"K" wrote in message
...
Too early to draw any conclusions, but I'm getting a distinct impression
here ...

It seems that the 'down south' gardens are doing really quite badly.
Mine's bad, but in terms of numbers of species in flower, I think have
more than anyone except Sacha (and that's a large 'plantsman's' garden).
So, instead of what I was expecting - producing a pathetic list to put
alongside everyone else's long list of exotics - my garden is in fact
holding its own ;-)

.. so - is it that this winter is a good deal colder than normal down
south, and therefore things have been hit quite badly? Whereas up here,
it's only marginally colder than normal, and we already plant for this
sort of weather, so we haven't been hit quite so badly?

So far (since the middle of December) the winter has been far harder here
than usual.
Most years we don't see any snow, at least any settled snow.
Hard frosts are unusual as well.

The flower count in the garden reflects this a little (I would normally have
expected to count in a couple of Fuscias) but our garden is in a state of
flux at the moment and doesn't have much in the way of flowering plants
anyway - it is mainly shrubbery.