If you have a warm sheltered corner under a house wall where you can build up a little raised bed and fill it with the sort of soil suggested, plant a few rhizomes of Iris susiana the Mourning or Widow iris, a black-and-white enormous flower, a fantastic flower.

You should grow Oncocyclus and Regelia [Aril] irises on a raised bed if possible, under a south wall, in very gritty soil with lots of mortar rubble in it because they like lime and good drainage, and mortar rubble supplies both.

I have written about irises in this column before now but never, I think, have I mentioned the Oncocyclus and Regelia species [Aril irises]. #gardening

Most of the irises are the most obliging of plants, putting up with poor treatment, asking for little more than a place in the sun; a modest demand which we should all enjoy if we could get it. #gardening

These reflections have been induced in me by receiving a copy of the Iris Year Book published by the Iris Society. I suppose we all grow irises of one sort or another even if we are neither experts or specialists. #gardening britishirissociety.org.uk

31 December ‘50 This may seem an odd time of year to write about irises, those velvet-warm flowers we associate with June—the very word June warms me as I write it. #gardening

29 December ‘55 Writing last Sunday about flowers to pick for the house, I realized suddenly that never in these articles had I referred to the lily-of-the-valley-scented winter-flowering Berberis now know as Mahonia japonica. #gardening

It is perhaps superfluous to say that they should be protected by a cloche when the buds begin to open, not because they are not hardy but because the low growing flowers get splashed and spoilt by rain and bouncing mud. #gardening

If you already have old-established hellebore clumps, feed them well in February with a top dressing of compost or rotted manure, or even watering of liquid manure and never let them get too dry in summer. #gardening

Christmas roses do not relish disturbance, but if you decide to plant some clumps you should do so as soon as they have finished flowering, which is another good reason for mentioning them now. #gardening

Christmas roses like a rather moist, semi-shady place in rich soil though they have no objection to lime; #gardening

The Christmas rose, although not a native of Britain, has been for centuries in our gardens. Spenser refers to it in the Faerie Queen #gardening

Helleborus niger is described as early as 1597 in his Herball by John Gerard who considered that a purgation of hellebore was ‘good for mad and furious men.’ Such a decoction might still come in useful today. #gardening

Its white flowers are, or should be, already on our tables. #gardening

28 December ‘52 This seems like a good occasion to mention the Christmas rose, Helleborus niger, in high Dutch called Christ’s herb ‘because it flowereth about the birth of our Lord.’ #gardening

I must say that I found this works well. It may sound unscientific since black spot is a fungus—I am not a scientific gardener and can judge only by results. The result of some barrow-loads of compost was: no black spot on some particularly vulnerable roses two summers running. #gardening

—which causes complete defoliation in bad cases. The orthodox method is spraying. Some rose growers also advise a thick mulch. Others put their faith in rich feeding on the principle that a healthy well-nourished plant is more resistant to infection. #gardening

Mrs. G.A. van Rossem [NL’26], Emma Wright [IE’36] Crimson Glory [DE’35], Mrs. Sam McGredy [IE’29]. I hope they will not all develop black spot, but I expect they will. There are several schools of thought on the control of this worry— #gardening

I have, however, succumbed at last and planted a dozen purely for picking in a corner of the kitchen garden. The chosen ones were: Ena Harkness [UK '46], Ophelia [FR '12], Etoile de Hollande [NL '31], Charles Mallerin [FR '46] #gardening

You can fill a bowl with them even into December when, strangely enough, they sometimes throw a more richly coloured and more richly scented bloom. Yet for some reason they do not catch my heart. #gardening

On the subject of hybrid teas I have never quite made up my mind. I am torn. I see their beauty. I see their usefulness. I see that you can pick them all through the summer right up into the late autumn. #gardening

And the great wild shrubby roses flinging themselves about, instead of those neat little, hard little, tight little scrimpy dwarfs we call the hybrid teas. #gardening

There are roses and roses. My own taste in roses is perhaps not everyone's taste, and I am afraid that I may too often have tried to force it upon readers of The Observer. I tend always towards the species roses. . . #gardening

Roses can still be planted any time between December and March, so it is not too late to order extravagantly on any plant-token you may receive as a Christmas present. #gardening

26 December ‘51 As this article will appear on Boxing Day (the day after Christmas), I thought I would write on the most unsuitable unseasonable subject I could think of: roses. We may be under snow by then and the very thought of a rose will be warming. #gardening

This was the young growth on which I was told to depend for this winter’s crop of flowers. But now observation persuades me that these young shoots will flower in January 1956, not in January 1955, and that the solution is to have two plants flowering alternate years. Staggered.

