After what feels like an eternity of dark and dismal days, the optimism of spring is slowly creeping in. Lengthening days are very much welcome; even if it’s raining the fact that there is just that little bit more light soothes the soul. Circumstances mean I’m eternally lucky to have found myself in the milder south west of the UK, a region where winters are noticeably shorter than elsewhere.

There has to be a trade-off. We can’t have everything to suit us. Winters are fairly gentle here and mercifully short, but the Atlantic winds bring us abundant rain.

Plants don’t care of course. Rain is good if your existence relies on the aquifers below ground being replenished each winter. It’s infuriating for the gardener to have flowers damaged by bad weather, but these frustrations are just the reality of life for our plants.

A wet Euphorbia x pasteurii

Gardening is about pushing boundaries. The excitement that comes from successfully cultivating something outside its climate zone is something that non-gardeners will never understand. Throughout life, success against the odds is always exciting, yet this excitement is tempered when we’re talking about gardens. Let’s have more excitement in our gardens please.

Isn’t it so often the case that we take things for granted? It’s easy to ignore the things on our doorsteps, promising ourselves that we will visit a garden at the key moment or spend time with a plant at its peak, yet somehow letting life get in the way. I have to push myself to get out more. With this in mind I visited the famous Caerhays Castle in Cornwall, a garden famed for its collection of magnolias and other woody plants. 

Caerhays Castle in Cornwall, UK

American magnolias have the good sense to flower later in the year, when winter is a distant memory, but the Asiatic species like to live dangerously and flower when the weather is more unpredictable. During a good spring the magnolias are epic, their large blooms seen in gardens large and small. More often than not the late winter and early spring weather damages the flowers, leaving behind a tragic brown mess.

Spring magnolias are always a gamble. Three years out of five might be depressing, one year might be mediocre, but one year will be an absolutely vintage spring. If you’re growing these treasures you must be happy to put up with good years and bad.

Chief among the harbingers of heartache is Magnolia campbellii. This species, native to Bhutan, Myanmar, India and parts of China, was introduced to Britain around 1865. It was primarily grown by sponsors of seed collecting expeditions, people wealthy enough to sponsor the trips and who had enough space to grow the resulting trees. Consequently the largest and oldest specimens tend to be found growing in older gardens with a rich heritage of growing wild-collected plants.

Magnolia campbellii

Every year I hear my fellow gardeners discussing the flowering of these remarkable trees. Some years they speak with sadness of storms and badly timed frosts, but other years there is great joy and a palpable excitement that the weather has been kind and merciful, and that the great early magnolias have been left untouched. This has, so far, been a gentle season.

Meeting the Champion specimen of Magnolia campbellii at Caerhays, that is to say the largest specimen in Britain and Ireland, was humbling experience. Any big tree is impressive but when that tree bears its spectacular flowers against the bright blue sky the whole thing is particularly special. There’s a simple bench so you can sit in awe and pay homage to the tree. So I sat there to take it all in.

It was an honour to spend time with the champion Magnolia campbellii

So few visitors seemed to care. I know I’m an unapologetic plant nerd but surely something this jaw-droppingly beautiful is worthy of a moment’s reflection ? To be in the company of such a trees is an honour; at any moment the weather might change and bring about the demise of the flowers until next year.

I needed my time of reflection and contemplation, and would urge gardeners everywhere to seek their own moments whenever they can. I have my own view of the world and I wouldn’t want everyone else to see the world the way I do, but making a human connection with plants of all types is an important part of gardening. If you strip gardening down to its bare parts it doesn’t make sense to gather a collection of plants together; add the humanity and you have a garden!

Magnolia campbellii ‘Lanarth’

The big old species magnolias represent a gardening world now largely gone. Magnolia campbellii can take 30 years before it puts out its first flower, so it’s fair to say that this species represents an investment in time. How many of us have the luxury to stay in one place for 30 years in this modern world? In these days of instant gratification how many of us would patiently wait 30 years for a tree to reach sufficient maturity for it to start flowering?

I wonder though if such spectacles might one day be lost? Nothing lasts forever; it’s doubtful whether legacy trees, those unlikely to reach full potential in a short time, will be planted when there’s so much emphasis on short term gratification.