January....

January is, in my opinion, the second worst month of the year. It's freezing, all the Christmas lights are down, and it's a good two months till the first daffodil appears. There are, however, a couple of things I'm enjoying in the garden right now; the first of the snowdrops have flowered, the Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn' smells amazing and, bizarrely, loads of my pelargoniums are flowering their little hearts out despite currently living in a greenhouse that is regularly going below -1 at night.

Propagation has also picked up with a lot of seed sowing going on. As mentioned above, the greenhouse isn't what I'd describe as cosy so all the seed trays are scattered around the house, with germinated seedling hogging all windowsills. I've got a couple of new plants going, including a new batch of species pelargonium seeds from the International Geraniaceae Group seed swop. They are definitely getting the most attention. Most will only flower next year (I hope) but it's very exciting getting hold of rare species. Most aren't particularly floriferous but they're all quite delicately beautiful. Maybe an acquired taste but once you start looking closely at the jewel like flowers, you'll be hooked I promise. The scented leaved pelargoniums are also lovely. I found a scented leaf variety last year called 'Cola Bottles', and it genuinely smells like Coca Cola. It's not particularly uncommon, I just hadn't come across it before, but what an amazing scent. My favourite scented pelargonium though, is 'Big Apple'. The sweetest appley scent is released with the gentlest touch of the leaves. And then there's the sweet, lemony rose scented P. cucllatum that is found all over the slopes of Table Mountain. It's so redolent of summer in Cape Town, it makes me homesick. I could go on forever, there are just so many beautifully scented pelargoniums, but I'll save my obsessing for another post. The long and short of it, as I've realised while writing this, January actually isn't that awful. I'll save my moaning for February when I've really reached the end of my winter tether!

Pelargonium 'Deerwood Lavender Lad' flowering right through

winter