Now, I obediently followed all these instructions which in the main suggested that we should chop hard back to the old wood in February. I cut back all the bits that had flowered as I was told to do and what happened? I got long young shoots but with never a promise of a flower.

—so that the fullest possible length of time is allowed for the new growth to be made, on which depend next winter’s crop of flowers. #gardening

And finally the great Mr Bean himself, whose three-volumes on Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles is the bible of all tree and shrub growers, tells us not to defer pruning much beyond February— #gardening

They should be pruned directly after flowering: the growths that have flowered should be cut clean out to encourage formation of new wood, for it is from this that the winter blossoms are produced.’—AW Darnell, Winter Blossoms from the Outdoor Garden. #gardening

On wall-plants the older wood should be cut after flowering to encourage new growth.’—Patrick Synge, Flowers in Winter. #gardening

‘Prune back the flowered shoots close to the main stem immediately after flowering so as to encourage the new summer’s growth on which next winter’s flowers will be borne’—W Arnold Forster, Shrubs for the Milder Counties. #gardening

But as most of us grow it trained against a wall, let me quote what some of the authorities have to say about that:

The advice we are given by the experts does not seem to work in practice. The experts all agree that the Wintersweet grown as a bush in the open demands no pruning at all. #gardening

19 December ‘54 The pruning of that most deliciously scented shrub the Winter-sweet, Chimonanthus praecox, has worried me for many years as I daresay it has worried other amateur gardeners who are wise enough to grow it. #gardening

Corylopsis spicata is much the same, but grows rather taller, up to 6' and is, if anything, more frost resistant. #gardening

Have I ever mentioned amongst early flowering shrubs Corylopsis paucifolia? The corylopsis is a little shrub not more than 4-5’ high and about the same in width, gracefully hung with pale yellow flowers along the leafless twigs, March to April, a darling of prettiness #gardening

This again is a white single-flowered blossom with a pink bud and may be admired out of doors or picked for indoors any time between November and April. #gardening

This again is a white single-flowered blossom with a pink bud and may be admired out of doors or picked for indoors any time between November and April. #gardening

There is also another winter-flowering cherry, Prunus sargentii Fudan-zakura, which I confess I neither know nor grow, and so don’t like recommending plants of which I have no personal experience. #gardening

There is a variety of this cherry called rosea, slightly tinged with pink; I prefer the pure white myself, but that is a matter of taste. #gardening

But ten days later when the weather had more or less recovered itself, a whole new batch of buds was ready to come out, and I got another bucketful as fresh and white and virgin as anything in May. #gardening

This cherry was in full flower in the open during the first fortnight of November. I picked bucketfuls of the long, white sprays, then came two nights of frost. I despaired of getting any more for weeks to come. #gardening

Corylopsis spicata is much the same, but grows rather taller, up to 6' and is, if anything, more frost resistant. #gardening

Some of the Daphnes are woodland, leaf-mould loving plants, especially D. mezereum and its white form, alba. Daphne tangutica and the fine hybrid D. x burkwoodii Somerset. #gardening

If you prefer shrubs for your shady corner or border, the choice is wide. Azaleas if you have a lime-free soil, rhododendrons, which enjoy the same conditions, are mostly too space-taking for the average #garden. #gardening

Foxgloves are perhaps too obvious to be worth mentioning, but these also can be obtained now in different varieties: #gardening

Phlox enjoy shade and a deep cool, soil; so do the peonies. The columbines will put up with quite a lot of shade, and there are some very beautiful hybrids: longissima, a fantastically long-spurred golden-yellow; Crimson Star; and a huge flowered blue and white called Azure Fairy

And if really moist should be the perfect home for the taller primulas such as the japonica hybrids, or the mealy-mauve Primula capitata, or the yellow Tibetan Primula florindae, or the coppery Primulai bulleyana. These are all very easily raised from seed or division. #gardening

In such a place, especially if the soil tends to be moist, all the coloured primroses and polyantha will be happy as a groundwork; #gardening