The first plants dropped to the frost last night. Plectranthus across the back garden is unrecognisably black and crisped; the Persicaria ‘Red Dragon’ has curled thinly into itself; and the Physalis is cascading wetly to the ground, still studded with too-late lanterns.
A corner of potted plants fights on in the lee of the wall. There, the aubergine stems of the Plectranthus cuttings have withstood the temperatures, tall and topped with just-spent flowers. They glow almost neon against a Pelargonium ‘Smart Senna Red’, supposedly scarlet to match the tunics of The King’s Guard at Buckingham Palace but here a pink so vivid it’s hard to look at. It’s in flower amid the frozen watering cans, and tiny green buds push up, hairily cobwebbed.
Still waiting to find its place in the ground, a Scabiosa ‘Ichwit’ is healthy in its plastic pot, the half-price sticker barely visible beneath the cloud of green. Tiny balled flowers are swelling on still-green stems, defying the weather as it pushes upwards and outwards, seemingly as unfazed by the cold as it was by its time in the B&Q bargain bin.
In the front garden too, life continues. The water butt has frozen but the fern-leaved Pelargonium Filicifolium continue their colonisation of the planter above it. Nearly disregarded for their scent which seemed too like wet animal, they now pour joyously into all available space, and I couldn’t imagine the front of our house without them. With an H2 rating – “tolerant of low temperatures, but not surviving being frozen (1 to 5°c)” – I have jiffies full of cuttings, but their resilience in the face of -6 gives me confidence, as well as a role model in hardiness for these tough winter mornings.
a year in the garden 