It’s pretty cold outside this morning but, to my delight, a pair of blue tits have been out and about inspecting a wooden bird box in the tree outside my office window, There are other signs of spring too – snowdrops of course, and other bulbs nosing their way up through the soil, tiny flower buds on the purple sprouting broccoli and catkins on the Egyptian willow. The flower buds on the epimediums are just visible; I’ve cut the old foliage right down so we’ll have a clear view of the strange little flowers as they come out (although they’re herbaceous plants, they’re in the same family as berberis – you can see a similarity in the flowers perhaps).

There’s still plenty of cutting back and tidying up to do in the garden, but the veg plot is tidy and ready to go. Keith, who also can’t wait, is preparing to sow leeks, broad beans and Japanese bunching onions for the allotment this weekend. Over the years, seed sowing has become one of his jobs, though pricking out and potting on are usually my responsibility (I have smaller fingers!).

 It’s funny how couples who are both interested in the garden divide up the chores. When I was growing up, my Mum did most of the gardening, but the lawn and edges were definitely my Dad’s territory. He was in charge of leaf clearing in the autumn, but I don’t think he ever did any weeding or pruning. Here the big Lawson’s hedge is Keith’s job, but the small box hedges are mine, weeding is mostly his domain, but I get to do most of the shrub pruning…there’s not much rhyme or reason to it since we are both quite capable of doing any or all of these chores. Generally Keith prefers to do the jobs that involve machinery – strimming, mowing etc. but he also does most of the weeding, leaving me to put the polish on the beds and borders once he’s done most of the donkey work.

And are there male and female plant groups I wondered last year when, at the RHS Spring Flower show, I spotted all these blokes and not a single woman looking at the daffs. Vegetable growing has traditionally been a male dominated hobby, whilst cut-flowers were mostly the preserve of the women, but I think these distinctions have been blurred in recent years; I’d love to hear what you have to say on the matter, and who does what in your garden – leave me a comment and let me know…

I hope that by the time you read this the country will have de-frosted but, for the moment, all activity in the garden has ground to a halt due to the weather. I say ‘for the moment’ but in reality I haven’t done any serious gardening for some weeks now – the ground has been first waterlogged, then frozen and now covered in a blanket of snow. I console myself with the possibility that at least the cold may be polishing off some of the pests and diseases that can overwinter in the garden in milder conditions – slugs eggs in the top layers of the soil perhaps?
So, how to keep occupied? One useful way of spending a few hours is to get out the seed catalogues or go online to order supplies for the coming season. This morning I’ve been browsing through lists and descriptions of vegetable seeds for the allotment. I prefer to go for old fashioned or ‘heritage’ varieties, partly for sentimental reasons but also because most modern varieties have been bred and developed for agricultural use, with the domestic market as a sideline. Whilst farmers prefer their crops to mature and ripen all at the same time, we home vegetable growers prefer a long cropping period, with the harvest spread over a period of some weeks. Heritage seeds will usually do this, because they were developed at a time when veg were produced in smaller quantities by market gardeners and the like. That’s the theory anyway!
Another endearing feature of these old-fashioned varieties of veg is that they often come in unusual colours. We’ve grown purple podded peas and maroon-flowered broad beans for several seasons now. They don’t taste much different from normal varieties, but they do make the plot look attractive, a plus point if you’re growing vegetables close to the house or as part of your main garden. A dark-leaved beetroot such as ‘Bull’s blood’ and a couple of rows of purple kale like ‘Black Tuscany’ or ‘Redbor’, together with some plants of Swiss chard ‘Rainbow mixed’ and a tepee of ‘Painted Lady’ runner beans will brighten up the veg plot quite nicely.
One way to while away a few hours on the computer is to browse through some of the many gardening ‘blogs’ that have appeared in recent months. These online diaries are a good way to discover what others are up to in the garden, to ask questions or chat with other like-minded gardeners. Most of the major newspapers have gardening blogs, as does the BBC’s Gardeners World team, but I prefer those posted by ordinary gardeners – they seem more human somehow.

