This will be the test of what we smug Londoners call ‘hardy’. I was young (and hardier myself) when I last saw streets and gardens full of snow like this, or felt this sort of cold.
Luckily the snow had already started to lie before the temperature dropped to minus 5; there will be an element of insulation for what’s in the ground. Our fears are for what is exposed, and specially for our fruitful Meyer’s lemon tree; now 30 years in its pot, having spent the past five deprived of any sun on our north-facing veranda (but carrying a promising crop of juvenile lemons).
We shall see how this, an oleander and a four-foot rosebud pelargonium stand up to it. We have wrapped the lemon up these past two nights in a shroud of fleece – which won’t of course, improve the temperature; it will simply moderate the wind-chill.
There’s nothing I can do to protect our precious blue Potato Bush, Solanum rantonettii, waving its many stems high above the wall and the greenhouse. All its leaves have gone now, some into the goldfish tank (where I hope they won’t prove solanaceously toxic). My other worry is for Iochroma (or Acnistus) australe, come to think if it another potatoid plant. There is a well-established bush in the Chelsea Physic Garden that flowers all summer, but down by the Thames these things are famously favoured. There was a big olive tree there long before they became common decorations. What, I wonder, will happen to all the dinky olives in pots on doorsteps? Our iochroma has been many years in a 10 inch pot, trained as a little standard, lovely when hung with its long blue bells. Frozen roots are not a good idea.
In due course we shall see the butcher’s bill. This looks like a costly winter for gardeners, and possibly a prosperous spring for the nurseries.
