January is a very lean time for the gardener in the UK. I have read many accounts of mid-winter desolation and stories of sad looking plots, seen endless pretty snow scenes and all manner of mid-winter distractions. It's either too cold or too wet to get out there and get on with anything, not that's there's an awful lot to get on with anyway. We've ordered our seeds, had fun drawing up our plans and heated propagators up and down the land are forcing some extra-early peppers, or what-have-you, into an early start. We can't wait, we're bored of waiting. And when we're not cooing at our seedlings or staring forlornly out of the window we get reflective, philosophical even. Well I do anyway. But I'm not normal, certainly not within gardening circles. This is my first veg garden so I'm not learning from last season's experiences, or considering trying something a bit different, or even eyeing up my overwintering stuff and imagining them in a white sauce or with bacon maybe. No, what I have is a blank canvas and dreams of summer.

What I also have is a flower garden and I thought it would be nice to share its mid-winter, or really-really early spring (for the optimists among us) highlights with you in this post.

Witch-hazel is one of the garden's treats for us at this time of year with its yellow flowers appearing on bare branches.


Looking like threadbare pom-poms they'd hardly be noticed in a busy summertime bed but at this time of the year, with dormancy as a back-drop, they are a charming and whimsical heralding of new life in the garden.

And then there's the Snowdrops. They have always held a strong attraction for people. Some are obsessive about collecting them. Soldiers have carried them hundreds of miles in their tunics after collecting them from battlefields. Generations of perfumiers have distilled and extracted it's heavenly scent for the world's most sought after fragrances. And for thousands of years they have been associated with the 'Underworld' and of mortality itself.

But don't they look pretty underneath the Dogwood?

Fear no more, thou timid flower!!
Fear thou no more the Winter´s might;
The whelming thaw; the ponderous shower;
The silence of the freezing night!!

S. Taylor Coleridge.