This March has been the first time I have seen trees of Magnolia Soulangiana with two weeks of beautiful flowers, then a frost on the night of 31st March turned the flowers brown. I do not have room in my garden for larger growing Magnolia’s, but I do grow two medium sized varieties, of these ‘Leonard Messel’ is the first to produce a lovely show of pink, star shaped flowers during March and early April and this escaped the frost. During April and May Magnolia ‘Suzan’ will produce a lovely display of light purple, tulip-shaped flowers. I prune both Magnolias as soon as they have finished flowering, by reducing the previous year’s growth by two thirds of its length.

I am very fond of Daphne’s and at one time had as many as thirty different ones in my garden. Some I found very miffy, they would grow and look well for a couple of years then suddenly die. Now when looking around my garden I find I have only sixteen evergreen varieties, but these are very reliable, some are over forty years old. There are a number of dwarf alpine forms, which I grow in alpine scree beds; others form low to medium sized shrubs. All that I grow, which flower during March, April and May have white, lavender, or pink flowers. One, Daphne laureola is the earliest to flower, but this has lime-green flowers and is the easiest to grow, it does however seed beneath other shrubs and can outgrow low growing shrubs. Most forms of Daphne have green foliage, but I grow three varieties of Daphne odora that have yellow edged foliage, of these ‘Rebecca’ is the most outstanding as during March and April its cluster of pale pink, fragrant flowers sit in the centre of a rosette of variegated leaves.

Lettuce ‘Lettony’, which I sowed during March, and planted into growbags that I keep in my cold greenhouse, which being a loose-headed lettuce, enables me to cut the outer leaves for many weeks. I sowed spring onion ‘Ishikuro’ in two-inch, 2.5cm cell trays, thinning them out to three plants per cell, these should be ready for Vi to eat by mid May. This year I am only growing five varieties of potatoes, all are grown in 25/50 litre black ex tree containers all of which have handles either side to enable me to move the early ones in and out of my cold greenhouse. During mid March, ‘Rocket’ was the first to be planted; ‘Arran Pilot’ followed this in late March. I was earthing up ‘Rocket by the first week in April.

I am very fond of alpines so I have a rockery, three alpine scree beds, the screes are six inches, 15cm deep and contain a mixture of two parts gravel to one part soil. I also have a stone trough, two stone sinks and a tufa outcrop. All have been planted with numerous alpines, which vary from alpine bulbs, tiny prostrate creepers to dwarf shrubs. During the first week of March, the Saxifrages, pictured below, are amongst the first to flower in colours of white, yellow, pink and red. Most of the alpine Saxifrages are evergreen, some having very attractive silvery foliage. In one trough I have a ten year old pink Saxifrage, but this is young compared to a huge forty year old grey leaved mound?in one of the screes, which produces creamy-white, pink spotted flowers during April.

In my greenhouse, during the first week in March I sowed the seed of two varieties of Lettuce, one being ‘Lollo Rossa’ whose frilled red leaves are often seen in restaurant salads, the other is new for 2012 and is a green frilled lettuce named ‘Lettony’, which if the description is correct, is the sweetest of all Lettuce. Both germinated within five days and when the plants are large enough, which is at their three-leaf stage, they are transplanted into grow bags.

However, Helleborus ‘Walbertons Rosemary, pictured right, which grows in my front garden opened its rich pink, outward facing flowers during January and is still in full flower. What a shame it does not set seed and is slow to form a decent clump. In the February addition of the RHS journal ‘The Garden’ there appeared a photograph of Helleborus ‘Anna’s Red’ and this appears not only to have outward facing flowers, but they are also a rich red. I rang RD plants in Devon and they informed me it will not be available until next year. Incidentally, most Helleborus hybrids produce an immense amount of seed, which seeds itself all over my garden, the seed requires cold germination and in the open ground, hundreds of seedlings appear during the first week of January. Pinus mugo is the dwarf mountain pine, which I have seen high in the Swiss mountains as low growing knarled conifers. I grow a form of this named ‘Zundert’ and this is an oddity in that during November, as the weather turns cold the dark green foliage starts to turn yellow. This and other dwarf forms of the mountain pine are often found in garden centres as small grafted plants, but when grown in good garden soil they will often grow much taller than they would on a mountainside. My twenty-year-old plant of Zundert is now four feet, 1.2m tall and I prune it every June to keep it compact. When pruning pines do watch out for the resinous sap, if this gets onto your clothing you may find it very difficult to get off.

During early February, I went along with BBC Radio Leicester to record a ‘Down to Earth’ programme at Tilton on the Hill. The weather was awful, but this did not deter Helen Osborn’s partner Bob from driving along snow-covered roads there, and into a blizzard on the way home. One of the questioners brought along a branch of Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, this had a superb large red flower attached and the question was how do I propagate it? For those of you who do not know this plant, it is the flower often depicted in the hair of Hawaiian girl dancers. The plant in question was growing in a pot in a warm bay window and it had become straggly. I grow the same shrub in my conservatory and as the plant; flowers on its new wood prune it hard back during March. Then, during May, when the new growth is about three inches, 7.5 cm long, I take cuttings that are just becoming firm, strip off the bottom half of the leaves and then put the cuttings in pots containing a mixture of half peat and half perlite. Keep the cuttings moist, but not wet and stand in a warm, but not sunny spot. Cuttings will usually root in four to six weeks.

Amongst the winter flowering shrubs in my garden the most highly scented are Sarcoccoca hookeriana ‘Purple Stem’, which is a three feet (90cm) tall evergreen with purple young branches and masses of white flowers from January to March, I also grow Sarcoccoca ruscifolia ‘Dragon Gate’, which has small green leaves and a more open habit. Both are strongly scented and we find even one sprig too strong to have in the house, but in the garden, they are superb, either in sun or in half shade.

