How is your Wintergarten?

In a previous garden this question, with a lot of gutteral empasis on the last word became a running gag, I am not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was because that the person who first posed the question, a certain Austrian gentleman, was not one of our favourite visitors, and certainly was someone who knew very little about gardening. But he did possess a "wintergarten", in his case a heated conservatory, no doubt full of the latest 'exotica'. Our conservatory on the other hand was unheated and was used chiefly to overwinter plants that could put up with perhaps minus one or two, but not anything more. Things that did flourish in it it were various salvias such as S. elegans and S. guaranitica, and Geranium maderense, plants which if grown outside often struggle, if they do not die. Moreover our outside wintergarten, which is to say those plants that come into their own during the winter months, because there was not a specific winter area, was nothing to write home about.

Here it is even less so. In my last blog I wrote about the mahonias, plants that I strongly recommended since they provide both flowers and an evergreen structure. Also recommended, though with slightly less enthusiasm Viburnum tinus for roughly the same reasons, though its structure is not all that exciting - just a bush. But of course anything evergreen is more noticeable in winter, so all conifers are obvious winter candidates. However, since I have never really taken to them I cannot give much advice about them, except perhaps to warn that so-called dwarfs have an alarming habit to turn into giants.

If you have ever visited Jean Thoby's Plantarium at Gaujacq (40330) you will have no doubt admired his many autumn/winter flowering camellias, mainly C. sasanquas. I am very taken by them, especially those that have good scent. They seem to take the heat a little better than the spring flowering C. japonicas, but if you consult Thoby's catalogue or website (www.thoby.com) , the words 'sol frais' will appear very frequently. They are surely worth a try - they do not seem to object to our soil, which though rarely acid is more neutral than calcareous - but bear in mind that they will not accept periods of secheresse.

I need to acquire a winter flowering clematis, C. cirrhosa for the most part, with names like Freckles or Wisley Cream. They are not as spectacular as their later flowering cousins - if you were feeling unkind you might call their flowers a rather dinghy white, but as I have undoubtedly remarked before a plant does not have to be spectacular to catch the eye in Winter since there is so little competition. C. armandii, of which there are many varieties, all in the white to pink range, are more truthfully early spring than winter flowering but their leaves are evergreen, and in their way quite decorative, and thus show well in Winter. They also have good scent and appear to put up with our hot and usually dry summers pretty well. Incidentally both it and C. cirrhosa need quite a lot of space, the former reaching 5 metres or so, but it takes quite happily to heavy pruning.

Many of our bulbs are beginning to appear. There are one or two snowdrops in flower, though as I have mentioned before, one or two is all we have managed to grow, and each passing year results in fewer rather than more, always a distressing state of affairs.. On the other hand the small iris such I reticulata, with names such as George and Harmony, flourish without any help on my part, and are now in full flower. Sadly, like most irises, the flowers do not last long, but they are very showy, and their colour, usually in the blue/purple range, go well with the winter flowering Cyclamen coums. The individual flowers of the perhaps most famous Winter flowering iris, which goes under the impossible name of of I. unguicularis, also have a brief life, but appear over a longish period. Last year promised to increase my stock, have failed to do so, but I will try to do better this year.

Meanwhile the undoubted stars of our wintergarten, that is until the recent very cold spell, are Viburnum farreri, this similar to much pinker V. bodnantense) and Prunus subhirtella Autumnalis Rosea. I have recommended them before, but have no hesitation in recommending them again, especially as the latter is surprisingly little seen in our neck of the woods. But then all flowering cherries, apart from the perhaps all too common Prunus cerasifera Pissardii, though I increasingly find the pink haze its early flowering produces a delight, seem to be rejected by the French, for reasons that I still have not discovered.