Whats Looking Good in January..

Lovely photos, MF!

I have that Hebe but mine looks very sad indeed. My cyclamen are doing well like yours also. I like your variety of leaf colours.

 

MF,love your garden photos.They all look like good healthy plants.I think your cyclamen are brilliant as well,lovely colours :D

 

Your garden is miles ahead of mine Marley! Great pics of all the early 'buds' chancing their luck with a bloom!

I absolutely adore snowdrops too - they are so delicate and pretty in looks, but what a robust and hardy charachter to brave the winter!

I only have a couple off wee clumps - have planted tons of bulbs - but nothing has come. Must get some in the green!






Whilst trimming my eucalyptus last weekend, I noticed it was flowering. Luckily there were a couple of the unusual flowers still in bloom today for me to snap:





The equally bizarre witch hazel is in bloom too:



While the stinking iris berries are still going strong!

 

What a realy lovely page of pics.MF & JB.....
It warms the heart on now what is a realy dull afternoon

 

I love the leaves on that red cyclamen MF

 

Dwarf Iris "George"

Gladiolus Communis Byzantina/Byzantius/Byzantine,whatever! shooting early.

 

well its the last day of the month and i have been laid up in bed for the best part of a week. Found these on the front flower bed. They grow like weeds but I think they look so pretty. Started off as a group of 10 in a rose bed amny years ago - they are now over most of the bed, despite 90% being dug out.

Camellia 'Desire'. I have never had a camellia in flower so early before and this one is an absolute cracker. Just a touch of browning on the edge of the outer petals. This has to be my favourite of the camellias i have in the garden.

Hellebores grow like rhubarb in my garden, nice big fat stems in late winter. This is one corner of one bed. All grown from seed. I am now digging up and growing on the seedlings from thse plants. I think growing them in slightly raised beds displays them better.

Detail of some of the flowers



I really like this one - very dark red, with contrasting stamens and the flower shape is very rounded. a big vigorous plant.

I think the two packets of Helleborous seed that I bought must have given me the most fun of any packet of seed. I was delighted with every one that flowered.
Sorry if the post is a bit long....but I feel like I have just been let out, I was going stir crazy. I don't like being in bed ill when the sun is shining and the birds are singing...and theres soil needs diggin...feels like I am wasting my life away. Now wheres those onions seeds that came??

 

Love your hellebores, Geoff! I struggle with them and manage to keep them for a year or two, but no longer. Those crocuses are the only ones I grow now as they multiply and spread so well. I don't care for the big, blowsy purple ones and the yellows get pecked to death.

Hope you are fully recovered soon. Get well!

 

Many thanks for the comments Hornbeam. At least i feel better than i did at the weekend. I would have quite happily have been carried off...I felt so ill.
What type are those crocuses? I know they are so ordinary, but I looked down at them open in the sun and after all the gloomy days we have had...and me feeling fed up and sorry for myself....it was "Wow". Really made my day they did.
Wonder why you can't grow Hellebores so well. When the darn things grow like weeds it is difficult to know what they don't like. And they do grow like weeds. There is a thicket of little seedlings underneath which i have to sort out before everything gets confused. I had been lifting and potting previous years seedlings but now I notice they are dozens and dozens of new ones coming through.
I always say i will collect the seed but then forget and when i remember the seed pods are already empty.
I cannot stand the big crocuses either. The little ones have such pretty markings. I like the one called Zwanberg Bronze.

 

Those Helebores look good enough to eat I just love the colours The buds on mine are still very small, but Ive been looking at them every day, willing them to flower :rolleyes: