THIS MONTH IN THE GARDEN (Feb 2010) by Derek Cox

The frost and snow during late December and January of this year reminded me of when; during the first week of February 1942, I first started work at Queniborough Old Hall as a gardener’s boy. During January of that year, we had very heavy snowfall, in many places the snow was 3 feet (90cm) deep. Then people who did not work locally depended on a bus to take them to work. At that time the bus, and most Lorries and cars, had snow chains fitted around their wheels and these enabled the vehicles to drive on snow and ice. The end of January 1942 saw the snow starting to thaw, but each night we had a frost, which resulted in the roads being covered in frozen, chain roughened ruts, so my first ride to work on my old ASP (all spare parts) bike was very precarious and bruising. Last Xmas we were lucky to have a fine, but cold spell of weather, consequently my wife Vi and myself had five glorious days in London staying with our son Mitchell and his wife Chris. During that time, we spent a day each at Kew gardens, Hampton Court and the RHS Wisley Gardens. You could spend a week at Kew and still not see many of the thousands of plants in the gardens, but as the wind was so cold, we spent most of the time in Kew’s magnificent glasshouses, in which there was a multitude of exotic tropical plants growing. Wisley Gardens has a new large tropical/temperate glasshouse and at the side of this is a large reservoir, which collects and recycles the water from the glasshouse roof. In the garden centre at Wisley Gardens, I spotted and bought the newly introduced Helleborus ‘Walbertons Rosemary’. This superb hybrid produces stems of pink, outward facing flowers, usually from late January until the end of March. The plant, which I purchased, was in full flower during December, no doubt, this was due to the pot-grown plant being in a cool, but frost-free greenhouse to bring it into flower for the Xmas sales. I shall plant this in my front garden in an attempt to isolate it from other Helleborus in the hope it will form seed, which will give me a selection of pink, outward facing hybrids. We had a great deal of fun at Hampton Court, mainly due to a pageant with Henry the 8th, his wife (which one?) the court jester and musicians. I somehow became involved with what was going on, it finished up with the jester and myself doing some entertaining. King Henry asking me if he had served with me in France and did they give me a decent pension, when I told him the pension was poor he said he would look into it and mention it to the chancellor. As we walked out of Hampton Court, I saw a group of people looking at a large deciduous tree and shaking their heads. When it comes to plants I am always nosey, so I went over to see what it was that intrigued them. The people were chattering away in French and as my French is almost non-existent, I asked if they spoke English. One young man said, yes I do, and could you tell us why the tree has clumps of evergreen hanging in it? I told him the clumps were mistletoe, a semi-parasitic plant that grew on a number of trees. As they had never seen mistletoe growing on a tree, most had their cameras out to take photographs. In my garden, I have three bird feeders and four netted fat balls hanging in trees, at present the birds are eating 3 kilos of sunflower hearts and half a kilo of nija seed each week, but I love my birds especially the tiny tits and finches who must struggle to stay alive in prolonged cold weather. Every day I go out to the birdbath, place a small saucepan in the centre, and fill this with boiling water, which quickly thaws the ice. This is also a good way to create a hole in your garden pond to let obnoxious gasses out. If you use a solid object to break pond ice, the shock waves created will often kill the fish.