Stephen Williams writes
Just had a check around the garden: Roses Dawn & Eye Paint are still in
reasonable flower, Coreopsis Sunray, various Cyclamen, Viburnam, usual
pansies and primulars and the odd Wallflower.
Daffs are poking their heads out of the ground, but no sign of any snowdrops
yet.

I live in Bewdley Worcs

Just did the same thing, but as I live on the first of the chilterns
west of Siberia I wasn't expecting too much :-)

The Mahonia Winter Sun has a few yellowish buds, but no flower. The
heathers are showing pink and white flowers. Only about six of my
several hundred daffodils are showing above the ground at all, and
they're only about an inch or so. I don't expect to see them until well
into February! Its all a bit windswept up here and I had 3" of snow in
November that lasted three days, and it looks like another dusting over
Xmas but I was away.

But lest that sounds a bit miserable, I do have a number of evergreens
of various shades and styles, so the garden is not bare. I have some
really white bark on the 'silver birch' trees (jaquemontii IIRC), golden
coppery bark on various other birch, yellow and green leaves on the
laurel, spotted leaves on the aucuba, light green on the bamboo, dark
green on the italian pendulous birch (name escapes me atm) clouded dark
green on the eucalyptus, various greens on the heathers, green bergenia
leaves, several shades of lonicera hedge (silver, variegated gold, plain
dark green), dull green on the hebe red edge, purple on the hebe
caledonia, dark green on the hypericum, variegated euonymous, a dark
spike of juniperus sky rocket, another juniper sprawled out, dark green
leaves of escallonia ivyii (??), dark green of a low ceanothus, plum and
amber of the mahonia winter sun, several hollies including a tree, and
some other evergreen trees such as small scotch pines and deodara (??).

Apart from some of the trees I really only started most of the garden
about 5 years ago and I've been concentrating on structural work like
the pond and the rock garden and flattening the lawn, so I suppose I
shouldn't be disheartened. I counted up some 56 trees I've planted in
the last 9 or 10 years, and some of those are now quite large, the alder
trees being the biggest and fastest growing.

--
David