A correspondent in Japan reassures me about my apple trees. ‘Is the moss hurting them?’ was the question.

She says ‘No prunus mume or actually no tree of the Rosaceae family should be without moss and lichen here in Japan. ‘Moss’ is even in our national anthem to represent life and eternity. In Ikebana arrangements, especially for New Year’s or other felicitous occasions, we even paste on bits of Parmelia tinctorum to give branches an aged look, to represent all that is old and wise and venerable still able to bring forth fragrant flower and sweet fruit, even in very cold weather. (Take that, young saplings). As you write, I do know that non-Japanese will look upon such branches as ‘mouldy’, unfortunately.’

But then we try to grow moss-free lawns under our apples, not an idea you will often meet in Japan.

Castelgandolfo

Three days of visiting gardens around Rome with the International Dendrology Society (or a harmonious subset of it) was not quite the fast-forward spring we had expected. It had been cold and wet for weeks and just brightened up for our visit. If our English spring arrived four weeks late the Roman one was certainly no more punctual. You might be surprised how many Japanese cherries grow in and around Rome, though, and how well they blossom. Above all, to one who usually visits later in the year, the shock impression was of green. The Campagna looked like Ireland. And there are so many elms.

I had almost forgotten how the elm does something no other tree does: it flowers and fruits before it produces leaves. The unripe fruit appears as little pale green discs that make it the greenest tree of all when the forest is just thickening to fawn and tan and purple with catkins. Rome is full of elms, a green counterpoint to the black banners of what should be called the Roman pine – the huge umbrellas that shade streets and squares and crowd the sky of the Borghese Gardens.

Ninfa was our first out-of-town call. ‘The most romantic garden in the world’ seems to have stuck to it as a subtitle. I wouldn’t argue. Our party was small enough for it to be easy to hang back and be alone by the river (subtitle: ‘the most beautiful river ……’) It is mesmerizing to watch the long green weed that undulates below the speeding ripples and the long trout that hang motionless below the bridges. Magnolia and cherry blossom were almost the only flowers. Oranges and huge grapefruit lit the deep green of the orchard like lamps.

Ninfa is by no means the only great garden concealed on an ancient estate within a few miles of Rome, nor the only one sheltering in massive ruins. Pines and cypresses, white-trunked planes and magnolias are the common theme. In a month or so it will be roses.
The Pope, we were told, only goes to Castelgandolfo, his summer residence, in July. It stands on a ridge between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Lake Albano in its volcanic crater, where breezes keep the dense shade under its evergreen oaks perpetually cool. The immense terrace looking towards the sea is to topiary what St Peter’s is to altars. Most memorable of all, though, is the half-submerged cloister, seventy feet high and 120 yards long, built for Diocletian’s after-lunch exercise (in his day it stretched 300 yards). There are as many ghosts as people in Rome.

How did spring get so mixed up this year? Or is it just that we have become used to more benign winters and steadier openings to the growing season?

I am not at all sure what to expect when I go out these days. How far have we got? Winter ended with the best blackthorn season I’ve ever seen – hedgerows snowy for three weeks – under a genial sun, while all the bulbs flowered at once and spring-flowering plants seemed to be playing leapfrog with their schedules. Cherries were late and magnolias early; I wouldn’t have been surprised if I had come round a corner and seen a dogwood in flower. So what can the weather record say in explanation? I have the book from the greenhouse in front of me.

January: 46 millimetres (approximately: you can ‘t really measure the rain in snow, as it were). 14 days of snow from the 4th to the 18th. 10 days with no precipitation at all scattered through the month. Highest temperature 43°F (6°C) on the 16th, lowest 26°F (-3°C) on the 7th.

February: 82 millimetres of rain, with only four days completely without, Maximum 48° (9°C) on the 5th, minimum 28° (-2°C) on the 15th. The January/February total of 128 millimetres or 5 inches is about a quarter of our annual total rainfall. But if not in winter, when should it fall?

March: 38 millimetres with 17 dry days. Maximum temperature 59°F (15°C) on the 18th, minimum 26°F (-3°C) on the 7th. A dry cold month with moderate sunshine, neither urging on nor holding back.

April: Only 10 millimetres, and 24 days with no rain: a very dry month with long sunny periods, reaching 68° (20°C) on the 28th with a minimum temperature of 36° (2°C) on the 21st.

May, to date: The only rainfall, 9 millimetres, on the 1st of the month. No extraordinary temperatures; no frosts until the middle of the month when there was enough new growth to hurt (as the ashes have been).

Now we have the full panoply of spring, early and late at the same time, in a sea of Queen Anne’s lace. Confusing, but brilliant. Snow in January, rain in February, drought in March are hardly unlooked for. Drought and sunshine in April were the surprise.

