winter colours – at Great Dixter

Wandering around the garden in February – sort of warmish, still air and birdsong all around  – the structure, that old overused term, is centre stage in the Peacock Garden where fluted stands of grasses alongside sculptural yet wayward form of dipsacus talk to each other within the framework of clipped yew.

Warm brown tones predominate – the newly composted beds are clean, the surfaces criss-crossed with canes laid flat identifying the recently planted groups and the lines of low aster bordering the paths looking burnt but seeming strangely tactile.

Signs of fresh new growth – Galanthus ‘S Arnott’ snuggle around the base of the yew . . .

. . . and informally sprinkle around fresh green fronds of the invasive Black Parsley better known as Melanoselinum decipiens – it’ll achieve human height in full summer – a charming monster. Yellow flowering Helleborus x hybridus inhabit this area too. All springlike.

Similar strong architecture in the High Garden – glossy fingered rosettes on Trochodendron araliodes – a plant perhaps hidden by showy neighbours in full summer.

And heavenly perfume from wintersweet and witch hazel  – competing or complimenting ? Just delicious together.

More snowdrops frothing around under the myrtle in the corner of the Wall Garden – what bark, what stems, what beauty at 60 years old.

The Pool Garden, cleaned but not yet pruned back.

And returning to the Peacock Garden, in contrast, a hive of activity with gardeners busy in every corner . . . no visitors as yet . . .

. . . but soon thre will be, during the first weekend in April, the Plant Fair heralding the start of the season – be there or be square – and thanks Fergus for a good lunch. And a good chat.Interesting perhaps to look at other posts of differing seasons and times to the day.

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space,

in which you see all Forms intensified.

(In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself,

would disappear into that vastness.)

 

Space reaches from us and translates Things:

to become the very essence of a tree,

throw inner space around it, from that space

that lives in you. Encircle it with restraint.

It has no limits. For the first time, shaped

in your renouncing, it becomes fully tree. Rainer Maria Rilke