Wordless Wednesday: A Week of Flowers, Day 6

I wasn’t expecting a lot from today’s count, but mild temperature in the week leading up to Christmas Day must have given things an unseasonal boost and I have had some surprises in the last few days. Having noted it was still only in bud, I wasn’t going to include sarcococca in the total until I came out of the back door again a little later and was instantly hit with an almost overwhelming fragrance: tucked under foliage and sprawling ivy was a clutch of fully open blooms, doing what they do best and perfuming the garden from several metres away.

With very best wishes and thanks to all my blogging friends for your continued friendship, wishing you health, happiness, joy and good gardening in 2024.

The gentlemen may well be resting and making merry but, never one to sit and twiddle my thumbs, I have suddenly found myself in the middle of another project. With only eight weeks until we open the garden again, it is not necessarily a sensible thing to be doing, but with a settled period of weather in the offing it was hard to resist, especially as the Golfer was very much up for the challenge. In fact, unusually, the project developed from an idea of his, a practical revision of the status quo, and began with stealing one of the cutting beds (above) and temporarily bagging it up (below):

If you love cartoon characters or want specimens that your kids can relate to easily, then these Spongebob Flowers are a must-have!

Enjoy a Virtual Christmas Tour of the Biltmore House. Happy Holidays from the HGIC Staff.

When I set off into the garden yesterday to pick materials for today’s vase, I fully expected to come back with a little posy and certainly not a bunch, Winter not being quite as generous in her offerings as other seasons of the year are.

Working through winter tasks in the garden when time and weather align favourably, there are plenty of opportunities to look forward and back, usually simultaneously, such as with crab apple Malus ‘Evereste’. This sad, mushy state was pretty normal for M ‘Golden Hornet’, but the blackbirds have usually taken all the peachy crabs from ‘Evereste’ well before now, leaving me looking forward to the pretty spring blossom or at least to when I am able to remove the offending fruit. Even the red Christmas lights do little to enhance their ugliness.

On day 12 of advent we’re offering the chance to win a hand painted fern bin and tissue box from Master the Art, worth £180.

During the Christmas season, the Biltmore Conservatory is filled with poinsettias, orchids, and other exotic plants.

Blooms are almost non-existent in the garden at the moment after several days of frost, but I had two options: another pelargonium from the Coop, or stems of the overwintering Salvia ‘Phyllis Fancy’ in the working greenhouse. The latter, which never made it back into a border last year after its previous overwintering, remaining in its pot in disgrace, won the toss. After continued underperformance, I have been on the point of banishing it altogether, but now plan to give it a reprieve, albeit keeping it in a pot rather than giving it border space. However, I am not holding my breath…

Day 10 of our advent prize draw gives entrants the opportunity to win a DNA’24 DB26 Bread Knife from Savernake worth £199. Please note you must be over 18 to enter this prize draw.

Our eleventh prize is a Gold Smokebox, worth £105 from Lambton & Jackson.