Is it just me or does each year seem to fly by faster than the last? I remember quite clearly that feeling of having 12 months stretching ahead of me in January, then a long, slow start, because the winter seemed to go further than it should into spring. I am not much good when that happens, needing the relief of growth, but this year the abbreviated spring rollercoastered into summer and midsummer's day flitted by without me even being able to grasp the moment. There was no slowing time down after that - the months just slipped through my fingers. But thinking back, it was the garden that allowed the moments to be marked in time. No month was without a high point, a mood captured or a combination that might have sung, no week the same as the last.
Despite the slight feeling of loss, I am never bothered by the advent of winter. The leaves of the wisteria have often only just fallen when December kicks in and the new transparency is something that takes a while to get used to. I love the first Viburnum farreri at this point, for it seems to be swimming against the tide. It often has the last of the leaves still hanging pale yellow in the bush, but the flowers seem to be barging their way through. It's so nice to start the winter with something perfumed.
I associate perfume with winter, perhaps because your senses are searching for something comforting. Mahonias, saracococca and the shrubby winter honeysuckle, perfume whole gardens on a still day. Hamamelis, too, but nothing is quite as wonderful as Wintersweet. We found a Chimonanthus praecox one January day when I was a child from only a few flowers that were scenting the bottom of the orchard with their spicy perfume. Their pallid, waxy petals would never have given them away, and when I clambered through the thicket of brambles to find them, I was shocked to see such an exotic flower emerging from bare twigs. I will plant a bush wherever there is room in a warm position or against a hot wall, because they need heat to ripen for flowering. It is a Cinderella plant for most of the summer and nothing much to look at but, in the dark months, this shrub will have you under its spell.
I usually get depressed in February, under grey skies with low light. There is a feeling of inertia; the hellebores are never really out like you imagine they might be and the buds are still tight on most sensible plants, but my Ranunculus ficaria 'Brazen Hussy' can be fully depended upon. Christopher Lloyd named it well. Its liquorice-coloured foliage is up early at the end of the year so it is already looking good in February. The first flowers are the moment when I know that all is not lost.
By March the 'Brazen Hussy' are lighting their brilliant way the full length of my path and the first of the new growth is coming through. Some plants are more precocious than others and well worth having just for this moment. Day lilies and the giant fennels are already rearing up in the back garden and out at the front the Acanthus mollis 'Hollard's Gold' has never looked better. Here in London it never stops growing in the winter and will do the same for you with the shelter of a wall. This need not be a warm, luxury, south-facing wall, indeed, the colour is better for a little shade and not as brassy.
April is the most delicate, exasperatingly fleeting month. We are spoilt for choice in terms of what is happening, but if I were to have just one thing (well, two in combination, for who could be so hard on themselves?) it would be an Amelanchier lamarckii underplanted with snakeshead fritillary. These two are out in combination every year on my birthday, in the second week of the month. Nothing could be a better celebration.
If you are in the country for a few days in early May, try to take in the moment when the fields turn from their winter green to their spring luminescence. I relish this moment when the volume is turned up. As I don't have access to this in my own garden here in the city, I let my box mounds do it for me. The dark, dependable green will be overtaken by the new growth, which, at a particular moment, is so green you think it might be lit from within. Bluebell woods, apple orchards in full bloom, the first froth of Queen Anne's Lace in the hedgerows; it is a time when things should happen on a big scale, and it is worth remembering that even if your garden is tiny something of the spirit should be caught before summer hits.
June is the month of the rose, but it can be a cruel month, too, if it is wet, turning the old fashioned roses into a mush of rotting petals. So much investment lost in one wet week. But the species are less prone to disaster, with their simplicity of flower which is unadulterated by the plant breeders. This year I will be planting up an eglantine walk, fit for several titanias, and June is their month. The foliage of the sweet briar roses, when wet from morning dew, smells of the sweetest apples, and their simple dog roses appear in arching delicate sprays. The Pemberton hybrids are a collection that are well worth seeking out, for they are, on the whole, not as vigorous as their parent, Rosa eglanteria
July should see the vegetable beds yielding their first proper crops. I will have had the thinnings from the cut-and-come-again salads and the rocket already, but the first Little Gem are worth waiting for. Quarter them to braise lightly in butter with peas or use them simply on their own with a walnut-oil dressing.
By August, I like to think I am self-sufficient in the vegetable department. This year, the first trusses on my outdoor tomatoes had ripened by the end of July, which is why it is worth seeking out the very hottest spot for the plants, but by August we were dining on them daily. It is funny to think that they were originally introduced from South America as an ornamental.
By September, the year was beginning to slow a little, to be more gracious in its ripening. The Morus nigra I planted for a client in the Cotswolds fruited for the first time. The apple orchard we planted there has yet to get the bit between its teeth, but a friend in Bath, who planted 40 or so trees on her farm five years ago, was giving away the proceeds and feeding apples to the shire horses that they are keeping on the land to pull the logs from their woods in the winter.
In October and November I travelled to the American prairies, but last year I was in Japan when the Katsura trees started to turn. They were the size of lime trees and their distinctive candyfloss perfume was wafting from the fallen leaves, making me think there was a fairground upwind. Cercidiphyllum japonicum is one of my all time favourite trees and I do regret not planting one at home, as it is one of the first trees to signify the arrival of autumn.
As I write, the very last of the Liquidambar foliage is still in the tree at the front. This is perhaps the best tree for autumn colour, as it starts late, but then colours for at least six weeks, this year for the whole of November and into the beginning of December. A tree is a gift that I will try and give wherever I know there is a future for it. A simple pleasure can be had in it marking the time as the years race by.