Garden Blog - January 2025

For many, groggily blinking and emerging from a fug of seasonal overindulgence, January can seem like a particularly cruel month; dark, cold, and unremitting.

Us gardeners, of course, see January in its true light; a time of new beginnings and transitions. In that same spirit, the month was named after the Roman god, Janus, who was always portrayed with two faces, one looking to the past, and one looking to the future.

As days lengthen and nights shorten, light vanquished dark, and our gardens stretch and yawn from their winter slumber. Pure white snowdrops and golden winter aconites push up through the soil, while the delicate flowers of winter honeysuckle fills the air with their rich scent, and witch-hazel unfurls its colourful blossom.

Witch-hazel, known to botanically minded types as Hamamelis, with their spidery flowers in shades of yellow, orange and red, bring a welcome splash of colour and spicey scent to our gardens in winter. Although slow growing, they can eventually become large spreading shrubs. There are three species of Hamamelis from North America, and one each in Japan and China. Varieties of the Asian species H.japonica and H. mollis, along with those resulting from their cross species H. intermedia, form the bulk of garden-worthy types.

Witch-hazel skincare products are created from a North American species H. virginiana, by distillation of its leaves and bark.

Looking forward into the year, and planning for summer’s glory, means that it’s now the ideal time to peruse seed catalogues in search of old favourites or something new to try out. Besides being very rewarding to grow your own plants from seed, it is also much more cost effective than buying the same plants from a garden centre or nursery. We produce a lot of plants from seed, both perennials for our borders and annuals for summer displays in pots and urns.

With our pots and urns in mind, it’s now time to take cuttings from heliotropes salvias and fuchsias. These were lifted in the autumn, pruned hard-back, and potted up. After a couple of months in the glasshouse they have now produced plenty of suitable cutting material, which we have harvested. Once the cuttings are rooted, their parents will be dispatched to our compost heap and rejoin the cycle of life.

January sees us complete our rose pruning endeavours, and turn then to the fruit trees in our Wildflower Orchard. We have a selection of free-standing apples, pears, and quinces, along with espalier trained apples grown against railings.

When pruning free-standing trees, the aim is to create an open goblet shaped canopy, to allow air and sunlight in. This is done by maintaining three or four main branches, that have their new growth pruned by a third until the tree reaches its desired height. Other new growth that is heading towards the centre of the goblet, is crossing, diseased, or damaged, should be removed completely. The new growth that remains should be pruned back to three or four buds from their base.

The basic principle where training espalier fruit trees is concerned is about selecting branches to train horizontally, in tiers that are approximately 45cm apart. These horizontal branches will then produce numerous vigorous vertical branches, which must be pruned back to within three or four buds from their base to encourage shorter, flowering, spur branches, until, eventually, little pruning is required at all.

Along with apples, pears, and quinces, we’ll also be pruning our blackberry bushes this month. Given their rather savage nature, this is a job best tackled with a very sturdy pair of gloves! Firstly, remove all of this year’s fruiting stems. Next, reduce the remaining new stems to half a dozen or so, depending on the space available. Finally, tie the stems into wires that are approximately 75cm apart. Our blackberry is grown against the walls of our Old Kitchen Garden, but they can just as well be grown on wires strung between posts.

As ever, next month, we will have our first garden openings of the season to celebrate the arrival of our snowdrops, details of which will be in the February blog. Naturalised snowdrops cover several acres of our Wild Gardens and managed ornamental woodlands that surround the formal gardens to the north of the lake and canal. Meanwhile, planted in beds close to the House, an ever-increasing collection of unusually named snowdrop varieties can be seen close up.

Although naturalised wild snowdrops flower reliably from February into March, named varieties, that are the result of crossing different species, flower over a broader period, depending on their parentage. Amongst the first into flower in the gardens here, from early January, is Galanthus ‘Godfrey Owen’. This highly unusual snowdrop has a multitude of both inner and outer petals, and was selected by famous galanthophile Margaret Owen, who named it after her husband.

As we are out and about in our gardens this month, we can take our minds back to the Roman God Janus, and admire the beautiful transitional sunrises and sunsets that so often bookend these wintery days.

Until next month, happy gardening.

Hamamelis-mollis	Perusing A Seed Catalogue	Heliotrope Cuttings	Galanthus ‘Godfrey Owen’	A Deene Park Sunset