Evergreen Week

The first snow of the winter comes swirling down on the Thursday of week 2010/47 and night temperatures dive to minus five. By Friday afternoon the grass is mostly covered, with only the long blades peeping out, and wildlife is looking for winter food. On the Saturday night or Sunday morning we have a visit from a fox.
Back on October 30, we lost the friendly spirit of our garden, a lonely white dwarf rabbit named Chip, which died of either a broken heart or a distemper. Chip, the last of our two rabbits (the other died of a facial abcess and heart failure in the spring), was much wept over and was buried by the boys in a shallow grave.
Four weeks later, smart Mr Fox is hunting for food in the snow and catches the scent of carrion. The dig leaves soil strewn over a band of snow almost two metres across. A hunter neighbour visits and confirms that the tracks in the snow are those of a fox. We can see where the carcass has been dragged across the ground for seven or eight metres. A paper covering has fallen off. The fox has finally managed to grab the meal and carry it. He wobbled a little at first, then managed to walk away in a straight line with it to who knows where.
The low temperatures have made the last foliage droop in the garden and only the evergreens remain strong. We have had an invasion of birds since the snow fell: they are picking off the remaining grapes and the red berries of the Photinia davidiana.

Heptacodium Week

In Week 2009/41, October's storms and drizzle are closing in, and only the Aster offers a new display of colour. Eupatorium is still going strong, but Lavatera has long ago finished its run, and the bright red seems to be fading out of the Sedum. Helptacodium is already looking ragged again in the wind and rain, after blooming about two weeks ago.

Overlap Weeks

Mild winters sometimes grant us a gift in Zone 8: crazy weeks where flowers from the past season refuse to die and the blossoms of next season jump out to accompany them in their slow expiry. It is not happening in Week 2008/49, but we hope for an early spring.

Advent Week

I've got to admit, there is not a whole lot of garden joy at the end of November, when you are being lashed with chill rain, the fallen leaves have turned to mush and only the berries - the extraordinary winter cherry and the snow berries of Symphoricarpos - and the crazy Chrysanthemum indicum are left to remind you of past glories. It is week 2008/48 and it is bleak. It is also the final week of the calendar of the western Christian churches, when expired books of Sunday readings can be packed away and next year's missals opened for use. The Celts and the Kurds and many other peoples treated the first glimmer of spring as "New Year," but there is a certain charm about seeing the onset of bleakness as the true start.

That gives us a reason to use electricity to put a little brightness back into the garden at the end of this week in the form of Advent lighting. Other people call it Christmas lighting, but Christmas does not come till December 25 and we are a garden, not a retail business. In Christianity, the four Sundays preceding Christmas are the Advent Sundays, a time of fasting, calm and preparation, not a time for drunken Christmas celebrations or riotous outdoor light displays in all the colours of the rainbow. It is best to keep the lighting low-key, a modest symbol of resistance against the gloom, just the beginning in a slow build-up to the 12 months ahead. In Germany, we do not put up Christmas trees till December 24, and we keep them steadfastly in place through the Twelve Days of Christmas till January 6. In February we'll celebrate carnival and by early March we should have a few early blossoms in the garden. Ending week 2008/48 by putting a net of little white lights on the Prunus laurocerasus as snow falls on Saturday is a way of keeping faith that summer will return.

Here where we live, the community has developed another custom to reclaim Advent from Xmas Hucksterism: the giant advent calendar. Each family is allocated a day to decorate a window of their home as if it were the flap of an advent calendar: they fix a big number (the date) on the pane, decorate it with window-pane paint and surround it with lights. They invite their neighbours to the front yard in the evening and serve mulled wine and finger food.

In their December newsletter, Staudengärtnerei Bornhöved, a leading local perennials collector and vendor, suggests a couple of other antidotes to winter in these latitudes: one is to follow a German tradition of cutting twigs on St. Barbara's Day, December 4, and bringing them into a cold potting shed for a couple of days, then moving these Barbarazweige to a centrally heated indoor room so that they come into blossom by Christmas. Staudengärtnerei tells me that cherry branches are usually used here in the north of Germany, but other regions use hazel, forsythia, birch, chestnut, Crataegus or Cornus mas.

