Hello Rosie!

Governor Mouton and April Remembered are in bloom! I love seeing my little baby camellias growing up. Several more are just about to pop; April Tryst, Mrs. Tingley, Harbor Lights, and Star Above Star.

What is your experience with Edgeworthia? I nearly got some last year, but had too much else to get in the ground and ended up not getting any. Some of my Daphne is VERY unhappy with all of these heavy winter rains. Are they as susceptible to root rot as their cousins?

I have two 8 year old daphne in pots that have lost most of their leaves and some buds. I am hoping that it is the radical temperature changes we have had. They started to bud out in the warm temps and then we got into the teens. We've had two cycles of this.

Camellia japonica is one of our favorite winter blooming plants, along with Daphne odora and Edgeworthia sp.
Just returned from a tour of the Magnolia Plantation Camellia gardens near Charleston, SC, where there were too many to count and was busy writing down names of cultivars that I would like to have, but would need about 10 acres to plant them!
They don't sell plants, but went from there to Middleton Place Plantation, where they had several hundred for sale. Bought a baker's dozen (didn't have room for more).
After our 2 daughters picked out their choices, we had 5 left! I insisted that they leave one of the Gov. Mouton and Tama Americana for us, also Lemon Glow, Pearl Maxwell & Fifth Avenue.

Tama Americana

Although Tama Americana (Nuccio's Nursery) has been around for about 15 years, I have not found it for sale locally, at the nurseries I frequent.

Governor Mouton

This is the variegation most often observed on the plants at Magnolia Plantation, but can vary significantly from this.

Stopped at Woodlanders, on the way to Charleston, and picked up Lyonia lucida & L. ferruginea and a hardy Bottlebrush cultivar (Callistemon sp.)

Guess my garden chores have escalated until I find a location for some or all of the new purchases. I surely don't need any more potted plants in my plant corral! Some of those become restless and develop legs and walk away. Latest one to "escape" was an Edgeworthia chrysantha!
Rb

Happy New Year to All! Sorry I haven't been around much, but the holidays...you know... :)

CANDYTUFT! My candytuft has buds all over it and looks like it won't be long now! I bought it last winter just to try it in the rockgarden-ish area, by the mailbox. I planted it with some lemon thyme, Nana coreopsis, butterfly blue pincushion flower and several sedums. Although I knew it was evergreen, I really didn't have much hope for it...since the sedums and coreopsis went bye-bye after a few months. But, here they are! They are apparently going to do really well there and so, as soon as the garden centers stock it again, I'm going back for more! The pincushion flower occasionally still throws up a little blue, wavy button and the lemon thyme is still going strong as well, but that candytuft...I have never been so pleased!

Gardening is definitely a learning experience!

Camellia japonica (early flowering cvs.), Daphne odora and Helleborus niger (Christmas Rose), H. x hybridus (Lenten Rose) & H. odorus, are all sporting flowers in various stages of development. It's also about time for the 4 winter flowering species of Cyclamen to begin. I'm trying to urge them along, by checking on them every day!

I keep checking on the Camellias today, to see if the wind has removed all of the blooms. Have had wind gusts in excess of 40MPH (Gale force) since about 11AM and have briefly lost power twice already. GA Power treats this area as a step-child and does little anymore to abate outages during high winds and icy conditions.
Guess they have observed that just about everyone in this area have clear-cut their property, except me, and my trees pose no threat to any overhead utilities.

Normal winter temperatures are predicted to return this week and can't say I'm sorry, I need the respite from outdoor activities!

Oh, boy! I've been sick and coming back and reading this is like...well, like a mandate to go to the nusery! Most of you guys have warmer gardens than me, but these still have to be plants that'll show up early here too.

Nippersdad, this is my first year with Edgeworthia. My friends all went crazy over it some time ago, but I looked at those silly flower-on-stick blooms and, as much as I love fragrance and winter bloom, decided to pass. Then I saw a mature plant all leafed out in another garden, and wow! The foliage is lush, even a bit on the tropical side, and it makes a very handsome plant for a position you'll be passing by a lot. Not so in winter, but then you get to spend the whole fall and early winter watching and waiting as those buds swell, so it is really a prize.

That's very valuable information about daphne, Steve, and I'm writing it down to remember. It's still on my must-have-someday list so I haven't managed to kill it yet.

What a great trip, Razorback. I love the Tama types but they sold out during a trip I made with friends to Fort Valley before I could grab one. Speaking of wanting more room, I used to live about 15 minutes from Descanso Gardens and 20 from Nuccio's Nursery, but my entire garden, carved out of the side of a mountain, totaled about 4000 square feet. I had 5 camellias in the shady back.

Candytuft's always been on the list, Mk87, but it suddenly jumped up big time on the tidy groundcover list I'm trying to put together. I have so much dirt to cover and am already seeing that vining groundcovers are going to be a major hassel to control in large spaces. Thank you.

