I should have known.

I have to confess to not being 100% honest with you all.  I have been on another one of my trips this time for 2 weeks in Myanmar (Burma) and scheduled my last few posts to appear throughout my trip. When I left it was lovely and warm and we were having the warmest winter I can remember. The posts during my trip reflected this and I think I jinxed it. If you have seen the news, or live in Europe you will know it is not a mild winter any more! You can imagine my horror when I got this photo of my dry bed from my OH.

I have mentioned before that snow in the UK does all the damage due to being wet and constantly melting and re-freezing. Thankfully my lovely OH had gone out and put down the fleece before it snowed so all the plants were fine and I need not of worried. The snow has gone now, and it has warmed up again. The moral of the story is don't go away in the coldest month of the year, and if you do, definitely do not comment on how warm it has been!

Don't worry I will do a post on my trip with some much warmer photos soon.

Is it that time of year already?

It seems it was only last week that I was talking about the late summer flowering echeverias. Looking around not only are the winter flowers still going but the first of the spring ones are starting as well.  Ok so not really the spring flowers but echeveria rosea which flowers winter/spring.  I rave about this plant, if you do not own it go and buy it is all I can say. For once it is actually one that is better if you have a proper winter.  Currently the plant looks like this:

The flowers are just starting to form  and the leaves are starting to take on a slight red tinge. This is where the cold comes in,  if it is left out in the cold it turns red and will develop to look like this in a month or so:

I have been developing a clump in my dry bed and last year they coloured up nicely despite the bad winter.

I am hoping that this year with the lack of snow, which did set them back last year, and them having settled in even more that the display with be something special.  I want a large clump which all reach the final flower to look like this:

Mind you, it is still only January and our coldest month is usually February, so who knows what this winter actually has in store for us.  In some respect the lack of cold is almost more nerve-racking than having cold.  I keep think it can't be this mild can it? So to take my mind off it I will continue to picture who good my spring echeveria flowers are going to be.

A work courtyard update

It is the first winter for the garden at my office and we couldn't have wished for a milder one.  The central London effect means that many plants that have been killed even in my mild area are still going and the rockery especially is totally untouched. (I apologise for the quality of the photos they are from my phone).

The plant I am most surprised about is the echeveria mauna loa. The ones in my dry bed have all melted, they don't survive below -1 for me, which shows how warm the work garden is.  There are even some still in flower which has surprised me as well.

The fastest growing agave has been the agave filifera which has sent out a few pups already.

The jungle bed has made the most of the warm weather as well.  We finally cut the gingers back a couple of weeks ago, but the ensete and even more amazingly the colocasia have lost no leaves due to the cold.  Sadly while it has been warm, we have had a lot of storms and the plants that up until recently didn't have a single damaged leaves are now very tatty.

Time will tell if the we continue to get away with not digging things up.

Some eye candy for those into the softer plants

I understand not everyone shares my obsession for the spikier plants.  So just for you here are some of the other plants from the Kew trip.

 

 

 

 

A peak behind the scenes.

I don't know about you, but any off-limit green house always has me peering over the fence or barriers. having to walk past the the fences seeing the glimpses of massive green houses at Kew is always a strain. So it was an extra treat on the last visit to get to go behind the scenes and finally get a look in those hidden areas.

Oh course glass houses is something Kew has lots of,  there are the Alpine and Princess of Wales I showed in the first post, Then the Palm house which is the most famous:

The Temperate house, which is currently undergoing a much needed re-vamp.  The poor thing has rotted and rusted away over the century and pretty much needs to be re-built.

Then there are the little ones; the water-lily house and the childrens Jurassic zone. Anyway I was looking forward to seeing what the behind the scenes glass houses looked.  I guess it is no surprise that the main building is a simple industrial sized glass houses, but there were one or two smaller ones.  I quite liked the practicality of these with their roll up and down sides.

 And what I wouldn't give for one of these.  You seem them all across traditional English manor house gardens, often used for fruit and veg, often with some very clever natural heating built into the base. As alpine or succulent houses they are perfect,  I can see all my pots neatly lined up all safe for winter, and then nicely displayed without the glass in the summer.

The fact that all of these were totally open in mind January shows you how warm our winter has been.

You can see the big green house in the background, which may not be very exciting as a building, but what is inside certainly is. When you have rooms like these, what is not to like!

The aloe room was awash with flower spikes, even the overflow area was:

It wasn't just the flowers that were colourful:

Then there were the more unusual ones:

And the ones that went straight onto the wish list:

Not to be outdone the agaves were pretty good as well, these agave mitis albicans were the best blue I have seen:

I got told off for not knowing that there is another hybrid with the same parentage of agave blue glow, you can see similarities but it is definitely different.

They didn't have many yuccas, must are outside, but this one caught my eye.

Needless to say my wish list is a little longer yet again.

The first visit of the year: part 2.

My last post started a quick tour of the main succulent bed in the Princess of Wales glass house at Kew.  The plants are pretty much grouped with agaves down the right hand side and aloes down the left.  Yuccas, cacti and other plants are mixed in throughout the bed. Around this time of year the majority of aloes are coming into flower.  It is a little early for the best display and sadly I think some of the displays are not as good this year.  There are flower spikes everywhere though:

There are some nice aloes in among the plants:

One of the bits they have dug up is now planted with little aloes, including a couple of little aloe plicatilis. I'm not sure how they have kept the leaves so small.

The green aloe on the right is one of my favourites, aloe vanbalenii. I searched for ages to find mine and it is growing nicely, although it's not quite as big as this one yet.

There are a few little aloes just in front of this group, the aloe somaliensis flower is almost open.

Finally aloee vacillans, it was this clump that made me go out and look for mine. Again the flowers this year are disappointing at the moment, but the blue colour is enough to brighten any bed.

Having finished in the succulent area we made the most of having a friend who is training at Kew to get another look behind the scenes. So no surprise what the next post will be about.

The first visit of the year: Part 1

The year hasn't properly started until the first trip to Kew.  While some part of the grounds may not be at their best, the bulbs are not out yet and lots of work is going on the main glass houses.  The aloes are in flower make the succulent section almost at it's best.  However before I was allowed into the candy store, I had to earn it by walking around some of the other areas.  At least the sun was out:

The glass house on the left is the alpine house, and the large one is the princess of Wales house. It is still a little early for the alpines, but there were a few out:

Finally I was allowed inside and they have had a big clean up after the agave flowers last summer left huge gaps in the bed.

This is now the only large agave, looks a bit sad all on it's own:

There are a few new agaves in the bed, including this very nice agave titonata (I told you I liked them).

The agave ovatifolia is coming on as well:

The bracteosas are looking good as well:

I particularly like the view form above:

I'll cover the aloes in the next post and then get to the behind the scenes tour!