January 2024 Monty Don

January monty don — a quick note to anchor this piece for readers.

January monty don: Quick notes

This garden and all who sail in her is floating into 2024 – almost literally. It has barely stopped raining for the past three months and as I write this the fields as far as the eye can see are under water as is sections of the garden .This is rather beautiful in a calm rather surreal way, especially in the brief gaps between downpours when the waters are still and become a vast lake appearing overnight. But mostly all this rain just means mud, slippery paths and the frustration of not being able to get on with much work in the garden without making a terrible mess.

This is a wet part of a wet country and there have always been very wet periods in British winters but it is definitely getting wetter, warmer and more extreme. 

Climate change now means that instead of being something we are observing and monitoring with a detached , almost academic interest, it is really affecting our day to day domestic lives and we have to react to this.

The practical problem for gardeners is that it is too wet in winter and too dry in summer. Very few of our existing garden plants thrive in both circumstances. Plant for one extreme and you find yourself with big problems at the other. 

So this is the big, over-riding challenge facing gardeners in the Northern hemisphere biggest it is not going to go away and will not get any easier. 

As well as finding a different range of plants we also have to work on adapting how we grow them and this will mean challenging received wisdom. But we should not feel threatened by this.  I see it as an exciting and fascinating challenge.

For all the problems of the bigger picture there are still the day to day seasonal jobs that are timely to do in January if the weather permits but do not worry if you cannot get out and get on – almost everything will wait. 

A healthy plant will always catch up if put in a little late, which is why at the beginning of the year I put most of my energies into raising really strong seedlings under cover, hardening them off slowly, so that each one is thoroughly ready. This is certainly the best way to deal with most pests and diseases.

One of the things I like best about January – even when the weather is so wet – is the grey, pearly light on the bare, stripped back bones of the garden. It creates a ghostly, misty atmosphere that is unique to the early weeks of the year.

And climate change means that as well as wetter, warmer winters, we also have earlier flowering of many early spring flowers such as snowdrops, crocus, hellebores, primroses, aconites, irises and shrubs such as winter-flowering honeysuckle and wintersweet.

We reference January monty don briefly to keep the thread coherent.