clear: light breeze: 34ºF


I’ve heard them described as “the roses of winter.” Camellias, the big-flowered japonica types, finally have started to bloom in the Linnaean glasshouse. This is their first season back home after spending last winter in storage while the glasshouse was being renovated. The botanical garden’s collection of camellias has been halved since a renovation converted the south side of the glasshouse into an orangery for subtropicals.

The photo above is Camellia japonica ‘C. M. Wilson,’ one of some 2000 named varieties of japonicas. C. M. Wilson was registered more than 60 years ago and this botanical garden has two specimens planted here. Like C. M. Wilson, most of the japonicas blooming here are velvety, lush, and tempting to touch and smell. To help imagine that all of these fragrance-free camellias really smell as pretty as they look, the keepers of glasshouse have planted olive trees, a mix of citrus trees, and a bower of pink jasmine – all meant to help the illusion along.

I’d never heard the word “floriferous” until I started planting amaryllis bulbs indoors. Now after a dozen years of buying, planting, and watching them flower I’ve added both floriferous and floriferousness to my vocabulary. Amaryllis bulbs are easy to grow and the payoff is always impressive. This morning I was glad to see that keepers of camellia glasshouse had sunk over a hundred pots of different varieties of amaryllis into the soil near the camellia trees. Until today, I didn’t even know there were that many different varieties of amaryllis. My bulb source, McClure and Zimmerman, lists about 40 varieties. From my experience in growing amaryllis I think the ones in the glasshouse will begin flowering just as the camellias finish. The mix of whites, pinks, cherry reds, salmons, magentas and candy-stripped blooms ought to be spectacular. Also since the pots have been planted so near the walkway, visitors will get a close-up look at the flowers. I predict a lot of posting on Flickr next month. I hope this kind of mass planting of amaryllis will become a new winter tradition here.

Until I too begin to take photos of the amaryllis beds in the glasshouse, here’s a picture of an amaryllis I have blooming now. It’s named ‘Fairytale.’ McClure and Zimmerman describe it as a miniature hybrid amaryllis with candy-cane blooms, white with raspberry-red stripes and white mid-veins that’s very floriferous. I routinely get three stocks per bulb with six flowers per stock.


As in years past, January is fix-up time for the garden. The newly-installed insulated glass panels covering the entrance hall to the garden are being repaired. The main restaurant has been closed for renovation. Outside, the biggest project is the dismantling (and I hope replacement) of a massive I-shaped pergola that covered two walkways and a pond. The pergola had been repaired several times before, but wood rot continues to reappear. With the Garden’s new emphasis on sustainability and reuse of old materials, I’m betting that when a new pergola is build, it will be built with composite timber.

What will take longer to replace than the uprights and the cross-ties will be the old established vines that climbed the old pergola. There were hops and autumn clematis vines along with one standout – the Chinese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis). Over the years, I’ve taken many pictures of this wisteria in full bloom against a backdrop of blue sky and I’ve taken still more of the seeds spread like small round tokens on the walks under the vines. Just a month ago, I’ve stroked the vine’s empty velvety pods that had fallen. This morning I took yet another picture of the wisteria vine – the last one.

Until the snowfall and cold temperatures of the past week, the winter had been unseasonably warm. Local TV news anchors made a habit of segueing to their weather forecasters by asking, Where has winter gone this year?” Here at this botanical garden I’ve already seen a colony of snowdrops in bloom in the Mausoleum Garden, a white-flowering Japanese apricot blooming in the Chinese Garden, and lots of later blooming witch hazels that have gotten off to an early start. Last week in a sheltered spot in the south facing rock garden, I saw this pale lavender crocus trying to bloom. The peak bloom time for crocuses here is mid-March. Before this year, the earliest reported sighting was the last week in February.

This morning in the Herb Garden, near a walkway that gets radiated heat for the brick edging, I saw this lavender pincushion flower (Scabiosa atropurpurea) in bloom. Like the crocus, the bloom is feeble, the color faded, but after all it’s still the middle of January here in Zone 6.