The cold finally set us all shivering this week as the unseasonably warm November draws to a close. Friday morning made for some fabulous frosty photographs, including this one of my dog in nearby fields.
Home I went to photograph some plants in the frost.
Frosty alpines
Alpines laugh in the face of the cold and their forms are often enhanced by a keen frost. My rock garden was enhanced and looked pale and sparkly in the cold morning light.
Contrasting Frosted leaf forms
So many of the alpines looked beautiful covered in icy glitter. This cyclamen hederifolium ssp crassifoilum was flowering in the greenhouse in early autumn, and I shared pictures of its pretty pink flowers in a blog about greenhouse plants. It doesn’t need winter protection though so I planted it out in the rock garden. The shape of the ivy-like leaves, after which it is named, really stand out in the ice. I’m almost impatient to see it flowering there next year.
Meanwhile, the leaves of the soldanella alpina are a mixture of circular and heart shaped and were glinting in the morning sunshine.
As fond as I am of these two dainties, they cannot hold a candle to the saxifraga fortunei, which I’m now featuring for a third time this month. What can I say? Any plant with this much flower power in late November deserves notice. Superb, leaf shape, pretty sparkler flowers and now a frosting of silver ice, this plant continues to be the star of the rock garden stage.
Molinia caerulea ‘Transparent’
This is another plant that I’ve featured recently but deserves a second outing after the frost. The ice weighed down the fronds, opening out the structure of the plants and I’ve felt newly vindicating in leaving them intact for the winter.
It’s a wrap
We move now from icy beauty to dumpy ugliness I’m afraid. Having promised that I’d wrap my Musa basjoo bananas 3 weeks ago, I put the job off as the weather forecasts promised mild weather and other jobs (bulb planting!) took precedence. The aim in wrapping them for winter is to keep height in the trunks for the banana grove effect for next year. 
I took some of the lower leaves away, bent others down and cut off any newly emerging fronds. Then I took a huge roll of horticultural fleece and wrapped it several times around the banana trunks, securing it with clothes pegs across the top of the plants. Luckily I was able to split them easily into two groups. I then covered the two groups with one huge green tarpaulin. Boy is it ugly but at least the green side of the tarp is better than the reverse bright blue one! I can see this green lump from the house but I know it’s worth it for the tropical display next year.
Shiny bling
This kitchen philodendron is now in your face shiny after I washed its leaves in neem oil diluted with water. Neem oil is a plant-based insecticide and I was trying it out as a treatment for scale insect. I’ve been battling scale insects on this plant for over a year, brushing them off with cotton buds dipped in surgical spirit but not doing it regularly enough to break the cycle. I’ll be monitoring the plant to see if the scale insects stage a revival but a good side effect of the treatment is that the plant is shinier than a Christmas bauble.
This seasonal diary is part of a weekly link-up of garden bloggers from around the world, called Six on Saturday. For more information and links to other blogs crammed with gardening activity, check the blog of host The Propagator.
A heavy frost certainly proclaims the end of the growing season and time to wrap up – yourself and the plants. I grow one large potful of bananas and simply leave it in a corner of the compost area, uncovered and, we might add, unloved. It came as a gift and Mary has this way with unwanted gifts, especially those tender gifts, of leaving them unprotected for the winter in hopes that nature will take them, painlessly of course! Hardy unwelcome gifts are left in pots until they outgrow them and, hopefully, die from lack of watering. One couldn’t simply throw away a plant received as a gift so one has to depend on nature so it will be possible to say, “It died on me!”
Hi Paddy, this made me laugh so much. The slow, drawn out death of a plant to save social embarrassment is something I think many people indulge in. I’m not sure I’ve ever deliberately done this but I do know that I’m less likely to care well for a plant I don’t like!
Your rock garden is simply superb. They were my first love (not really suitable conditions here), so I’m going to lap up all your posts. The philodendron looks wonderful with that neem oil on it. Note to self … Have a good gardening week.
Hi Cathy – they were my first love too. My dad gave me a little patch of garden when I was 8 and the first thing I built was a little rockery. It looked more like a currant bun but I loved it! I promise to keep featuring it for your benefit.
The frosty alpines certainly do look pretty. Lovely.
Thanks Graeme – they were even more beautiful than I could capture with me camera. Alpines rock – sorry I can never resist that gag!
The alpine borders have settled in so well that they look as if they had always been there. You must be so pleased with them.
I’m not a huge fan of grasses, but I will admit that the Molinia look rather fine.
Hortus – I am in fact over the moon at the alpine rock garden. I was worried how it would look in winter but the rocks, evergreens and conifers give it structure and of course soon the bulbs will be popping up. I know what you mean about grasses – they can be tricky to incorporate and these molinia are my first proper foray into the world of grasses. I do like them.
Stunning, frosty photos. We haven’t had a heavy enough frost to look pretty yet. The white giraffe guarding the house is quite a feature, shame he was covered over.🤭
Yes – now I see the Giraffe! Yes I’m afraid he did get covered over. After I’d done it I spotted some huge bananas in a frost garden not 10 minutes from my house. I’m wondering if I need to go to this much fandango but we have had temperatures of -15 since I’ve lived here. This is very very rare but knowing it can happen makes me a bit cautious…
The pictures of frost in the Alpine garden are gorgeous (as I had seen them on Twitter). Good job!
I see that you also made “ghosts with fleeces and clothespins”… I have plenty of them in the garden! 😂
Neem oil is something I have to buy against spider mites … Mike (from Twitter) told me he was spraying SB Plant Invigorator once a week (I ordered it in UK because not sold in France. ..)
We’ll see.
I’ll have to investigate SB Plant Invigorator. If Mike recommends it, it must be good! Ghosts with clothespins – I like it!
Wow that philodendron is beautiful! Loving your frosty photos, the plants looks so pretty, but none as much as your lovely. 🙂
Hi Gill – yes the philodendron is a beautiful plant. It looked a bit sad before the neem oil treatment and now looks like cinderella ready for the ball!
Love the frosty photos. We hardly get any frost down here. And your philodendron is a beauty. I had to throw away several indoor plants because of scale – just couldn’t get rid of it no matter what I tried. Hope you have some success with the Neem oil (I didn’t know about that).
Neem oil keeps being recommended to me and I bought a bottle a couple of years ago. It’s described as a spray but I just thought that would be too messy so I put a mat under the plant and wiped each and every leaf, top and underside, with a cotton cloth soaked in the diluted neem oil. I’ll have to see if it’s contained the scale insects but it certainly works as a leaf shine!
Agree that the phots of the plants in the frost are lovely, and I especially like the one of your dog walking up the path. I must say your bananas look very good pre-tarpaulin 😉
Hi Sel – yes, the bananas were a hit grouped together like that which is just as well as I’m not sure I’d enjoy the tarp view were it not for the promise of more tropical lushness next year.