ariel baena-tan

As I’ve said many times before in this blog space, it’s difficult to predict the weather at the Botanical Garden more than a week or two out, which leaves me with little confidence about the number of winter-flowering plants that might be blooming for a visitor’s New Year’s walk. At this writing in mid-December, Clematis cirrhosa (winter clematis), Grevillea victoriae (royal grevillea), Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ (hybrid mahonia) and Viburnum x bodnantense (Bodnant viburnum) are looking great and full of flowers. As long as it doesn’t freeze hard, all of these will still be in bloom and there will be plenty of other flowers to talk about for January. No promises, of course. I can, however, talk about a feature that isn’t in the least affected by our normal weather: bark.