The Staudengärtnerei also recommends planting Lonicera x purpusii as a source of cheer in a grey garden in northern Germany. This hardy honeysuckle shrub is one of those jump-the-gun plant on the lines of Prunus autumnalis. It sometimes blooms with fragrant white flowers in December, though mine usually waits till March. It is a cross between Lonicera frangrantissima and Lonicera standishii and never grows bigger than 2 metres in height.

Evergreen Week

Week 2008/47 is that time in the second half of November when winter often arrives in Hamburg with frosts and the first falls of snow. Not always: in some years, mild weather continues into December and an abortive mini-spring happens in vegetation until harder frosts freeze off the buds. Early Monday this week we had a mild early morning frost and snow is forecast for the end of the week. This is the moment when the evergreens come into their own: lively holdouts against the cold. The grass is still mostly green, but looking a little peaky.

Vanishing Foliage Week

In week 2008/46, the gardens are looking thin and a lot of plant material is underfoot. Where oak trees line the street, as in Stockflethweg, there is a thick carpet of dry fallen leaves that have not yet turned to mulch.

Nipponanthemum Week

In week 2008/45, it's the remarkable Nipponanthemum which attracts wonderment as its white, daisy-like flowers come into full bloom, absurdly late in the year. We have set it off with winter Chrysanthemum indicum, which began flowering a week earlier in purple at this time, perhaps the last of the common perennials to flower in the Zone 8 cycle. Nipponanthemum is a subshrub, with woody shoots that survive the winter snows to come back each year with pale green, star-shaped leaves. The autumn stripping of the trees continues: now it is the turn of Cornus to turn brown and red.

Sticks Week

In week 2008/43, bare trees and vines are starting to emerge as noticeable features, even as other trees remain completely green and untouched by autumn. Almost all the leaves are gone from Vinus, Gingko, Acer negundo and Paulownia, creating a mixed effect in Zone 8 gardens: berries everywhere, many golden leaves, a few late flowers and bare sticks. Perennial Paeonia vegetation has died back completely. This is the week when European oaks, a common feature of our sandy district, begin to turn yellow, while the leaves continue to gradually thin on the Betulus, a tree that takes about two months to strip. The Japanese maples have reached their richest shade of red, but we are still waiting in Zone 8 for Fagus sylvatica to demonstrate its gold qualities. In Zone 7, the beech forests are at their fullest glory, as we have just seen this year in the Ilm Park at Weimar behind the garden cottage of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and as we saw last year in the wooded valley below the Falkenstein in the eastern Harz mountains.

Leaf-Peeping Week

By week 2008/42 you have the perfect time to begin leaf-peeping in the suburbs. The sumac (Rhus typhus) trees have been grabbing attention for more than a week with their reds, and now Stewartia offers an even hotter red on bigger leaves. Some species of Acer have gone to their shades of mostly yellow and brown. At the start of the week, the grape leaves are into that change where the blotches spread in the green till the entire leaf becomes brown, and with wind and rain late in the week, the vine has been three-quarters stripped of its leaves.

Heptacodium Week

Heptacodium miconioides is one of the ultimate holdbacks of any arboretum-style garden, coming to a peak in week 2008/41. Among the most impressive bushes in this season are the constant-bloom and second-bloom roses: not the standard tea roses with their big blowsy blooms, forever looking too "blobby" as Christopher Lloyd terms it, but the little polyantha bush roses with their sturdy masses of pink blooms (possibly 'The Fairy', though I have not checked this with local garden suppliers). These constant bloomers are looking fresher than ever when other foliage fades. There is also a magnificent carmine red bush rose in a nearby street, Am Ochsenzoll, that has powered away into a whole new firework display to celebrate the autumn. Another unexpected second bloom comes from one of my Prunus lusitanica which has put up a spire or two of white flowers.

Callicarpa Week

Callicarpa bodinieri is actually looking even more impressive in Week 2008/40 than in the preceding weeks when its berries were ripening, because its leaves have turned mauve as well, enhancing the berries, which look like purple beads on rough leather in some kind of exaggerated costume jewellery. White Symphoricarpos berries are on the bushes now, but are not so big as I remember from earlier years. As the first autumn storm lashes the house, it seems supremely odd to discover that Heptacodium miconioides is beginning to cover itself with small daisy-line white flowers. Hydrangea paniculata has also been impressive until the arrival of the storms mutilates its petals. We give a big welcome in this week to the rest of the aster clan. Aster laevis has already been in flower for a week, and now it is the turn of purplish Aster novae-angliae to impress at shin height.

