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- Lamenting a garden still in the grips of winter.

Not sure what to do in a wet, cold and possibly unwelcoming garden? Here are a few ideas.

EDEN BRADFIELD is a writer, musician and investment analyst. One day they discovered the magic of hydrangea cuttings and ended up with a full-blown gardening obsession.

Everyone more or less stays away, save for the jaunt to the pub to sup beer and complain about how cold it is. Everyone also talks about how dignified and architectural the garden looks in winter; it exposes the “bare bones” and so on.

In reality, the garden in winter gives me very little pleasure. You can prune the roses, of course, and I have done so – with vigour. This is a thankless task, especially if you have a predilection for particularly thorny rose bushes as I do (‘Gertrude Jekyll’ is a prime example, as thorny as it is flamboyant, resembling the fuchsia of a mother-in-law’s gown from an 80s wedding). You can prune your pinot noir grapevines (or any other varietal) too if you wish.

Some years ago, I thought it might be a good idea to buy a bunch of pinot noir vines to grow the world’s most mega crop of wine. They have not produced well so far but the foliage is a welcome addition; I have them growing alongside the fence and over the potting shed.

But really, winter is about dreaming about what might be when spring comes along.

Some ideas then: if you find yourself looking outwardly to your garden (a cup of tea in hand, perhaps) and find yourself gripped with a kind of mania to try and remake a particular bed or section of the garden, then you should rug up and start to do it.

Nothing is sacred in the garden. Take no prisoners. Everything is dormant, and pulling plants out of the garden with relish is therapeutic.

A couple of years ago, I did this with what is now quite an established garden down the side. There are roses and penstemons, and a carpet of thyme. This side garden previously had grasses and some ugly fetid roses, and it needed a rethink.

Now I confess, I want to do the same to the wild “dry” garden I planted around the same time. It consists of an awful lot of wallflowers and euphorbia and globe artichokes, and every spring it becomes a veritable canvas of purple. Well, so what? The wallflowers have started to look a little long in the tooth (after two or three years, most varietals of wallflowers are due for a trip to the editing room) and I can’t help but think that some kind of golden grass – Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’, maybe? – might intermingle well with the euphorbias. (I avoided ‘Karl Foerster’ for a while, stubbornly, because everyone who had ever heard of Piet Oudolf was using it. Call me trend-phobic.)

Now, the other thing I like to do in winter is plant more bare root roses. They come in a rather sad-looking plastic bag, though sometimes the roots are wrapped in newspaper which is a great deal more charming.

Might I suggest ‘Troilus’, an unusual David Austin from the 80s which is the yellow of 60s picnicware, or perhaps ‘Mme Louis Leveque’, one of the few repeating moss hybrids. ‘Mme Louis Leveque’ is a very delicate pink and its petals resemble a gown by Valentino. I imagine it would pair well with Verbena hastata ‘White Spires’, a candelabra-like verbena which takes well to cuttings, so you can produce it ad infinitum and have endless gifts for your neighbours.

I have harped on before about the benefits of bare root roses, but all you really need to know is that they are often far cheaper than potted roses and they grow better. They look terrible for a bit in winter, but then again, most things do during this time of year.

The other thing I feel the need to harp about is the delights of the winter rose, the hellebore.

Several years ago, I bought several for 50c each from the local recycling centre. I did not think much of them other than recalling Clifton Homestead Nursery, which is the place to buy hellebores. Anyway, the hellebores were planted in a shady section of the garden, underneath the hydrangeas, and have since multiplied exceptionally.

I have no idea what variety they are; some are red and some are green and they carpet the shady part of the garden in winter, their flowers dangerous yet pretty.

The public gardens in Oamaru are absolutely covered in hellebores in the winter – they are my favourite thing about it if I take a winter’s walk through.

The other thing to do, of course, is to curl up inside with a good book and wait for winter to be over. Hope springs eternal.

Winter’s tendrils have laid the garden bare and most mornings are met with a frost which glazes over the grass and soil and the concrete on the sidewalk.

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2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

2022-08-01T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://fairfaxmagazines.pressreader.com/article/283119957668149

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