Winter gardening and free plants

Our wonderful Besson Street Gardening Club volunteers are now turning to thinking about spring and the upcoming growing season. We have had a good look through the seed catalogue for some vegetables to grow this year and the first batch of seeds are now in trays in the greenhouse.

Mimosa looking (and smelling) gorgeous in December

Our gorgeous Mimosa tree put on a fabulous display this year. It sits at the edge of the garden on the corner of Besson Street and Kender Street topped with masses of yellow blooms and the scent is heavenly. As the blooms begin to drop we now have a carpet of what looks like yellow confetti on the ground. Meanwhile, bulbs are popping up and some, including the lovely yellow daffodils, are now beginning to flower. Crocus and snowdrops are poised to come into bloom. Hellibores, the stallwarts of the winter flowers, are looking lovely.

We have a few plants that seem a little confused. That is to say that they are flowering at an unusual time of our. Pictured are Vinca (normally out in April/May time), Marigold (a stallwart summer flower) and Hebe (also summer). The Vinca started flowering before Christmas and more and more blooms have come out despite the hard frosts that we've had. The marigold is a self seeded plant - we use them in the veg beds as companion plants to deter insects from feasting on our precious home grown vegetables.

New Zealand Flax (Phormium Tenax) - nine cuttings from one plant!

This is a great time for creating free plants from those already in the garden. What was a single New Zealand Flax (Phormium tenax) has given us nine separate viable plants. One has gone back in its original position where we hope it will thrive and bring us even more plants, and the remainder have been potted up while we decide where they will go. Over the next few weeks we will look at other plants to see which can also be divided and then when we know what we've got, we'll make a plan for where to plant them all. We also have lots of self-seeded plants including the Marigold and Forget-me-not. For those, we will dig up the clumps of little seedlings which, if left where they are would likely crowd each other out. Instead, we re-plant them around the garden as individual or small groups of plants.

On the edibles front, we have some purple sprouting broccoli which will be ready to start harvesting in a few weeks' time, and we've just harvested a bumper crop of beetroot which, because they were in the ground during the frosts at the beginning of 2026, will be lovely and sweet.