At ‘Green Valley’, the farmhouse was quite literally cut off from the outside world for almost a week. The narrow dead end road that leads to the valley, running below the ridge of the northerly hills, was quite invisible beneath the huge snowdrifts slipping down from the slopes above. Because of the freezing weather and the deep snow, I was concerned about the many small birds that live in the locality: blue tits, coal tits, robins, tree creepers, nuthatches, wrens and chaffinches … and sure enough, there was no sign of a pair of nuthatches which would always visit the bird table for nuts, right after the heavy snowfall.
The effect on the plants has been no less devastating. The ten little rosemary (R. officinalis) bushes which I was planning to plant outside the kitchen to edge my new herb garden in the spring, have been scorched to a dry-brown by the freezing conditions. I don’t know if they will ever recover. The other slightly tender Mediterranean herbs still in their pots, including lemon thyme, variegated thyme, rue and prostrate rosemary are also suffering from the chill; the hardy oregano and young peppermint shoots, however, still look fresh and green beneath their snowy blanket. And of course, those plants used to alpine conditions such as the gorgeous bright blue gentians and the beautiful pasque flowers, simply shrug the snowflakes off their emerging leaves with ease.In the herbaceous border, unlike the rhododendrons and azaleas, my three camellias including a lovely single pink variety of C. williamsii are not coping well with the biting winds that have swept through the valley these last weeks; the species Camellia ‘Leonard Messel’ would have been better adapted to the cold. The newly planted ‘tassel tree’ is also frost damaged and looking very sorry for itself, having lost most of its semi-evergreen leaves. My unnamed magnolia looks perfectly fine, as do most of the other shrubs and small trees in the border, including the tough olearia that will put up with gale force winds if necessary. My young Amelanchier lamarkii tree is covered in new buds ready to burst into white spring blossom, although everything is very late developing this year, compared to the previous one.
Of course, it is under such extreme conditions that the value of positioning plants correctly in a site that suits them within the garden becomes self-evident. For example, the Mediterranean shrubs should really have been planted against the shelter of a wall, but I am hoping that in the longer term the other hardy evergreen shrubs will provide a screen for it when they gain a little more height. The three Buddleas will be fine, putting up with virtually anything that the soil or climate can throw at them.In any case, I like the relaxed attitude of the head gardener at ‘House of Gruinard’ on the west coast of Scotland where the conditions are extremely exposed and windy: “Keep moving plants about if they are not in the right place. Half the fun of the garden is that it is always changing. Try not to look at the garden with too many preconceptions before you get started. And don’t take too much notice of what people tell you …. just do what you want!”