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Garden Blog – Winter Wonderland

I had spent a couple of weeks putting decorations up in various rooms and decorating Christmas trees at the National Botanic Garden of Wales but it wasn’t until we arrived this week that it felt really Christmassy (Is that how you spell it?).  The temperature had dropped and we had to scrape the ice off the car windscreen when we set out and that wasn’t nearly as pretty as the ground in the car park when we arrived.  The leaves that had fallen to the ground from the horse chestnut tree were edged in frost and looked wonderful.

Elsewhere in the Garden the leaves on the evergreens were frosty and looked great. Even the soil was transformed and glittered in the morning sunshine, and it was all down to the weather.  We complain about the cold and, of course, it was very cold but not as bad as it might be.  At least our weather isn’t as extreme as it is in other parts of the world and you really can’t beat a bright sunny winter’s day. Of course, the sun was melting the frost but there were still shady places where the frost stayed all day and it was just so pretty.

I went into the Wallace Garden, where my husband was working, and was blown away by the cabbages!  Now that has to be a first.  In an earlier blog I was on about the cabbages in the Wallace Garden because of their beautiful colours.  Their still colourful leaves were edged with diamonds – all provided by Jack Frost.

Last week the Christmas trees were being put up in the Great Glass House in readiness for the schools’ tree decorating competition, this week the competition was over and the trees were decorated. We are usually lucky enough to be around for the competition but unfortunately were unable to make this year. The theme was “A Traditional Welsh Christmas” and I have to say that they were all brilliant.  I can honestly say that I never expected to see Dylan Thomas on the top of a Christmas tree but there he was.  There were some adorable sheep, Santas galore, innumerable dragons and even some daffodils.  Every year I am amazed by the ingenuity of the children and their teachers.  They make buying Christmas decorations seem like a bit of a cop out.  Mind you I expect that, like me, you have decorations that spend most of their time in the loft and get dragged down a couple of weeks before Christmas.

I suppose that our weather will get worse before it gets better but when I look at the calendar I see that it will not be too many weeks before the first snowdrops will be pushing through the soil and after the 21^st of the month it will start to get lighter in the evenings and we all look forward to that.  In the meantime I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy 2013.

Pam Murden

15 December 2012

to see more of Pam’s Garden Blogs for 2012, go to our Blog page.