January in the garden

 It is always lovely to wander round the garden and see what is growing.  Owing to the relatively mild winter weather so far (this is apparently set to change from next week), some plants from last summer are still flowering and winter plants are also growing too.  My favourite flowers for this time of the year,  snowdrops, are starting to push through which always make me happy.

 Small clumps of snowdrops are all around the garden - you can never have too many in my opinion!  I do like the named varieties with their different markings, but for reliability, you can't beat Galanthus nivalis, the 'common' variety.  (How can something this elegant can be called 'common'?  That is just wrong!)

My young replacement winter flowering jasmine is flowering too and I will get the poor thing planted in the border at some stage.  It is a bit of a birds' nest of a plant as it can become very straggly, but my previous one, which had to come out when the wall was rebuilt,  was very forgiving and I did hack at it without much planning.  The burst of bright yellow is so welcome on a dull winter day.

Camellia Yoimachi is becoming a regular feature at the moment and I make no apologies for this as it is a beautiful plant.  It has been flowering since December and apart from moving it out of full sun in the summer, it has been left to its own devices.  It has rewarded me with lots of these stunning flowers which shine out at the bottom of the garden.

It is just so pretty.  I am going to repot it in Spring and hopefully will enjoy a repeat performance next autumn and winter.