re: What is in bloom now plus a cyclamen question

>Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 14:28:48 +0000
>To: tnottle@picknowl.com.au
>From: Colette Dunkley <gb81@dial.pipex.com>
>Subject: re: What is in bloom now plus a cyclamen question
>In-Reply-To: <21444048486764@picknowl.com.au>
>
>
>
>
>Trevor ,
>I really enjoyed yoour posting about your garden. It sounds wonderful and
I am very very jealous! For a start its cold here and  my "garden" (for
garden read weed patch and that is not false modesty) is so tiny>. On a
good day with a following wind I could spit from one end to the other not
that I am the expectorating kind you understand.:-)
>
>I plant with a shoe horn and my garden is crammed with plants not
particularly well arranged I am sad to say. At least it isn't designed to
death!
>
> Your posting had me reaching for my trusty Plant Finder.
>>Under a large Gleditschia - the yellow leaved kind SUNBURST?
>I can confirm that this is  G tricanthos,Sunburst ( with an AGM to boot)
> 
>> with dwarf vinca (ELIZABETH CRAN - double wine purple) 
>this set my blood racing . Its not in the PF so not available in commerce
in England. But "Marion Cran" is.
>I am a a real fan of Mrs Cran the garden writer. ( I just love her books
but they are an acquired taste because the gushing meandering prose style
is something else.)
>She had a number of plants named after her including a rose, an iris and a
pink but I didn't know about the vinca.  I must get in my garden for
sentimental reasons Do you think that the  Elizabeth Cran is a seperate
variety ? perhaps named for a family member?
> One of her books is " Joy of the Ground" if memory serves she decribes
how a  dusky wine red vinca was found (by her?) in the wild. She writes
about it being passed on from gardener to gardener never sold   as a token
of their shared " Joy of the Ground". The name of this variety became  "Joy
of the Ground" (which logically shouldn't be in the PF.) Mrs Cran was
popular writer in Australia I think in the 1920's and up to her death in 1941.
>
>
>
>Wish I could match your posting of such a fecund garden Trevor. But any
way here is a tour of the flowers in the  weed patch today!
>
>Rosemary and Jasminum nudiflorum, Mahonia and Sarcococca are  in flower
the latter two scenting the air nicely.
>
>Pulmonarias David Ward Siisinghurst White, Officinalis but not Dora
Bielefied who is meant to be early. A double primrose.  A seedling of a
yellow fowered Hellebore from Erway has flowered for the first time this
year. It is from Mrs Palmer at Erway  who selects and develops them and
sells her seed to Chilterns BTW
>
>As for bulbs my first Tete a Tete daffodil is out so are the Crocus
tommasinianum, Tulipa greigi, Cyclamen coum, and my little collection of
snowdrops. Magnet has finished flowering and so has Atkinsi ( Flower badly
damaged by the slugs: it must taste good the others are OK). The plain
Galanthus nivalis was the first out and is still flowering vigourously.
Broadleaved G elwesi has just started to flower. I have another ordinary
clump which I can't name. I know I planted five sorts a few years ago in
flower.  I have lost one clump. The remianing one should be either "Tiny",
which it isn't, or G n "flore pleno" which it isn't!!!   I have been
relabelling the others so i wont forget whcich is which.
>
>Galanthophilia is a sad disease a bit like stamp collecting really. The
bug bit me hard when I went to visit the yellow book garden at Erway
Farmhouse in Shropshire on the last Sunday in February 3 years ago. It was
a cold but sunny day but it felt more like summer with the quantities of
bloom.  Now I have read accounts of people watching the aurora borealis and
being so taken with it that they didn't mind the cold or realise just how
much time had elapsed. Something of the kind happened at Erway. Swathes of
many thousnda of snowdrops of all sorts filled that garden as well as a
myriad of other beauties. I have never seen such a magnificent garden!
Well one day I hope to have a february garden like a sea of light so I am
building and collecting now. When I get enough I will hold a snowdrop party
and you are all invited ;-)
>
>Last week I achieved a long held ambition to visit a RHS Flower show in
their fabulous Art Deco  hall in Westminster. It was wonderful and I got
the galanthophile glint when I saw all those delicious snowdrops (alas no
Greatorex doubles which I really crave) Having sussed out what I wanted to
add to my collection and making a mental note  of the location of the stand
I had to wait for my big sister and guardian of the purse to slip off to
the loo. Then I could my way back to buy without listening to her winces of
pain. We are talking serious money here. Finding the stall again I could
scarcely believe that the Tubby Merlin and Mrs Backhouse that I had admired
had all gone even at £8 per bulb. So I had to be content with G n Sam
Arnott (AGM) Dionysus and G elwesi flore pleno at £4 each.All safely
planted, as we all know snowdrops must be planted in the green. Mo the big
sister lost the catalogues I bought. She said she left them at Pizza
Express but I am paranoid enough to think it was  fiendish plot to stop me
buying any more by post:-)
>
>If anybody has managed to wade throough this drivel I wonder if they might
help me to put a name to a lovely little cyclamen I bought at the RHS Show.
As I dived in to buy it the nurseryman demanded first to know where I lived
and were I was going to plant it ( Is this serious concern or marketing I
had this treatment  for a plant the other year and its as tough as old
boots) It is marginally hardy I assume. Satisfied that the Wirral was a
fairly mild place and that I could plant against a warm wall and could give
it good drainage I was allowed to purchase. When I arrived home no label!
It is taller than C coum but smaller than hederifolium. about 2 1/2 " It
shares the smooth margined round leaves of coum and purpurescens but they
are very silvery not mottled.The leaves a few in number and about 2" wide
wich is very big giventhe overall scale of the plant The flower is very
elegant with long tapering petals (about 3/4" long)  a very pale and
delicate pink in colour but white at the base of the petal. I have had a
look in Rix and Phillips  but can't see it
>
>TIA 
>
>Best wishes to all 
>Colette
>
>
Colette Dunkley Upton Wirral Merseyside England L49 4PD   (Approximates
USDA Zone 8 /9)
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