Spring is just around the corner?

Well, even if RHS starts with "Spring is just around the corner" in my garden Winter is not willing to "pass away".  We experienced in the last 10 day two heavy (for us) snowfalls (15 resp. 20 cm). So, even if the temperatures didn't drop to much unter the zero, I'm happy that the new Australian corner is well coated.

The single Grevilleas are protected with a double layer of non woven fabric. At night, with just little lighting from the streetlights, they resemble small ghosts visiting my garden.

Usually I protect just few corners. Xerophytes, South African and few Australian plants. Even several species that in the books are quoted not to survive minus (celsius) temperature, have no troubles during normal winters in my garden. Moreover, I tried some subtropical like Hedychium coronarius. With some care, 10 cm of mulch and some branches to fix the mulch material, it survived -10°C two years ago!

Yes, it's still Winter, but some species like this Hakea, are just willing to flower, no matter the outdoor temperatures and the snowfalls. In the last few years I protected this species with non woven fabric, but than I realized that I had every Winter misst the flowering time. So now I have a small specimen as back security copy in a container in a cold frame, and I enjoy the lilliput small but scented flowers. 

Grevillea lanigera is also a Winter flowering species. I wait a couples of weeks, than I'll disclose this 1.5 x1.m meter large flower falls. 

Well, this green non woven fabric is not very elegant. Some other materials used to protect the plants have more fashionable results, sometimes with the help of the snow.

I have several species of domestic and feral animals that visit my garden. From the harmless hedgehogs, to martens, foxes, badgers, deers and cats. So I need to protect some plants taking care that the result should also bee acceptable from an aesthetic point of view. This is a Drymis lanceolata Mt. Wellington. Sometimes I reuse old birdcages like this one (from an animal welfare point of view these cages were and are a nonsense!). 

One of the South african borders is well protected from the snow. Few centimeters of snow are not dangerous, but the constant high humidity for weeks would kill the plants.  On the left a Protea subvestita, one of the more cold and humidity resistant Protea species. In Fall 2014 I had to reduce dramatically the size, because it began to cause troubles to the traffic ....

In most regions with mediterranean climate, snowfalls are rare. This is the reason why several species are not structurally build to compensate the weight of the snow. In some cases like Dendromecon rigida or even with Quercus suber, just few centimeters  are enough to break down branches.

Dendromecon rigida. Rigida from Latin "rigid" means rigid or stiff. Well to be "rigid" in regions with heavy snowfalls is not a positive adaptive mechanism.

This is even more harmful. This happened in the night despite my preventive job to reduce the volume of the branches and to fix the main branches.  

Well, as said, even Spring is around the corner, I still have some weeks to prepare myself and my garden tools for the action!

I will have to wait a little bit before I can prepare my miniature parterre to accomodate the citrus trees. Last year my box hedges experienced heavy attack from Cylindrocladium buxicola and Diaphania perspectalis turning myself from happy plantsman into a desperate plantsman.