Just add colour

St Christian
Yesterday's weather: Mild, dull, dry

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO CHARLOTTE

21 TODAY x x x x

As the garden (i.e. weeds, brambles and nettles) are all dying back now it is a good time to clear up and have a good think about what to do next.

Therefore, this afternoon finds me thumbing through plant books, looking for plants with winter interest as well as summer plants, which are much easier.

As this is our first year here, we have confined our garden colour to pots, including the few veggies that we grew over the summer. Whilst fairly successful, we nevertheless want to get on with planting other plants in the ground.

This is certainly not as easy as it sounds since we live on rock here and there is very little topsoil to work with. Digging a hole for a plant is a major excavation and results in multiple jarring injuries to the wrists and shoulders, lots of bad language and bad temper. Still, we want a pretty garden and will struggle on even though it will be a slow process.

As we look out at the moment we see a dying back forsythia the now greatly reduced, the denuded fig tree and a few plants in pots on the terrace. What we would love to see is a lovely display of colour including viburnum x bodnantense which we had in our garden in the UK. This plant, while ordinary in the summer with no flowers, suddenly bursts with fragrant pink flowers on its bare stalks in the winter. A winter flowering jasmine nudiflorum would look good under the kitchen window and a few pieris dotted around would add further colour and interest.

It will be good fun to visit the local garden centres this week and see what else is available with winter colour.