A plant that's doing very nicely in my garden is lime thyme. Lemon thyme kept dying back after a while, but lime thyme's looking very pretty and fresh out there right now. If rodents (I assume) hadn't eaten my little species tulips, they would have been a wonderful picture. I'll be trying again. I don't mind all the learning experiences so much, it's that they take soooo long!

I'm afraid of what another of these cycles is going to do, even though I have no winter-flowering camellias yet (it's so cold here I have to stick with winter-hardy, with maybe a couple of my favorites tucked against the house.

What a difference these warm temperatures made since my post on New Year's Day, though. My tiny Osmanthus delavayi now has tiny buds at each leaf joint, so it will bloom after all, and both witch hazels, virginiana and Primavera, are opening flowers I thought had been killed by that early cold. These are my first from them, and I was thrilled to find their fragrances lovely and easy to discern from even one open flower (turns out they start blooming from the bottom, so I'm on my knees in the mud checking them out).

Also looking very nice out there is Lavandula stoechas, Spanish lavender. The label's gone (do birds fly off with them?), so I don't know what cultivar, if any, but it's a very handsome tidy mound of a pretty pale green-blue-gray. And has a wonderful fragrance when you brush your hand over in passing or pinch off a piece to carry along. It's not in an especially dry or well-draining spot but doesn't seem to have been bothered by the rains so far.

My husband needs me. A window just blew out of his workshop.

Hi rosie!
Yes, birds do pick your white labels and other white material small enough that they can manage. They use the white material to line the bottom of their aerial nests, so that any predator on the ground or below the nest will see it and believe they are observing the sky, thus pass by the nest, without taking the eggs or the young chicks. Birds may have small brains, but they have strong survival instincts!
Good luck with your garden. I think anything I have in the garden would also do well for you. Tight Camellia buds can survive the freezing temperatures, but open flowers cannot. All of my pretty blooms will be brown after the next freeze, but others will replace them soon, if the temperatures remain above freezing. I have learned to appreciate any color in my winter garden, however breifly it may persist.

I know that Daphne does not like to be moved so I was nervous to move my old girl from her giant pot to a permanent in-ground home at my new house. Fortunately the orientation was exactly the same and I didn't disturb the roots at all. It thrived all summer and is now loaded with buds. It is in a protected place and it is really happy. I can't wait to smell the perfume. I guess we all have gotten a little spring fever in 7B during these warm winter days. I have so much planting to do when the time comes!

Rosie:

Question -- I don't think I've ever seen "lime thyme" in the nurseries around here...is it very different looking from the lemon thyme? That's the other plant that's done so well in that rocky/mailbox area, so maybe some lime would be good as well, if I can find some!

And, btw, just checked this morning and those candytuft buds are starting to open! Isn't it funny how every year we are always so sort of amazed when things work like they are supposed to? LOL I don't think I have very much garden-faith, so I'm always surprised!

I think it's pretty similar in appearance to regular lemon thyme, MK87, not variegated of course. It's a bright, fresh, somewhat yellowish green with dainty little leaves that make a pretty mat. It's not rare. If you don't get it before, you should be able to pick some up at the Spring Garden Expo in Gainesville in April. After my first one from an herb nursery selling there did well, I went back the next time around and picked up several more because the dealer confirmed my observation that it was happier here than the lemon.

Your message made me laugh, Georgia Rose. Accession records for my garden are being compiled in the trees, but at least they're going to good use even if I'm having trouble accessing them.

A plant I didn't mention that I'm glad of is a weed Chinese privet tucked up against a wall. I haven't hoicked it out yet because it's the only mature shrub around and a bird is wintering in it. He's very nervous about being so close to us and stays hidden, even though I throw seed out near him each day, but we hear him chirping away in it in the early morning.

Well I hope they wont regret it, but I've got hyacinth poking out, and some that appear to have prematurely flowering (before they even get completely above the ground) We have had some warm temps so I guess they thought it was time. I know last year they did something simiilar and I was worried that the cold would hurt them, but it didnt and they were gorgeous. other than that I have paper whites all in bloom and of course all my pansy's and violas and many oriental lillies starting to pop up too.

rosie -- Thanks...I will be on the lookout for it in the garden centers. There are a couple of places that hubby and I go to between here and Atlanta that sometimes have things that are not available in our area.

Pines and Camellias. ALso a Loquat and some cold-hardy palms and Rosemary.

Rosie: Thanks for bringing up the Edgeworthia! I had nearly forgot about it and it sounds like it would be wonderful as a textural accent againt other green things not in bloom during the summer. I'm not sure about rodents getting your tulips, though it is certainly possible. Most tulips really don't get the freeze hours here that they need to bloom and die out pretty quickly. On the plus side, however, daffodils run riot!

Otherwise, the lenten roses grown from seed are getting their first flower buds! I hope some of them are the double red ones.....

I have camellia, lorapetalum, jasmine and forsythia flowering at the moment.