipa praestens I had planted at the back of these, and the chionodoxa I had planted near the front. What was not eaten is coming up all over the beds now, including among the aquilegias that fill the beds in summer when the bulbs have died down. Mouse, vole, rat or weasel, I cannot tell.
I can but carry on and hope that I am right, and less than I thought succumbed. I have sown leek and onion seed indoors, planted onions and shallots in trays and modules in the greenhouse. Most of my Mediterranean herbs like lavender and rosemary have survived the winter in pots in the greenhouse, despite the onslaught.
Soon I will know. Replace what I have lost and rejoice in what survived. Every spring, there is always hope.