Symphoricarpos Week

When the early morning sun comes out in week 2008/44, and the dew still sparkles on the leaves, sprays of white Symphoricarpos berries are among the most attractive features of a morning walk. And of course, this is the time when Prunus subhirtella 'Autumnalis' builds up a head of steam, with lots of its improbable blossoms scattered on the branches at the diametrically opposite time of year to the "proper" cherries. A mauve-red hybrid of Chrysanthemum indicum is at last coming into flower and I wondering if it will survive the winter.

Aster Week

Aster is the dominant newcomer this week, with Aster laevis now fully in flower and buds of Aster novae-angliae just visible. Shrubs that wait to flower until September or October are fairly rare things in Zone 8. Syringa microphylla 'Superba', an autumn lilac, has been in flower for a few weeks now and is indeed pretty. We are still waiting for Heptacodium miconioides to bloom. The Lorenz von Ehren nursery catalogue has a few more suggestions including Lespedeza thunbergii purpurrosa and Osmanthus heterophyllus, and reminds us that Elaeagnus ebbingei ought to be showing its modest white flowers about now. So I go out to look, and yes, they are there, though so subtle that only the bees would really notice. Franklinia alatamaha is another standard late flowerer elsewhere, but enormously expensive in Germany: about 100 euros for a specimen. The Eggert nursery proposes varieties of Buddleja and Ceanothus, but of course these have been in flower since the summer. The Horsholm botanic gardens list (see the left column) proposes Leycesteria formosa, Caryopteris incana and Hamamelis virginiana. Otherwise, Viburnum tinus and Viburnum farreri are uncertain flowerers, rather like Prunus subhirtella 'Autumnalis', which begin to leak flowers about now and might jump the gun and go into complete flower in a mild November or December, but could also keep us in suspense till March. The main glories at this time of year come from berries, like that of Callicarpa bodinieri, often dubbed the beautyberry. We have seen this looking straggly and neglected, and even then it is eyecatching. On a bush that is pruned and well shaped, the purple berries in week 2008/39 are already something very beautiful indeed.

Caryopteris Week

The Rudbeckia has run its course in week 2008/38 and the slack has been taken up by the slightly smaller sunflowers that I believe to be Helenium autumnale (though there has always been a suspicion here that they are Helianthus decapetalus). Coming into flower now: the taller Aster laevis with their delicate mauve-reds: The lower Aster novae-angliae are not there yet, holding back almost till the falling of leaves. Among the sub-shrubs, Caryopteris clandonensis 'Heavenly Blue' has come into flower at last with its cornflower-style blues: amazing that any woody plant can wait so long in the season before giving its best.

Vinus Week

You know autumn has arrived when the vendange, or grape-gathering, begins in northern Europe. Our table grapes are full and sweet and ripe for the picking in Week 2008/37. [Later note: I can't completely remember, but I suspect week 37 was the week that the autumn lilac Syringa microphylla 'Superba' came into flower.]

Overlap Weeks

2006/49: The start of the 2006-2007 winter has been remarkably mild: grass sown in week 46 has germinated and is about one centimetre high, the Prunus autumnalis, although only 60 cm high, is in full blossom, and Katharina Stamm has a very late aster with beautiful flowers on it. The azaleas are budding, and so are the hydrangeas. Even the Eschscholzia is shooting forth anew like a perennial and is about 10 cm high and beautifully green.

Vanishing Foliage Week

2006/46: The garden is pretty bare by now. The lady of the garden has chopped the tops off most perennials, but Salvia nemerosa is still partly green and the Rudbeckia nitida still has bottom growth.

Aster Week

Of course it's not just any any asters we have been waiting all this time for, but Aster novae-angliae, a species that refuses to participate in spring blooming and that treacherously harbours slugs and snails all summer long before compensating us in 2006/39 with its autumn flowering. High pink ones under the Rudbeckia at the driveway look particularly effective. Lower blue ones on the side bank add colour, but should remain limited in number. A cutting from the Salix caprea was moved to the front bank, where it was looking peaky but will survive.