A glorious day today with temperatures in the high 60s.  Girls in skimpy summer dresses and cardigans were walking through Bryn Mawr college grounds, everyone seemed happier.  It was a great day to potter in the garden, cutting back the dead hellebore foliage before their new buds burst forth.  At the edge of the woods the witch hazels are in full bloom.  There are so many interesting cultivars  I do not own but covert.  In my garden, the tried and true  Hamamelis x intermedia 'Arnold Promise' is my favorite.

The witch hazel hybrids are large deciduous shrubs that grow from 12'-20’ tall and flower in mid to late winter.   ‘Arnold Promise’ is an upright, vase-shaped cultivar with sweetly fragrant yellow flowers that blooms slightly later than the other cultivars, usually around this time from February to March.  In the fall the leaves turn yellow-orange to yellow and are attractive but not spectacular.  It was introduced by the Arnold Arboretum in Boston and was a Royal Horticutural Society of Great Britain Award of Garden Merit plant (1993).

I also have ‘Jelena’ which is meant to be one of the most beautiful witchhazels that supposedly flowers in the dead of winter, though in my garden she usually flowers the same time as Arnold's Promise.  The description of the blooms sold me - "curled, strappy petals emerge from a burgundy calyx cup and are red at the base, orange in the middle, and yellowish at the very tip, giving the flowers the appearance of dancing flames.  Incredibly, these blossoms remain effective for a month or even more!"  Unfortunately I find the blossoms meld into the background and are obscured by last year's ragged foliage which obscures the display.  Dirr claims unlike many of the other witchhazels, 'Jelena' drops her spent leaves prior to blooming, so maybe I was sold the wrong cultivar.  I clipped off many of the dead leaves yesterday so I could see the blossoms.  ‘Jelena’ does have a beautiful growth habit, unlike many of the other cultivars and is an elegantly broad-spreading shrub with graceful branches that grows slowly to a maximum size of 20′ high and wide.

Houseplants languish in my care, suffering through irregular watering, bad nutrition and general neglect.  The one stellar exception was a cyclamen I was given as a hostess gift  years ago and which seems to enjoy my haphazard nurturing. 

When it's gloomy outside with winter flowering shrubs buried under snow, having flowering plants inside can be a great boost to the spirits.  I was just at Gentile's, a cheap and cheerful produce store, and they had small-flowered, indoor cyclamen banked up on the tables for $2.50 each, it's about as pretty and inexpensive as anything you can find in a pot at this time of year.  

Most indoor cyclamen are Cyclamen persicum hybrids and are derived from a wild species native to the Middle East. Modern hybrids include miniatures and those with silver marbled leaves, frilled petals, and fragrant blooms.  They can vary in height from 6” to 12” and come in a range of colors from white to crimson and magenta.  They're in a different league to the large-flowered, large-leaved brigade which look coarse and overblown in comparison.  Somehow the smaller cyclamen scale seems right this time of year, mine are lined up along my kitchen windowsill -- if there was not still a foot of snow outside the window their hardy cousins, Cyclamen coum as well as  snowdrops and aconites should be poking their way up in the spring border outside the window. 
I love having a range of similar colors spread around windowsills or running down the center of the kitchen table.  Cyclamen bloom for several months and will flower again in future years.   If you’re buying a plant, choose one with plenty of buds showing under the foliage and avoid any plants with drooping or yellow leaves.  I dislike the plastic pots they come in and either hide them in another container or repot them.  Be careful not to disturb the roots when doing this and if you are re-planting them into a larger container add some grit to the potting soil.  They actually do better when slightly root-bound so I usually just tease them gently into a similar sized pot. 

After gently firming the roots into the new pot or bowl I cover the surface with dried leaves or an emerald-green cushion of moss. If you have time, try spreading the flowers out from the base. They tend to clump together, but teased out gently and evenly between the leaves, the flowers look lighter and more elegant.

Cyclamen care
They enjoy temperatures between 45-55 degrees farenheit, which despite my family’s comments is far colder than our kitchen.  You should choose a brightly lit situation away from direct sunlight and heat sources.  They can endure or rather tolerate temperatures at around 60 to 70 degrees as long as this is not consistent and lasts for only a few days -- not all winter which is what my cyclamen seems to thrive in.   If the temperature reaches above 70 degrees, which is comfortable for most people, it will go into dormancy.  I don’t think my kitchen ever reaches above 70 in the winter which probably helps.

To prolong the bloom, spent flowers should be removed by twisting the stem and giving a sharp pull, to avoid leaving part stems behind. 

As far as watering goes, they don't like much which suits my hit and miss house plant care.  The worst thing is a constant dribble of water.  Once a week I sit the pots in the sink and really soak them for a few hours so the whole root ball gets a good drink and the soil rehydrates.  I then drain them and leave them for another week or so without water.  They should really dry out before watering so the tuber doesn't rot, if I forget the flowers start to droop slightly and I guiltily soak them and wait for them to perk up.