Heritage vegetable seeds are available from Chiltern Seeds www.chilternseeds.co.uk, Thomas Etty www.thomasetty.co.uk/vegetables and the Organic Gardening Catalogue at www.organiccatalogue.com/catalog

This time last year we planted some saplings of Cornus mas, the cornelian cherry, into our boundary hedge. It’s a deciduous shrub or small tree native to central and southern Europe and SW Asia, prized for its small umbels of bright yellow flowers. These are produced each year in late winter, well before any leaves open, to be followed by bright red fruits in late summer. The fruits are edible when ripe, and are supposed to contain more vitamin C than oranges. I’ve wanted of these shrubs for a while now – my mother-in-law has a large specimen, which is sometimes in full flower when we visit in February. She hangs her bird feeders in it, because the twiggy growth protects the little birds from the neighbourhood sparrowhawk, so the clouds of yellow flowers are embellished by long-tailed tits, goldfinches and great tits.
We bought our little plants mail order, from a big firm that specialises in bulbs. Mail order plants from this kind of place can be a bit of a hit and miss affair – often the plants are very small, or delivery methods are such that they take a long time to arrive and are consequently dried out at the roots. Occasionally they are mis-named. Still, if the plants are cheap enough or a tad unusual, they’re often worth a punt, and this time we struck lucky; our cornelian cherries were in good condition, three feet tall or so, with fat buds on their straight stems. A bargain at twice the price!
Winter flowering shrubs are worth their weight in gold, and every home should have at least one to brighten the garden in January and February. Witch hazel (Hamamellis) and mahonia are two that spring readily to mind, whilst the long catkins of the silk-tassel bush, Garrya elliptica would be eye catching at any time of the year. Viburnum tinus is a relatively common sight, less so Azara microphylla, which is an evergreen with tiny yellow flowers that smell of vanilla. The contorted hazel is one of those plants you either love or hate, but there’s no denying that the winter catkins are a welcome sight. Also on my long-tern shopping list are Stachyurus praecox, and Ribes laurifolium, though you don’t often see them for sale and I may have to wait until they pop up in a mail-order catalogue…

A while ago I watched a TV programme made by a celebrated bird watching person, talking about his ‘home patch’, the area around his city home where he noted all the common or garden birds that shared his local environment. I was quite taken by the way that he prized the familiar just as much as he appreciated all the interesting and exotic birds which he came across in the course of his bird-watching travels. In a similar way, I have a ‘home patch’ for plants; trees, shrubs and perennials which aren’t growing in my own garden, and which aren’t particularly exotic or unusual, but which I notice and enjoy as I go about my everyday life here in Cockermouth.

            For a start, there are all the plants in my neighbours’ gardens, not necessarily the same as the plants in my garden and often flowering at different times and in different colours. This week I have appreciated a winter jasmine in full bloom, a Mahonia growing in a more sheltered garden than my own and still flowering strongly, a fine Garrya elliptica growing up a garden fence, the rusty brown heads of old hydrangea flowers and numerous hollies and ivies fruiting in the front gardens all along my street.

            Then there are all the plants I encounter on the way to do my shopping in the town centre – a number of well-berried cotoneaster bushes overhanging a garden gate, tiny ferns, Asplenium trichomanes, clinging to the churchyard wall, fat brown fir cones in the school grounds, Iris foetidissima with bright orange berries at the back of someone’s garden and pale pink heathers in front of a block of flats.

Garrya eliptica catkins

            If I go slightly further afield, to take the dog down through the park to the river for example, my walk will pass a number of big trees and native plants that mark the passing of the seasons in a way that garden plants sometimes don’t. In the park itself there are glossy red buds on the lime trees, I can just see the noses of a few snowdrops pushing up through the banking and from time to time there are interesting fungi around the bases of the older trees. There are old cones and new catkins on the alders by the river, giving the trees a fine, purple haze when viewed from a distance. Catkins are also lengthening on the hazel bushes which grow along the greenway, where there are grey-green lichens hanging in the oldest of the hawthorn trees and the remains of last year’s rose hips.

Iris foetidissima

            The plants and flowers in my patch are quite as interesting as those in my garden, the more so because I don’t visit them all every day.  And just because they’re ‘common or garden’ doesn’t mean they’re not appreciated!