Small stones 7 ~ snowdrops and hellebores

Spring was in the air today. The hellebores flowers are just about open in my garden and the snowdrops are already out at the Rococo gardens. I love this time of year.

Our local newspaper (Gloucestershire Echo) today reported that,

SNOWDROPS have started to bloom at a garden in Painswick following a mild start to the new year.

With temperatures hovering around the 10C mark so far this January, dozens of the white flowers have emerged earlier than expected at Rococo Garden.

blooming: Snowdrops on the hidden slopes of the Rococo Gardens, Painswick.

Paul Hervey-Brookes, garden adviser at Rococo, said: “They usually start to bloom around the second week of January and the last to flower finish by the end of March.

“But because it has been mild this year so far, they have been tricked into thinking it is later in January than it is, and they have started to come out.”

Temperatures are predicted to plummet in Gloucestershire this week, but Paul says the snowdrops will survive.

He said: “The cold weather will not kill them, it will just stop their bloom, and then they will continue when it starts to get milder.”

Forecasters are predicting a progressive drop in temperature as the week goes on, with a night time low of -1C possible by Thursday.

There should be a let up for areas affected by flooding, as no heavy rain is predicted.

Snowdrops at Painswick Rococo Garden
I happened to be at Painswick when the sun was shining, the views long, the trees magnificently silhouetted against a blue sky. I like trees better in winter than summer. The form becomes the chief point of them, not just the mass of green that is all we see in summer. And because the situation of the Painswick garden is so extraordinary, you get long views both across and down, snowdrops clothing the steep banks below the renovated Eagle House, snowdrops, many of them fat doubles, thick on the grassy bank that leads up to the viewpoint above the maze, snowdrops down by the fish pond and the square, rather dark plunge pool where surely only the most muscular of Victorians would have wanted to plunge. A bonus at Painswick was the best bank of winter-flowering cyclamen I’ve ever seen, pink and magenta Cyclamen coum seeding itself through the grass with an abandon I could only envy.

The Independent 2008