Winter has been long and quiet here at the Plant Library, blanketed by a new found stillness that has settled deep into the bones of the garden. There have been many persistently grey days and the season has been characterized by a mix of settled cold conditions and periods of unsettled wet weather, which has inevitably at points dampened the gardener’s spirit. It is both testing and essential and I cannot comprehend a garden year without this vital pause before the months begin to evaporate again into the next growing season. If gardens are critically both places of making and becoming, then these are the months of becoming.

To me, the Plant Library with its quadratic fractions of plants mimics a treasure box and at this time of year when peering inside there are already all manner of sweet and brilliant jewels appearing in each corner. I find myself closer to the ground wanting to appreciate them all at eye level, the snowdrops, the crocus, the first iris. New life here starts small and hopeful. And we have been cutting back last year's herbaceous growth accordingly, to allow these early flowers the space around them to breathe and really come into their own. Colchicum hungaricum was the first jewel I found back in the very first week of January, its six soft mauve petals opening at the heart of two v shaped leaves are bright and friendly and have slowly migrated across their metre square. They are full of character, delicate in appearance but hardy and resilient in nature, thriving on the most northerly hillsides of the Balkan peninsula.

January and February are possibly the happiest months for the avid galanthophiles among us. We have around fifteen different snowdrops spread across the shadier half of the Plant Library here, these include species such as Galanthus nivalis, woronwii as well as elwesii and varying cultivars such as ‘Sam Arnott’ ‘Magnet’ and ‘Lyn’. I recently put together a Galanthus flower ident in which we were able to find their similarities and differences and most importantly pick our favourites. On closer inspection, we could appreciate the variations of green patterning, shape and height as well as the heady and honeyed scent of Galanthus ‘Sam Arnott’.

It has been nine months since I started my scholarship here at The Serge Hill Project and it has taken a good proportion of that time to feel that The Plant Library has become truly familiar. Even then, there is still so much to learn and understand in the hope of becoming more “fluent” in plants and deepening my skills in the garden. I am looking forward to experiencing my first full spring here and throwing myself back into growing with the natural rhythm that the year takes on. Sowing and tending to seedlings, planting and harvesting, it is going to be a vibrant and busy year here in the Plant Library and Apple House.

Over the next fifteen months my role here will also be pivoted towards educational outreach. With the invaluable support of my colleague Rachel, we will be finding ways to open up more conversation around encouraging horticultural careers and in turn hopefully help to enthuse a new generation of gardeners and caretakers! This project is something that is extremely close to my heart, and I hope to pass on some of the kindness that others continue to show me along the way, at the same time helping to foster a new-found curiosity about the wide-ranging benefits of a career in horticulture.

I am very impatiently waiting for some two thousand tulips to appear in the cut-flower garden, which happily remained free from any rodent damage over the Christmas break. I think Margot, our local tabby garden cat, is working overtime, but then again she is spending a lot of time on the heatbench these days. In the next few weeks, as the light strengthens and lengthens, I will begin sowing, and finalise my plans for the vegetable beds and cut flower area. For me there are few excitements in the garden that come close to noticing those first signs of germination and the true leaves that follow. It is the purest happiness.

I also have plans to reshape the cut flower garden, by extending the bark path to merge with the Serge Hill Project's School and Therapeutic beds, in the hope that this area at the top of the Plant Library will marry together more seamlessly. In the sand and green waste areas, there are paths to bark, beds to mulch, a green roof to plant up and more cutting back as well as general reorganization in the polytunnel as we anticipate long-awaited milder temperatures in the coming few months. But for now, it is still winter, so I am sitting tight, while allowing myself to look forward to all that is to come.