A weekend in North Wales (let’s say Merioneth, for the poetry) to see how the winter has treated the woods. Kindly, is the answer. The grass on the hills is still sere, snow hangs in the high gullies and dusts Cader Idris again in the night. The larches, pines and spruces stand impassive, a few leaning, a few prone, but no mass casualties in a winter with no strong gales. It is catkins that provide the excitement, close up where the hazels are clouds of yellow down-strokes and here and there pussy willows flash like shards of mirror, and in the distance where they begin to paint the hills.

The brilliant colours of massed twigs always surprise me: the oaks pale buff, the birches purple, ashes the colour of bone and hazels en masse, as their catkins ripen, bright orange. Spruces are dull green with silver flashes if the wind shows you their petticoats. European larches are pale custard colour, Japanese larches pinky-orange. In forest land the colours are laid on in random brush strokes. The silver slash of a waterfall (there is very little water after a long dry spell) hangs from a hill top.

The ponds and puddles are fecund with frogspawn and loud with froggy noises, sharp croaks above a long soft purr like a contented cat – the sound of spring warming its engine.

Home to a quite different scene from the one we left. What unit of energy do you use for a spring garden getting going? Kilojoules? Megatonnes? The energy driving the buds on every bush and tree, driving the crocuses and daffodils and fritillaries, driving every blade of grass (not to mention every weed and bramble) is immeasurable. If knotweed can split concrete, the concerted force of this garden could reach the moon.

The other day I caught myself putting on a tie to go out in the garden, and realised I was doing it simply for warmth. Things had come to a pretty pass …

Then I reflected, not for the first time, on how much hardier women are than men. A bare throat, at least, is de rigueur. Long stretches of leg are routine, clad in, at most, thin tights. A year or two ago the fashion was a bare midriff in all weathers.

True, there are builders who expose their lower backs to the cold, but men in general have the sense to put a bit of fabric between themselves and the elements. You warm up, of course, once you start gardening in earnest. Shedding layers, though, is quite different from venturing out to admire the indifference of buds to the East wind. ‘Overcoat plants’ (who coined the expression?) is all too applicable at the moment.

Crocus tommasinianus offers the only colour with any warmth (snowdrops have no calories) and this morning I discovered the crocuses are being neatly mown by unseen mouths by night. The flowers go, leaving just the white stalks; no sign of the petals and the no-doubt-sweet working parts. Rabbits? Voles? The moorhens would surely leave a mess.

It happened last year (a month earlier), and I said I would try watering them with a repellent product called Grazers and report back. This is the report back.

There is very little we can do about the two problems that beset our horse chestnuts, leaf miner, and possibly fatal canker, except insure against a future without them. It is by no means inevitable, but we should be prepared.

What to plant to succeed them depends, of course, on what part they are playing. An avenue presents the worst dilemma. There is scarcely ever space to plant another avenue for succession outside the root-zone and the shade of the incumbent

Fell alternative trees and replant in the gaps? It is hard to take such a radical long-term view, but it is probably the best answer. And replant with what? Limes are the safe choice.

To replace a screen of chestnuts, which is what I need to do (they are the only big trees between the house and the village street) I am planting beech under and around the chestnuts. Beech grows quite quickly when its young and demands less light than other candidates. By planting the trees small and quite thickly I hope they will be forming an almost hedge-like screen (though not cut as a hedge) by the time the horse chestnuts succumb – if they do. Then I shall be able to choose the best beeches – some may well be damaged by falling timber – and train them up as worthy successors.

It was a regular customer who suggested I should change my nom de terre to Treedescant. You’re always writing about them, she said.

Touché. But it’s largely a winter habit. At this time of year they are the only thing in the garden to look at – and this is the time when you really can see them; they’re not all covered with leaves. It is the intricacy of their frameworks that I love to see, and the intimacy of their just-swelling buds. The comparison with people, with and without clothes, did occur to me – but you never know where these things will lead.

Certainly there’s nothing outside the window so well worth study as the Siberian crab that rises like a wind-blown fountain a hundred yards down the drive. Its jet black silhouette perfectly expresses its experiences over 60 years or so; the constant shove of the west wind inclining it to the east, the perennial effort to find more light for its leaves ……

An artist who could draw such a telling design would be rightly celebrated. Every tree out there is a drawing of an autobiography, expressed in a different medium and a different style. Call me Treedescant if you like.

There will be plenty of time for post mortems after the winter has done its worst. Previous cold winters have taught us not to be hasty: miraculous resurrections are not unknown. What I am seeing now, though, is the survival (albeit in a battered state) of plants that the books say should be dead.

I only planted my old aspidistra outside as a joke; a sort of mock hosta to frighten visitors. Confirmed house-plant it may be, but it is very much alive under (and over) its blanket of mulch. Unmulched, left where it seeded itself, Geranium palmatum, both adult with its huge leaves and baby seedling, look perfectly happy. A seedling of Euphorbia mellifera is only a little brown at the edges. In fact I see hardly any obvious mortality so far. I am worried about my fish, though: what do last year’s little fry do under the ice: suspend animation?