winter – Charlton and Blackheath Amateur Horticultural Society

New Year 2026 Flower Count at Charlton House Gardens

On a perishingly cold day – encouraged by a wintry sun – the intrepid Garden Volunteers ventured out on their mission to spot which brave flowers are showing off in the gardens this new year, 2026.

Viburnum tinus at Charlton House — *Viburnum tinus*

This is the third year we have undertaken a flower count, so we should know roughly what to expect. UK weather data shows that 2025 was the sunniest on record, and probably the warmest too. Here in the depths of winter, it’s easy to forget the unprecedented spring sunshine and incredibly hot summer that we’ve had. This is bound to have disrupted plant lifecycles and confused some into flowering at the wrong time.

Plant(s) of the Month: December flowers

What a mild 2025 December we are having! So mild, the weather is confusing some plants, such as lavender, Calendula and yellow-flowered Phlomis, out in flower at present.

One of the joys of winter is admiring all the window boxes, the wide variety of beautiful Christmas door-wreaths and observing what’s flowering in front gardens whilst out strolling.

Calendula officinalis flowering in December — A confused pot marigold, beautiful Camellia sasanqua and festive Abutilon

A confused pot marigold, beautiful Camellia sasanqua and festive Abutilon

10 Things for December 2025

December is a month when the garden often takes a back seat, and when Pat deserves a break from helping you all with your garden jobs, so the CABAHS Committee have come up with a list of 10 Things that they are doing this month in, from, or for their gardens.

Kathy's decorated greenhouse, December 2025 — December in the festive greenhouse

Members’ gardens: virtual wreaths

Everyone enjoyed seeing the autumn colour in CABAHS members gardens, so we thought we’d like to see some more – this time on the theme of ‘ingredients for a winter wreath’. People submitted photographs of evergreen shrubs and perennials, winter flowers, berries and seedheads, and here they all are, compiled into virtual wreaths – complete with festive bows! If you contributed a photo, can you spot your plant or plants?

Virtual 'winter flowers and berries' wreath compiled from CABAHS member photographs. — Winter flowers and berries wreath, made up from Kathy’s ‘Spider’s Web’ *Fatsia* and yew berries, Jenny and Pat T’s *Pyracanthas*, Pat K’s ivy, a seedhead from the Old Pond Garden, Carolyn’s *Fatsia*, Pat T’s hellebore (won in a recent CABAHS raffle!) and Mandy, Brownie and Fran’s *Mahonias*.

Plant of the Month: More Salvia! (November 2025)

Last week I was in Greenwich Park, in what was the Old Rose Garden for several decades, and now transformed into a fantastic herbaceous garden, a riot of colour, shapes and forms, tall grasses swaying and intermingling flowering shrubs (find out more about this transformation). I had gone there to see one specific Salvia – and what a show they were putting on!

Salvia 'Phyllis' Fancy' in Greenwich Park Old Rose Garden, November 2025

November 2025 Meeting and Show Table

CABAHS Show Table, November 2025 — So much colour in November!

There was a great turn out for CABAHS’ last meeting of 2025. As usual, there were refreshments (this month featuring mini-stollen and mince pies!), also a plant sales table, a raffle, the Show Table and – the main event – an engaging talk from Dr David Marsh, garden historian and blogger.

Visit to the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh

I spent a weekend this February in Edinburgh, and came across this interesting doorstep display on my travels around the city. Some new ideas for displaying your succulents …!

I also visited the Royal Botanic Garden. The morning I visited was bright, cold and calm, in stark contrast to the previous weekend when the garden had been ravaged by storm Eowyn. The sad remains of the garden’s tallest tree – a 166 year-old conifer – were clear to see.

The sun was shining and the sky a bright blue but the frost remained in the shadier parts of the beds and the Rhododendrons had bowed their leaves to protect themselves from the cold. But they were also covered in buds, waiting to burst forth in a few weeks time.

Pat’s Jobs for February 2025

1. It’s time to cut back those late-flowering clematis…the viticella small-flowered types and the ones flowering after June. All that rain last year made mine grow rampantly so cut back hard to just above a bud, 6 to 12 inches from the ground, and give them a feed and a mulch.

Late flowering viticella clematis — Late flowering viticella Clematis

Clematis viticella - two varieties — Late flowering viticella Clematis

2. You can also cut back some of the slightly early-flowering types like jackmanii varieties and Comtesse de Bouchard, but it’s best to check individual varieties or you’ll lose all your flowers for this year. Other varieties such as early varieties like Montana should be trimmed back after they flower in Spring, unless overgrown – when they require drastic action and you’ll be sacrificing the flowers for a year or two. Anyway, please check.

3. If the ground is frozen or too wet then don’t be tempted to walk on it for fear of damaging the structure. Seems impossible at the moment to get much done!

Plant of the Month: Galanthus (February 2025)

If you wish to see the snowdrops now, I can highly recommend the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. The gardens are easy to reach via the District Line to Kew Station. The woodland garden (near the Princess Diana Conservatory) has meandering paths beneath the trees, where an array of snowdrops, aconites, hellebores and mauve-coloured crocuses (the shade of colour I’ve only ever seen at Kew) are displayed to a wonderful effect. Visiting on a beautiful sunny day makes the gardens appear even more delightful.

The magnificent sandstone rock garden nearby, which mimics mountainous regions, is an important feature of the gardens, and here and there, in mostly sunny locations, could be found very choice, small clumps of snowdrops which are labelled for the visitor. I would love to have any of these growing in my garden and I thought you might too.

Galanthus ‘John Gray’: This early-flowering snowdrop is regarded as very choice indeed, which was seemingly found in the Suffolk garden of the late John Gray. I was captivated by the shades of lime-green on the inner segments.

Belfast Botanic Gardens

I have been spending some time recently in Northern Ireland, and was enchanted to find the Belfast Botanic Gardens are right on my doorstep here.. just waiting to be explored.

The gardens started in 1828, when the “Belfast Botanic and Horticultural Society” was formed and a 14 acre site purchased. The Palm House was built in 1839 by ironmaster Richard Turner of Dublin, who went on to build the Palm House at Kew a few years later! If this one was a practice run, it is still really impressive.

It is not large, but cleverly designed to incorporate a Cool Wing, a central Dome which is sub-tropical, and a Tropical wing, so it can house a wide range of plants. Sadly it was closed for repairs on the day of my visit, courtesy of the recent winter storms.

There is another glasshouse on the site, the Tropical Ravine House, which is just amazing. It was built by “the Head Gardener and his staff” (Jason & the Garden volunteers – there’s an idea!) and was finished in 1889. Uniquely constructed into a hillside, so the visitor walks around a balcony and looks down into a moist glen filled with tropical planting.

It was renovated in 2019 with help from the Friends of Belfast Botanic Gardens, who clearly play a large part in supporting and maintaining these gardens. They have also created a fascinating new Global Medicine Garden just to the side of the glasshouse. https://fobbg.co.uk/