The one about….The February Cutting Patch

"There is always in February some one day, at least, when one smells the yet distant, but surely coming, summer.” Gertrude Jekyll.

I’m not sure I agree entirely with Ms Jekyll but it is true that in February my garden has moved from mostly shades of green and brown to embracing the purple hues of the warmer months and that is down to the proliferation of crocus in the grass (it’s not a lawn), dwarf iris in pots and hellebores in the borders.

Generally low maintenance, happy in dappled shade, providing valuable nectar for early pollinators and with a long flowering season, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better flower for February in the garden. Grown in a border hellebores don’t even need feeding but occasionally they suffer from either drying out or becoming waterlogged. The remedy is straightforward and that is to plant into free-draining soil and to apply a mulch annually. They also benefit from old leaves being cut back in early spring to allow the blooms to be displayed at their best. An additional benefit is you can control hellebore leaf spot. Remove faded flowers in late spring and pick the seed pods if you don’t want them to self-seed prolifically and become overcrowded.

I’ve never propagated hellebores from seed as they can be quite tricky to germinate and frankly, patience is not my middle name. I’ve had some success dividing existing plants in Autumn and digging up seedlings and replanting. You’ll also need patience for this as they can be slow to establish.

In truth, hellebores are flowers I rarely cut for the vase but I have been known to float some blooms in a bowl of water with some candles for a special occasion, where their beautiful colours can be appreciated. I do believe that they are at their best nodding their heads in a gentle breeze in the garden and providing food for insects.

If you want to live a little and channel your inner medieval peasant you can pick twelve blooms and put them in an array of small bottles – one for each month and use them to predict the weather for the year ahead. If the blooms open, the weather will be good that month and if they don’t, expect something more inclement.

I might just try it.

Elsewhere there’s plenty of greenery to cut to pimp up shop-bought daffodils - bay and Christmas Box are my favourites,

Apart from some clearing, rose pruning and mulching the real work of February is indoors, sowing a few early seeds on the kitchen windowsill and making sure I’m ready to start sowing in earnest once there is more light next month. So far there are sweet peas and cobaea in the cold frame (started indoors) and snapdragons, Iceland poppies, alchemilla mollis and one lone gaura seedling up already. Having no room for a greenhouse or a polytunnel my family are at their most forbearing in February when the downstairs windowsills are home to shelving units full of all the seeds I’ve sown.

Now where can I put the compost-filled sandwich bags I use to start off the dahlias?