SAD and doleful - if not deathly - the wallflowers looked, some sturdy plants stripped of foliage while others proffered stems of mushy, rotting leaves. Wallflowers are generally hardy, robust things managing despite the general buffeting of winter's rain wind and, snow to emerge cheerfully in spring colourful and nostalgically scented; they are old reliables for brightening up pots, and patches in borders, from March until May while we await summer flowers.
Here, the late-December frosts followed by early morning sunshine and a sudden thaw seem to have taken a toil, the swift change in temperature being too much for young plants in a new home.
The frosts which saw the old year's declining days and made for many a delightful silvery winter scene certainly brought an element, of misery. As temperatures dropped lower than they had for several years, December proved a testing time for many gardens. Places where severe frosts are not the norm received quite a shock and gardeners in coastal areas were alarmed to see thick sheets of ice form on garden pools and then to see favourite plants such as pelargoniums which had been for years happy outside, succumb to cold and turn to a blackened mess. And I suspect that the losses will be worse in such places than in the colder midlands and Northern parts.
Inland, we expect frost every winter and have learned to plant accordingly. We take occasional chances and plants may survive unexpectedly. The situation is never precisely the same in every garden. Neighbouring places can report different results depending on micro climate, soil and shelter. Plants in a well-drained soil sheltered by a wall can thrive while half a mile away similar items in a heavy, poorly drained clay exposed to wind will quickly give up the struggle. We can only learn from our own experiences: gardening is not a rigid and defined art.
In different parts of the country, we define varying thresholds and then seek to push matters to the limit. Nature occasionally checks us, but such reprimands we will boldly ignore - playing utterly safe is just too boring and unimaginative.
So, the south Dublin gardeners dismayed to see their echiums blackened and seemingly dead should take heart. Two years of waiting for this imposing half hardy biennial to throw up its 8 ft tall startling spike of flowers and greyish green leaves, only to be outwitted by an unexpected frost may at first seem completely off putting - but plants may possibly recover, and if they don't, the gardener should be sufficiently impudent to try again.
ECHIUMS in the midlands and in Northern areas would generally be a waste of time as the average winter would finish them off. Here, yardsticks are plants such as pittosporum or hoheria. The word is that many are blackened and gardeners in Armagh, Cavan and Monaghan tell dismal tales. Some may survive and should not be discarded too hastily. The last hard winters to clear out such plants as well as a host of others were 1979 and 1981. Many people have come to gardening since then and will not be aware of the havoc caused when hollies were stripped of leaves and cut back hard and when even ivy on trees and in hedgerows was blackened and left bare.
No doubt we are due a hard winter - at least, it can help to tell ourselves so. Then we can be a little more philosophical about hardship. It is still January and we have some way to go before we can breathe easily. Bad as the low December temperatures may have been, we escaped lightly. When the frost came it settled on calm, wind-less days and nights. Wind with a serious chill factor would have had a really devastating effect. How fortunate we were to be spared that, for there would have been much longer, sadder faces all around.
In recent years our problem has not been the winter cold but late frosts in April and into May. Even hardy plants which can survive much colder winters than ours succumbed to May chills after they had come into growth. Perfectly safe in winter cold, many plants cannot cope with frost after the sap has begun to rise and growth commences. Gardening is not unlike sitting at the gambling tables in Monte Carlo. There are always losses and occasional wins, the excitement, anticipation and the rush of adrenalin make it worth while and makes optimists of us all.