Ruud Kleinpaste: Looking for unexpected winter beauty

When rain and cold weather stops for a day, I go out into the garden. 

Just looking – Julie often has new inhabitants in the garden and some of those are surprising.  

Grevillia is a species that hails from Australia. Some older TV Gardening Show watchers may remember Don Burk doing his hour-long shows every week – he loved Grevillia and so do I. In mid-winter, birds and pollinating winter insects will look for these flowers, filled with nectar. 

White Magnolia are coming out right now. No pollinating going on, just plenty of off-white colours that lighten up your boring garden background.  

Miscanthus chinensis, still waving in the wind. A froglet sitting quietly. 

Gaura Butterfly Rose with an emerging kiwi.  

“Just a Daffodil”, according to Julie – bright colours in winter. 

These are Hamamelis (also known as Witch Hazels). Many of these wonderful plants have an excellent smell – our yellow variety (H x Arnold Promis) is probably the exception, not much smell at all, but the bright colour stands out in a bare winter’s day.  

The red Witch Hazel is known as Hamamelis x intermedia Jelena. The colours sometimes float in a copper direction, with a smell that’s just divine.  

“Hamamelis” comes from two Greek words: hama (meaning “simultaneously”) and melon (“fruit”): it refers to that in autumn flowering varieties the flowers as well as the fruits that occur on the plant at the same time.  

I love those Hamamelis shrubs – and while researching a bit about our specimens I came across a spectacular hybrid: Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Diana’. Bright red flowers in winter but also preceded by bright red leaves before they fall in autumn.  

Guess what: I’m searching for that specimen mentioned above! 

LISTEN ABOVE 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Tame podcast
from News Talks at b Route time.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Pass is in the garden for us this morning, and rude,
I don't want to get you too excited, but as
keenly as I always take your advice and listen to
your various thoughts and recommendations, I do have one eye
on a press conference between the President of the United
States and the President of Russia this morning, So if
we have to cut you off, you know why.

Speaker 3 (00:32):
Yeah, I realized that. And put In is an amazing gardener,
isn't he famous?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Famous for his green fingers.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
Before we go, I'm going to make it even worse
because the stuff that's on the website will be giving
you all the all the ideas. Anyway, last night I
went to a place where your youngster will go when
he is five or six years old in christ It's
the Botanic illuminating the Vitenny Garden, Yes, exactly, illuminating the Potennic.
So you see the Virginny Garden at night under light

(01:03):
and sound, with ultra vine the lights and the most
amazing systems going on there. It took Julian and I
two and a half hours to walk through it. Just
keep it in it for those people in prices. You
can't miss. This's number one.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Okay, Oh fantastic. Okay. So you're keeping your eyes on
the garden this morning and looking for a bit of
unexpected winter beauty.

Speaker 3 (01:25):
Well, Julie's often putting new inhabitance in the garden. Then
they sort of escaped me a little bit and suddenly
there they are. So so I looked at some of
the really nice on the white magnolia at the moment
that is coming out, which I think is wonderful. It's
not pollinating. It's a beautiful big flower, but it's one
of the oldest plants on the planet that doesn't do pollination.

(01:45):
I think the pollen aid distributed by window or something
like that. So that's number one at Caerphlia. I remember
Don Burke doing television from Australia. He loved Cravillia. At
the moment in flower, go and look for them. There
are tall grasses called the scantist. They're about almost a
meter high. Fabulous, always good to see. Then there was

(02:09):
this daffidel. I said, Jillie, what's That's just another daffodil.
That's what it does. So here we go, all right,
but here comes the thing that I really loved, and
it's Hammer Maleis. We've had it for a while, and
the hummer Maleis comes in. That's the witch Hazel. And
it comes in different colors, in different colors and different

(02:29):
shapes and all the sizes. But then when I started
looking at it, I realized there was one called It
was actually very very red in color. And I'm actually
I'm going to find where I can get This is unbelievable.
What I'm trying to say is what we think of
winter as a dull time a boy, if you got

(02:51):
the right stuff in the garden, it certainly pays for
everything you get there. Basically all the colors, everything works.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
Nice, fantastic. So I've got a bit of news for
you as well, and that I took your advice a
couple of weeks ago and I moved our pomegranate tree.
You know how you were saying it was the time,
and I moved it. And there's been a lot of rain.
I've been a little bit nervous about how everything was going.
The good news is, and I've been checking it every day,
is that I can just see the leaves about to

(03:21):
start coming out of their little whatever it is. Yeah,
so it looks like that. It looks like it has
survived the move. I will report back again next week.
But every day I see a tiny bit more growth
on the edge of the stems and I think, oh
my goodness, Rube was right. I think I might have
got away with this.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
So that's good about a little bit of fruitilage in
about two weeks. How's that?

Speaker 2 (03:41):
Yeah, yeah, no, I don't worry. I'll be on that absolutely.
Thank you so much, sir. We'll make sure those photos
for a bit of winter beauty are up on the
news talks Hed website so you can see them soon,
and we will catch Rude in the garden again.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
to news Talks He'd be from nine am Saturday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.