The Cosmos have grown tired and the last of the rose blooms are fading. The garden is going to sleep. It’s getting colder, and now dark when I get home from the studio. My dark skies wildlife friendly lighting by Hudson Lighting creates a soft illumination that allows me to get to the greenhouse at night, but I am struggling to do anything other than monitor the progress of my hard wood cuttings of some bay that were gifted from client’s garden - nature’s circularity in action.
I prepped the cuttings correctly, dipped them in rooting powder and have hedged my bets by doing half a dozen of them, but have no idea whether they will take. They say that propagating Laurus nobilis is not the easiest or the fastest, but I am hopeful for a positive result. Right now, it is all happening beneath the soil, and though I am dying to see if roots have formed I am aware that I need to be patient and resist checking. It is the kind of patience I preach to my clients all the time. Especially at this time of year. Doing any kind of horticultural activity in winter requires a leap of imagination, trust in what you can’t see and waiting for spring to come around. My greenhouse, with its cuttings of bay and packets of seed tidied away for the next year of growing, is a micro version of that.
There sure is a lot of promise held between those glass walls, but what to do in the winter months? As well as the cuttings, I do have some seed heads drying, though i probably need to get them packaged up soon. I’ll also be using the greenhouse to prep my dahlia tubers for storing once they have been lifted. They will be dug up after the first frost, cleaned, dried, wrapped in newspaper and stored in a container with vermiculite. It is possible, that being in London, they will be fine stored in the greenhouse too, especially if I have a bit of sheep’s wool fleece to hand if we get a real cold snap.
I’m also hoping that my scented pelargoniums will be fine overwintering in an unheated glasshouse. Aside from their lovely smell, they offer wonderful flashes of fresh green from the kitchen window view and some might creep inside to find a temporary spot on a window cill - if the indoor plant police don’t stand in their way.
One thing is for sure. I definitely don’t just want the greenhouse to be an outside storage room - we’ve already had that argument in our household. It needs to remain optimistic and uplifting.
And then there is Christmas - the one time in the year where I might give in to some fairy lights. Maybe Santa will even leave me some green gifts under a small chili illuminated plant or there will be an elf on my gardening shelf. We’ll have to wait and see.