Follow the life cycle
Cyclamen persicum are Mediterranean and follow the common pattern of coming into growth in the autumn, growing through the winter and spring and then going dormant while there is no rain and intense sun in the summer.  To mimic this as closely as possible, when mine start to taper off in the late spring I shove them into the mass of house plants eeking out a survival in the mud room.  I stop watering when they stop flowering and let the leaves go yellow and wither.  During the summer I move them to a shelf outside the mudroom, which I couldn't say is cool but is in deep shade and then totally forget about them.  

When I start thinking about taking cuttings and bringing in my tender perennials at the end of summer, there are usually a few leaves sprouting on the cyclamen, and I soak them thoroughly.  As they are tubers it’s best to water from the bottom and let the plants soak the water up for 20-30 minutes.  You can water from the top but you shouldn’t let the water get on the tuber as it can cause it to rot, for this reason you should not allow it to sit in water for more than an hour.    As new growth appears it’s good to replace the top inch of compost in the pot with fresh compost and resume regular watering.
They have become friends whose blooms I’d miss very much in the winter months.  Their presence on the windowsill has also made me realize I don't have nearly enough of the hardy garden Cyclamen coum outside.   They look best in carpets as big as you can throw them, almost as lovely in leaf through the autumn as they are when in flower.  My favourites are the deepest magenta colour forms which look good growing outside or arranged inside in a small glass with snowdrops or a few early primroses.

In grammar school my botany teacher told us to gather senescent blooms for class.  We wandered around the school grounds for a long time searching for a non-existent plant.  It took a latin student to twig that senescence was derived from the Latin word senex, meaning "old age" or "advanced in age". 

Instead of pruning back all senescent flowers in the landscape it pays to leave some to age gently.  Seed heads and dried hydrangeas look particularly fetching when dusted with snow in winter

Pieris Japonica is one of my all-time favorite evergreen shrubs.  Although I can't get heathers go grow successfully, this member of the heath family (Ericacceae) thrives in my garden.  It prefers similar conditions to its' rhododendron cousins including some shade from midday sun.  This one is outside our bedroom window, growing in a small bed between the house and the patio.  It is never watered but thrives, the top branches are at least 15' high, the lower branches are hung with multiple candelabras we light in the sumer months.  It must have been planted when the stone patio was installed in the late 1930s.  The pink buds look great with the dusting of snow.

Despite the snow some other other winter stalwarts are blooming.  It's sunny today and a joy to walk around the garden.  

It's a challenge to have something in the garden in bloom at all times.  So far we’ve achieved this, most of the winter blooming plants are clustered outside windows or on well travelled paths from the mail box to the back door and besides the steps from the street to the front door so they can be enjoyed with little effort.

Jasminum nudiflorum is an heirloom shrub that was introduced from China in the mid nineteenth century.  Its long flexible green stems spill over low walls and down steep banks or can be espaliered along horizontal wires or trained up a trellis.  Ours covers a stucco wall outside our kitchen door and has been blooming sporadically since the end of December, seemingly indifferent to the freezing temperatures.  The flowers are bright yellow, unfortunately they are not fragrant (although I prefer to view them through our sliding glass door) and their full display will be in a month or so when the whole wall will blaze with color.  It was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's prestigious "Award of Garden Merit"

Another snow storm is threatened to start this evening and turn into freezing rain tomorrow morning.   More time inside by the fire sorting through seed catalogs.  Outside Cornus sanguinea ‘Winter Flame’ glows in the snow -- its yellow fall color is followed by amazing winter twig color, yellow at the base of the plant flushing to orange-red at the outer edges.  It looks like it is lit by fire all winter. 

Deciduous trees and shrubs can have a stunning beauty in winter, a fine counterpoint to the heavier weight of conifers and other evergreens.  Probably the best-known plants for winter stems are Cornus (dogwoods) which display a wide range of colors from bright yellow to dark red.  We’ve inter-planted ‘Winter Flame’ with Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’ which has dark red stems, C. alba “Elegantissima’ whose white-variegated foliage provides a longer season of interest and C. sericea ‘Flaviramea’ whose greenish yellow stems provide a startling contrast. 

Others to try include Cornus sericia ‘Cardinal’ which has vivid cherry-red stems, C.alba ‘Kesselringii’ has purplish stems (the dark color is great when used sparingly with lighter brighter cultivars) and C. alba ‘Aurea (gold leaves) and C. alba ‘Spaethii’ whose green leaves are margined with gold . 

Dogwoods do best in moist, even wet soil and their winter color is most dramatic when they are planted in open sunny positions -- they can be spectacular around the margins of ponds.  Ours however are in partial shade on top of a bank and have colored up fine in the winter.  It’s the fourth year for this planting and the path is beginning to come into its own -- this spring I’ll cut them down to the ground again so they don’t overwhelm the path.  The old wood should be cut out each year as it is the new wood that has the best color.

We have underplanted them with ferns, snowdrops, aconites, crocus, hellebores and amsonia hubrichtii -- I love the stunning orange and yellow foliage of this native.  If space permitted it would be great to color theme the yellow and orange-stemmed selections with early narcissus, yellow crocus, aconites, mahonias and witch hazels.  The reddish-stemmed cultivars would be stunning combined with the bronze foliage of Bergenia purpurasens, Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Diane’ and the pink-flowered Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’.  I already have these plants in our spring border and cannot find the room to add anything