Marvelous marbled foliage of Arum

JANUARY has been mild so far this year and it has been possible to get outside and make a start on the jobs planned for this year.

Both days last weekend began unpromisingly, grey and dank on Saturday and pouring with rain on the Sunday. However, once the skies cleared and a little sun managed to get through it was possible to spend a few hours in the garden without getting cold.

It was so exciting to get outside and spend a decent amount of time in the garden. We are coming up to our fourth summer here and this winter I have been planning how to really make this garden my own.

Moving from a tiny plot to one many times larger has been more difficult than I had expected, and I have spent the past three years getting a measure of this new space.

A lot of time was spent on the vegetable area last year, so 2014 is the year for the flower beds.

Dahlias are resting the shed waiting to be put into their allotted place. New plants and divisions are taking their ease in the greenhouse and the first of the beds was emptied, dug over a partially refilled last Sunday. Darkness was falling as I made my way indoors but the year has begun.

Plant of the month

ARUM leaves are beginning to open out throughout the garden. The marbled foliage of these low-growing plants is welcome in January, joining the pointed shoots of daffodils and snowdrops that begin to poke through the earth this month.

As is often the case, this small plant has a very long name, Arum italicum subsp. italicum ‘Marmoratum’.

It is worth remembering at least the first part of the name and adding this plant to garden for guaranteed winter foliage that seems able to withstand the hardest of frosts, persistent rain or a covering of snow.

The shiny, arrowhead-shaped leaves begin to appear in winter, the number swelling as tight shoots unfurl one after another during the weeks until spring. By then a mature plant can produce a wonderful clump of white marked leaves. Pale green flowers appear in spring but they are easily missed being insignificant against the foliage.

I tend to forget about this plant as spring turns to summer and beds are filled with taller perennials. Those early plants that are so precious at the beginning of the year go on the back burner. Arum italicum is among them, waiting for autumn when the next phase of its life bursts forth.

As summer falls into autumn and herbaceous perennials fade back to the soil, dotted about the garden are the stout stalks of the arum that have developed from the flowers that bloomed so long ago in spring.

Green to begin with, the tops of the stems expand as the berries under a papery covering begin to swell, splitting their delicate shroud and gradually ripening to the brightest red.

Then the cycle begins again as the first leaves begin to appear as the berries disappear.

Arum italicum subsps. italicum ‘Marmoratum’ will grow in sun and part-shade and needs moist fertile soil to produce the bust foliage and a god crop of berries. The berries are poisonous to humans but attractive to birds, which will kindly deposit them about the garden, allowing the plant to pop up in unexpected places.

Unwanted seedlings are easily recognised and can be moved, but I like to leave some plants where they have chosen to grow, somehow they always look just right.

In the veg patch

THE rhubarb is just beginning to pop up in our vegetable garden. We have a couple of clumps that are around three years old, but their growth has been curtailed a little by being moved.

Now is the time to give them a thick mulch of garden compost.

Rhubarb needs moist soil to support the large leaves it will soon be producing, mulching helps to retain moisture and supress weeds.

I like to put a first layer on as the new leaves appear and add to it as the weeks go on and the eventual spread of the plant becomes clearer. Choose a frost-free day to do this and clear away weeds and other garden debris before spreading the compost.

Gardening TV and radio

Sunday

8am, BBC Radio Humberside, The Great Outdoors. With Blair Jacobs and Doug Stewart.

9am, BBC Radio York, Julia Lewis.

9am, BBC radio Leeds, Tim Crowther and Joe Maiden.

2pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. Chairman Peter Gibbs is joined by Chris Beardshaw, Pippa Greenwood and Bob Flowerdew in the GQT potting shed at Sparsholt College in Hampshire for a postbag edition of the programme.

Friday

3pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. Bob Flowerdew, Bunny Guinness and Anne Swithinbank answer questions from the audience at the Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, Derbyshire. The chairman is Eric Robson.