I don’t suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, not clinically, anyway. But I can’t deny the brightening effect that a spell of warm sunshine has on my mood. In early March I become a crashing weather bore, squinting at the sky, lamenting the glowering clouds and whingeing about the refrigerator-like temperature to anyone within earshot. The cold doesn’t bother me much in January, I expect it. But like an overtired child on Christmas Eve, by March I can’t wait any longer. I need sunshine and warmth and I need it now.

Today I got my first proper fix of the year. The sun peeked sheepishly from behind sullen clouds and my warm down jacket finally spent the afternoon hooked on a fence post, though never out of my sight.

Sunshine doesn’t just lift my mood, it restores my fragile belief that plants will grow, that flowers will open, that borders will fill with colour and that the swallows will return. In a biting wind, laced with snowflakes, these things seem about as improbable as cost-effective nuclear fusion or divine alcohol-free wine.

Unlike me, some plants are more than happy to strip off and strut their stuff in chilly temperatures. Hellebores are out in all corners of the garden in every shade of purple and cream but the pure white Helleborus niger does it for me.  I just love the simple purity of it.

Petasites paradoxus is a cracking perennial in winter – the flowers open close the ground in February and as you can see, are a magnet for early emerging bees. This clump was humming with activity in the weak sunshine.

In summer, it makes an impressive display of silver leaves and is the perfect alternative to hostas as the slugs seem to leave it completely alone.

Pulmonarias take centre stage now for bright colours. This is a superb new one, Pulmonaria ‘Raspberry Splash’. It’s the first time we’ve had it in stock and it seems strong and very early flowering. Wonderful jewel-like colours too.

Bergenias can be yawn-inducingly dull, but this is a cracker. Bergenia ‘Bach’ has tight, flat rosettes of warm burgundy leaves that are drawing admiring glances from early visitors to the nursery, and rightly so.

And then there’s the promise of so much more to come. These amethyst shoots are Crambe cordifolia – hard to imagine that in three months time, this plant will have leaves a metre across and a froth of white flowers towering up to 6 foot high.

My warm coat went back on at four o’clock as the sun lowered itself slowly behind the polytunnel. The crocuses closed up, the bees disappeared. The garden and I made the most of the short spell of warmth. A new gardening year has begun.

March 7, 2015