A month has passed since my last visit to the gardens, and on the face of it nothing has changed – today the scene was again sprinkled with the fairy-dust of frost…

It is not that many years ago that we could have reasonably expected to experience a whole month of freezing temperatures, but this winter the intervening weeks have been unseasonably warm, although it is interesting to note this hasn’t been enough to offset the mid-December deep freeze. Here is a Witch Hazel today, with (on the right) the very same individual three years and five days ago…

Of course this is NOT evidence, as some would like to claim, that ‘global warming’ is a lie, just that weather and climate are two very different things.

Midwinter is monochrome, or at least it presents a subdued colour palette. But with searching, beacons of winter colour can be found to lift the spirits…

… and the first few flowers are starting to appear, even if looking a little floppy from the heavy frost of the past two nights.

It was still cold, so no insect activity to report, but birds were active: a Kingfisher on the Reservoir pond, Redwings, Fieldfares and Siskins in the treetops, and Robins and tits all in song. A Great Tit repeatedly investigating a dead Globe-artichoke head, that which all too many gardeners get rid of because convention sees it as untidiness. Whether for seeds or spiders hiding therein, it illustrated one of our hopes for this year, that we as a species can start to overcome our obsession with tidiness … it most certainly is not a virtue, especially during the planet’s sixth Great Extinction.

Now is the time to let light into your life and embrace the coming Spring. And Beth Chatto’s  is as good a place as any to do that. Fortunately it reopens from its winter recess tomorrow!