After days and days of rain it has at last desisted and the pools of water are gradually dissipating. Bicycling through the country lanes in the evenings the field and roads have been awash with water. Gurgles in all directions.The hazel catkins are at fully last out. Nothing gives me more pleasure than their pendant yellow flowers overhanging my bed of snowdrops. About time too. They must be at least three weeks late. We have a particularly beautiful form of Crimean snowdrop which my mother was given from Henham Park. It has large substantial white flowers and is a robust plant normally in flower by the beginning of January.
I think early Spring should be mostly white. I always shudder when the first King Alfred daffodil rears its ugly head. I can never plant enough of the beautiful white Cyclamen coum Album in my garden. They look so wonderful in great swathes round the base of mature trees. This year due to the cold weather my they are only just now coming into flower. Cyclamen really are the most surprising member of the Primula family. Contrast their refinement with the coarseness of the average bedding polyanthus all aglare at the moment in the munipal parks. 
I have just been up on our iris fields and it is difficult to imagine that in only 3 months time it will be ablaze with colour. There is not one sign of new growth yet! I love the dormancy of winter and the waiting for it all to begin again.
We are busy here in the potting shed getting ready for the season. We have potted up some 20,000 plants in the last three weeks. My wonderful staff remaining cheerful through all the sleet and snow, the wind whistling through the cracks in the shed.
Remember this is the time to cut back all your deciduous grasses. Chop them down now and when they start to shoot you will have all fresh new growth rather than an unsightly tangle of old and new.
If you have any gardening queries, click on comments and post your questions.
Good gardening
Mike Loftus
