The deep frosts of this winter have really hammered some plants - my handsome winter flowering cherry (Prunus x subhirtella autumnalis) was a mass of blossom until those first solid fingers of ice grabbed it. Overnight it became just a stark little tree festooned with small bits of unattractive brown swabs. Three weeks later though, and despite no noticeable rise in temperature, the little pale pink flowers are just starting to emerge again.

It amazes me how some plants can just shrug off being plunged into sub zero temperatures. In our garden, the broad, sword like leaves of the large Phormium had curled up into tubes and looked as though it would never recover, but it has done. And the paper thin leaves of the violas with their delicate flowers, they all looked black and dead. But no, just a kiss of sunshine and there they are, happy little faces again.

Then there’s the snow - and we’ve had plenty to open up the new decade. It has transformed the garden into a lumpy white iced landscape and the fields that sweep down below us towards Ludlow are smooth, untouched and virginal white - It is quite, quite beautiful.

As a good and conscientious gardener I have been out there knocking snow off some of the more vulnerable plants and shrubs - I had been loathsome to do this as I hadn’t wanted to spoil the purity of the garden, but I remember last year when my little Pittosporum tennuifolium ‘Tom Thumb’ split in two as did the Rosemary and Cistus x corbariensis.Mind you, is it a waste of time this year? Half the plants in our gardens originate from the Mediterranean, so how many will perish in these freezing conditions alongside the bugs, beasties and the not-so-hardy gardeners?

For now though, let’s re-cap the last twelve months… Last winter was an unpredicted ‘proper’ winter with snow and ice, the barbecue summer that was forecast never happened and now it looks as if we are set to have the hardest winter for a trillion years. And what is the biggest issue being forced on us and is dominating our lives?

Global warming.