This year Jasminum nudiflorum has been magnificent, producing a lovely show of bright yellow flowers. Last year the flowers were so badly frosted the plants took on a very sorry looking spectacle. This lovely winter flowering Jasmine is not a climber, but a very lax shrub that looks at its best when trained out and up a trellis against a south facing wall, or fence.

During March, as soon as the flowers have faded, prune all of the branches back to within a few inches of the framework you have created on a trellis. Last year, just to see how they performed, I purchased three new Helleborus ‘Double Ellen’ hybrids. Although I planted them in well-prepared soil and watered them in dry periods, two died. The remaining one is now in full flower and has four layers of creamy petals, each petal having a pink edge, but having such a heavy head, it does hang, so you have to lift it to appreciate it. Incidentally, all Hellibors are resistant to rabbit, deer and mice and although the hybrids will grow almost anywhere, they are at their best in half shade. Now it remains to see if ‘Double Ellen’ will seed itself around the garden, as do all of my other Helleborus hybrids.

Cyclamen coum is a very hardy, dwarf tuberous alpine, which in my garden flowers from late December until early March. I have five different varieties of this superb alpine with flowers in colours of white, lavender-pink and red. Their small, rounded leaves also vary; some are deep green and others being green with Christmas tree-like silver patterns in them. I did have one with pure silver leaves, but this year it failed to appear. It was fifteen years ago when I first received Cyclamen coum and thinking alpine, I planted them at the front of a gravel scree, but gradually over the years they have seeded themselves towards the shade of rocks, or dwarf conifers.

At present, there are a number of different coloured polyanthuses in one of my borders. In the first place, all had been purchased as winter bedding to plant in the tubs, or pots on my terrace. They gave way to summer bedding and as they are perennials, I planted them in the border. Some are five years old and still, when the birds leave them alone, give me a colourful display.

Old polyanthus can, when they have produced more than one rosette of leaves, be carefully divided into single rosettes, but do make sure there is an ample root system with each rosette and then replant, or pot on to use as bedding the following autumn. In the past, I have contributed money to buy shares in seed collected by plant hunters throughout the world. Some seed has produced unusually and interesting plants, but a lot were often weedy looking plants that finished up on the compost heap. However, a few years ago I contributed to one expedition to the Sakhalin Island, which is between Japan’s north island and Russia. Some of the seed did not germinate, but amongst the seed that did germinate was a species of birch, which has light brown bark. I have given two of these, which are pot-grown plants to St Peter and St Paul School to plant in their new wild life garden.

My very best wishes, to all our readers and I look forward to once more writing about gardening in the coming year.

People will often ask me if it is wise to feed lawns during the autumn. I must admit I only ever feed my lawn during the spring and early summer as I have found that feeding during October encourages moss to grow more rapidly than the grass in my lawn. At this time of the year, a question that listeners often ask on Radio Leicester’s ‘Down to Earth’ programme is when should I stop mowing my grass? This always depends on our inclement weather, some years I finish mowing by early November, but I have known years when mowing has continued until the first week in December. I would point out however, that when you mow during the autumn or early winter, set the mower to leave the lawn with at least one inch, 25mm of grass showing above soil level, if you scalp the lawn, moss will soon take over.

I have already moved all my half-hardy plants into my cold greenhouse where I can control the amount of water each container receives, I can also cover individual plants with fleece during very cold weather. If, like myself, you have a number of hardy plants in containers, do make sure the containers stand on pot feet to allow excessive water to drain away. It is amazing how many hardy container grown plants die due to excessive rainwater filling a container when its base is standing directly onto paving.

I have been using my leaf Vac to gather up all the fallen leaves, my Vac shreds the leaves; this enables me to mix them with ease with any other material that goes into my compost bins. Once they have dropped their leaves many trees will look naked and unappealing, but I have two trees, which become even more appealing after leaf drop, these are Acer pensylvannicum ‘Erythrocladum’ and Acer ‘Phoenix’. The young branches of both trees, at leaf drop, start to turn bright red and this colour remains until the trees start to come into leaf the following year.

My garden contains many herbaceous perennials, many of these I have mentioned in the past, but this year I planted Ageratum corymbosum, which was in flower when I purchased it in June and as I sit writing is still a mass of fluffy blue pom poms. Many of you will have now received seed catalogues, most contain fabulous pictures of plants and these will often entice you to buy them. I am always wary of photographs showing large flowers, as in the past I have purchased seed of plants depicted as having large flowers, or vegetables that look show bench perfect, only to find when the plants grow the flowers and vegetables were very disappointing. Nowadays I am lucky in that I often go to trial grounds to see how plants perform, so I can then select the best.

picture courtesy of Ball Clegrave Ltd

My wife love tomatoes, but two years ago I found I was allergic to them, so stopped growing them. Since then my wife has complained about the tomatoes she buys from superstores, says they have tough skins and little taste. This year my old friends at Ball Collgrave Seeds, Wholesale only, carried out a trial on forty-seven varieties of tomato, which were judged by the public for their taste. The cherry tomato ‘Sweet Million’ came out top and the small-plum tomato ‘Rosado’ came in second. Third and fourth were also cherry tomatoes, so it came to ‘Sarta’ at fifth to be the first of the medium–sized round tomatoes named for taste. I shall order all three and plant them to enable Vi once more to enjoy the taste of a home grown tomato. Incidentally, the commercial tomato ‘Shirley’ came in at 21st and the old stand by ‘Moneymaker’ 40th.