Buds of Potential

It’s that time of year again when I am out in the backyard surveying the residual winter mess and examining the plants already budding with potential.

Leaf buds on Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Schneeball’.

I have also been spending a few minutes poking around in the sodden vegetation to find any discrete beauties preparing for their floral entrance.

Unfurling leaves of the Lenten Rose, Helleborus orientalis.

And, to my surprise these hellebores had just started to bloom as the last of the snow finally melted away.

Another pink hellebore. The first flower.

Not all the plants in my backyard coped as well as the hellebores with the -5 degrees centigrade and 20 cm of snow. All of last summer’s pelargoniums that I had moved up close to the house are now a sad, blackened gloopy mess of vegetation. That is they are dead. Fortunately, last autumn I brought three indoors; one white single zonal, one dark pink regal and one pink scented-leaf variety. Overwintering in my kitchen isn’t ideal, but at least the are still alive.

Pelargoniums overwintered in my kitchen.

It isn’t only the temporary residents in my kitchen that are doing well, a couple of cuttings taken from the Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Schneeball’ seem securely rooted and have recently burst into leaf.

Cuttings sharing a small pot – two hydrangea and one Crassula ovata aka Money Plant.

Now, I must come clean. I don’t normally buy imported flowers but I couldn’t resist having some of these sweet pink beauties. I think it was a Lockdown 3 thing.

Of course, I could be mistaken regarding their provenance and they may have been grown under glass in Lincolnshire, but somehow at £1.79 a bunch (worryingly cheap) I think probably not.