The year has turned. Days are getting longer once again and, on January 19, a significant thing happened in our part of the northern hemisphere.
The ground began to warm up again. Our gardens are slowly coming back to life and they should be producing early flowers.
There are lots of new plants, as well as established favourites, to tempt the bees and you. These winter gems will set your heart racing, sustain the earliest bees and bring spring one giant step nearer.
Aconites take over
Winter aconites are among the earliest of all and I love the way they hover at ground level, like fledgling birds, with plump buds protected by feathered wings of foliage. The commonest species, Eranthis hyemalis, has been grown in Britain for 400 years.
Many colonies thrive under tall deciduous trees, like those under the lime trees at Rodmarton Manor in Gloucestershire. The root system ensures that they’re well-drained in winter, but cooled by a leafy canopy in summer – if there’s one thing these tubers hate, it’s drying out in summer.
They do need to catch winter sunshine however, so that their bright yellow orbs of flower open fully and allow early pollinators to get to work. Seed pods follow, and the pale brown seeds can be collected and sown, or left to self-seed. After three years or so the seedlings will flower.
Winter aconites are at an exciting stage of their development because in recent years doubles and different colours have begun to pop up. The self-explanatory 'Orange Glow’ and the pale apricot 'Schwefelglanz’ are both for sale, albeit in small numbers. Both were discovered in naturalised populations and, as a result, breeders have begun to look at established colonies.
I’ve noticed at recent snowdrop gatherings, where snowdrops and winter aconites rub shoulders, that one or two people have spent most of their time peering into the aconites, not the snowdrops. Joe Sharman, a famous snowdrop raiser, is one of them. He’s besotted by winter aconites and he has begun to hybridise them in the hopes of breeding doubles in orange and apricot.
Sharman was prompted to begin working with eranthis after seeing 'Orange Glow’ in the Nineties. This distinctly orange winter aconite was on fellow galanthophile Richard Blakeway-Phillip’s Vincent Square stand and he’d acquired it from the Copenhagen Botanic Garden. It was discovered by Danish nurseryman Jens Ole Pedersen. 'Orange Glow’ has spread well for me and the orange flowers, framed by a green ruff of foliage, stand out nicely against the soil.
Joe’s second acquisition was a fully double greenish-yellow named 'Noel Ayres’, after a head gardener at Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire. It had been spotted by Noel’s son Richard in the Fifties before he went on to become the head gardener of Anglesey himself. Sharman, who’s also based near Cambridge, was given a clump in the early Nineties. He collected seeds but they produce single-flowered forms. Sharman’s third eranthis was a pale yellow single found in Petersfield Physic __garden in the mid-Eighties. It was named 'Pauline’ after Pauline Dean, a botanical artist who had painted this pale aconite.
'Schwefelglanz’, which translates as 'Sulphur Glow’, is a German eranthis that I first saw at the RHS Vincent Square February show of 2008, on Avon Bulbs’ stand. They sell it, as do Monksilver Nursery along with a few others. 'Schwefelglanz’ was found in Ruth Treff’s __garden in Darmstadt, Germany in 1985. Other German discoveries include the double green-marked 'Grünspecht’, German for green woodpecker. It was found by Erich Pohle and I suspect I’m probably attracted by the name as much as the plant, so it’s on my wants list.
Unusual winter aconites are also turning up in Britain. Joe Sharman found the semi-double yellow 'Hafod’ in woods close to a derelict Cambridge lodge house in the early Nineties. 'Hafod’, which does come true from seed, has settled in well for me. In 2009 another double called 'All Saints’ was discovered in a Suffolk churchyard. John Foster, a respected local galanthophile, got permission to remove it so this one is on its way into production.
These new winter aconites are still waiting in the wings for most of us. But the common yellow winter aconite can look dazzling in early spring sunlight. You can acquire them in the green, or buy tubers in September.
It’s a good idea to soak the dry tubers in water for two hours before planting to rehydrate them. Find a well-drained position, one that doesn’t bake in summer, and allow them to self seed. Or sow them in trays just as the seed pods split.
Lesser celandines
Lesser celandines, now Ficaria verna (formerly Ranunculus ficaria), have a similar tendency to throw up doubles and singles in different foliage and flower colours.
Forms have been named and collected in the wild and a double named 'Flore Pleno’ has been grown in Britain for centuries.
