Charles Dowding (my new gardening god) is running a course on No-Dig Vegetables at Great Dixter on February 13th (£120 incl. refreshments and lunch). It is a practical one-day course on the theory and practice of this method and is bound to be hugely inspiring. It is also an opportunity to see Great Dixter when it is closed to visitors. If you can’t make it there, I can recommend reading the book about the course ‘Charles Dowding’s Vegetable Course’ . I read it from cover to cover over a weekend and it is going to change the way I grow vegetables.

©Ian Wigley

Snowdrop Valley, near Wheddon Cross on Exmoor, is open to visitors from Saturday 4th February until Sunday 4th March 2012. This remote valley with its magnificent blanket of snowdrops has been opening for fifteen years. The Snowdrop Valley Park and Ride service transports passengers down into the valley. Buses run from 10:30am to 3:50pm from the village car park at Wheddon Cross, next to the Rest and Be Thankful Inn and there is a marked walking route down into the valley for the more energetic. The final week allows walking access only to the snowdrops.Contact snowdropvalley@googlemail.com for more details.

Last autumn I dug up a clump of vulnerable cyclamen seedlings and potted them into individual cells. They have spent the winter in semi-shade near the greenhouse and are looking good. I’m planning to let them grow on until next autumn when I will plant them in the woodland garden. One of the best indicators of getting the conditions right is when your precious plants self-seed – very satisfying.

Well, it wasn’t that hot last year, but they are popping up all over the place in the garden and a pot in the greenhouse greeted me with 3 lovely flowers with lots more to come. The more I garden the less I know!

First hellebore flowers

The first hellebores are in bloom and are particularly welcome as I had to dig them all up in the autumn and put them in pots while I waited for building work to finish. It is generally said that they hate being moved and won’t flower for a few years afterwards, but I think the combination of the time of year and the mild winter means that they have dealt with the move far better than I expected and seem very happy back in their newly enriched beds. I’ve been around the various plants removing last year’s foliage and making sure that any affected by blackspot (as in the photo below) is put in the rubbish rather than composted.

There’s always a time around Christmas when I wonder what possessed me to buy so many bulbs – and when I’m going to finish planting them. Somehow I managed to get them all in this year and although planting them couldn’t always be described as ‘fun’ – it’s lovely to see all my pots filled and bulbs starting to show. This is the time of year when friends ask me ‘is it too late to plant bulbs?’ and I generally reply that bulbs are more likely to flower in the ground than in a paper bag.