Splendid confusion

Cyclamen hederifolium

For once it is a joy to look back. 2011 became a dream year for gardening, at least in most of Britain. Few years in my lifetime have started so badly but by mid-June I could not believe the good luck. By late July the sunshine brigade had become wonderfully disgruntled. August was kind and cloudy. The autumn was dry but often divinely beautiful. The mildness of November and early December laid the coping stone on a superb year.

The harsh start left us all with interesting lessons. Many evergreen shrubs were reduced to brown misery after the hardest winter since 1981-82 and the question then became what to do with them. The answer, vindicated yet again, is to do nothing in a hurry. Even by July some of them had hardly resprouted. My bay tree is essential for pungent leaves in stews and slow cooking but even by August there was no sign of living green growth. Only in autumn did it shoot thickly from the base of its 15-year-old stem after bossy visitors had condemned it to death. The young leaves are especially well flavoured in French beef stews and after this narrow escape they have never tasted better.

Cistus c. laurifolius

Much of the hebe family was wiped out by the frost but two of the smaller leaved forms survived well as young plants. They happen to be two of my favourites, Hebe Watson’s Pink and Hebe Nicola’s Blush, a late pink-flowering evergreen. Ceanothuses were decimated and never returned to life with any vigour, nor did most of the evergreen cistuses. Cistus laurifolius really is the safest bet in hard winters. However, two fine evergreens survived and regenerated in a way which may strike a chord with you.

One is magnificently slow-growing. Silver-variegated Osmanthus ilicifolius has holly-like leaves but progresses very slowly in most British climates. My plant is a beloved 36 years old, about 4ft high, and has moved once into poor soil. This time last year it was defoliated by the bitter weather and for months it looked like a brown skeleton. Then, wondrously, new little holly-leaves appeared to be hugging its stems. In July I spent a fascinating two hours clipping away the dead brown branches and twigs and leaving an open framework of stems with young leaves. The shrub now looks as if it has been cloud-pruned, the height of fashion, by a Japanese expert. In fact winter and patience did the job. The entire plant has another 40 years of life and is already blocking less light than before from its neighbours.

White-flowered Solanum jasminoides

On walls evergreens had less protection and lacked a thick snowy blanket. The losses were heavy although the white-flowered Solanum jasminoides eventually regrew from roots below ground. I doubt if anyone had much mimosa in flower even in the warmest areas of London. A sad casualty seemed to be the evergreen Hydrangea seemannii which dropped all its leaves and shivered against the stonework like a frosted carcase. Until July no signs of life appeared but then it too sprouted at intervals along its old branches and ended the year, its 25th in my care, in an open, fresh green shape as if it had been cleverly pruned.

Wisteria

Meanwhile the spring had been dry and amazingly warm, bringing May’s flowers to their best in April. Under the sunshine I realised how the threat of wildlife has made pale yellow the dominant colour in my garden in April. Tulips and crocusses are eaten or excavated but small narcissi are bulbs which no squirrel will ever ruin. I had a fine show of Narcissus Hawera and Jack Snipe while the blossom on the mid-season cherries was falling after only two days of beauty. In the hot sun everything was speeded up and confused. Britain’s home counties began to look like the Mediterranean in mid-May. Wisteria, yet again, was in vintage form.

More drought in June would have been a serious challenge. Fortunately the weather relented and the light and softness of clouded skies saw the classic moments of British gardening at their best. I do not understand why roses were so magnificent after such a hard start to the year. I had expected them to have been curbed by all the wood they had lost in the cold weather. Instead, they flowered abundantly and were late to show any serious signs of black spot on their leaves. Many of July’s border plants opened early and set the roses as never before. I had some great days of pleasure from big delphiniums.

Monarda Gardenview Scarlet

Gentle rain and broken skies then persisted through August. There was no need for laborious watering to see the best from many annuals and in the borders my investments in newish mildew-resistant monardas paid off in full. Monarda Gardenview Scarlet and red Jacob Cline were vivid and entirely free of white downy mould on the stems. They have restored an old favourite to my repertoire after decades of disease.

Revelling in the intermittent rain, the dahlias were then a superb sequel. They entered September in full flower and hit the one dry patch which saved their flowers from becoming sodden. Remarkably, all the Michaelmas daisies were out two weeks before Michaelmas. Had the sunny spring accelerated them perhaps? I never remember a finer late August, one in which most of September had come into flower four weeks too soon.

If you left your garden for a compulsory August holiday I pity you. I left mine in late September only to coincide with heavenly weather all over again in France. Some of the heavenliest was on the day of my visit to the charming flower show at the Château de Saint-Jean Beauregard near Paris. Many of you have written to ask for details of the logistics behind my visit. I went as part of a brief French garden tour with French Gardens Today who took all the bother out of the planning and combined the show with three days of excellent private visiting in the region. In 2012 they are taking a similar group to the show and the surrounds on September 19-21, details of which can be checked at www.frenchgardenstoday.co.uk.

Cyclamen neapolitanum

Under the trees in one French château-garden on that trip I met my sight of the year, thousands of pink and white-flowered little Cyclamen neapolitanum flowering in utter profusion. It is never too late to start or to reinforce colonies of your own. They will settle in very close to the old roots of beech trees.

My wish for 2012 is very simple. I want 2011 all over again, but without the cold until mid-February and with even more cyclamen under trees to make me marvel at the variety of nature.

Robin Lane Fox was a guest of French Gardens Today