Lesser celandines aren’t every gardener’s idea of a great plant because they have a tendency to produce lots of tiny bulbils
In the Nineties Joe Sharman noticed that 'Double Bronze’ had produced single seedlings. “I crossed it with a plant from the orange Aurantiaca Group, but all the seedlings were single and yellow.
I knew the 'Double Bronze’ gene had to be in there, as well as the orange one, so I put the seedlings into a corner of woodland and, after 13 years, my first orange double appeared.”
More have followed since and they have been named after a coterie of French ladies who worked on his nursery. 'Nathalie’ is a short, vigorous double orange that is sold by Monksilver. 'Nicola’, 'Claudine’, 'Sylvie’ and 'Vanessa’ are still being bulked up, but they include a double cream with frosted purple leaves, a double cream with dark purple leaves, a double orange with almost-black leaves and a subtle yellow double.
Lesser celandines aren’t every gardener’s idea of a great plant because they have a tendency to produce lots of tiny bulbils – which travel.
However, their high-gloss petals, which look as though they’ve been lacquered by a graffiti artist, shine and dazzle in spring sunshine more brightly than anything else. I am constantly asked for two from my own garden. The dark red-leaved single yellow 'Brazen Hussy’, found by Daisy Lloyd in the woods of Great Dixter, and the cream 'Double Mud’. They are among my most requested plants.
Iris
Shorter reticulate irises light up late winter and early spring. I have done well with the very blue 'Lady Beatrix Stanley’ and the softer grey-blue 'Sheila Anne Germaney’ by putting them in well-drained south-facing areas. 'Lady Beatrix Stanley’, collected by the lady herself whilst plant hunting with Edward Augustus Bowles in 1928, produces a lot of foliage and is the most vigorous short iris I grow. Luckily it’s more available than it was.
In February 2015 we were given a glimpse of a new Canadian-bred iris called 'Eyecatcher’ raised by Alan McMurtrie. It’s one of a series containing many different colours so it’s an exciting breakthrough. It was made possible by McMurtrie’s discovery of a diploid form of Iris danfordiae in Turkey in 1985, which he was able to use in his breeding line. 'Eyecatcher’ lives up to its name, with white falls marked and spotted in blue and yellow and blue-streaked white standards. Jacques Amand sell 12 McMurtrie hybrids.
Look out for the larger-flowered, lemon and white 'North Star’ and the dappled grey-blue and yellow 'Splish Splash’. These McMurtrie hybrids are complex crosses between Iris reticulata, I. histrioides and I. danfordiae, natives of Turkey, the Caucasus Mountains and parts of the Middle East. They need good drainage in the garden.
Blues of spring
Touches of blue, although usually rare, are abundant in the early spring garden. The most intensely blue miniature bulb is Scilla siberica and this will self-seed and grow in shade, although it will flower later in a cooler position.
Corydalis solida, which will also self-seed in bright woodland positions, has been revolutionised by Latvian bulb breeder Janis Ruksans, and now comes in many colours.
Several early bulbs also do well in lawns – the starry white-centred blue chionodoxa, Anemone pavonina and Crocus tommasinianus will all self-seed in lawns, although any mowing has to wait until the seeds have dropped.
How to grow bulbs in grass
- Go for simple species bulbs, or lookalikes, rather than showy doubles. These will be bee-friendly and look natural.
- Many species spread by self-seeding rather than by making baby bulbs, so don’t deadhead them. To allow the seeds to drop, wait at least eight weeks after flowering before you mow the grass.
- Plant in September at twice the depth of the bulb. Lift a triangle or square of turf, using a spade, then break up the ground with a fork. Space the bulbs out on the ground, plant, then re-lay the turf.
- Don’t make a tasteless dolly mixture containing lots of different types of bulb. Create simple swathes using a maximum of three, such as Crocus tommasinianus, Narcissus pseudonarcissus (or 'W.P. Milner’) with the later flowering Ornithogalum nutans, for instance.
- Dutch crocus (C. vernus) is strong enough to push through turf. The striped white and purple 'Pickwick’ and the softer violet-purple 'Remembrance’ are both excellent.
- Choose well-behaved bulbs that don’t set frightening amounts of seed. I’m still rueing the day I planted Scilla bifolia! Lift the skirts of deciduous shrubs (but not daphne or hamamelis), by removing lower branches and plant miniature bulbs, such as March-flowering Scilla siberica, round the trunks.
