I’ve never been all that taken with magnolias. They have these huge showy flowers which look wonderful for 5 minutes, then get brown and bruised and drop before you know it.
Well this year I’ve completely changed my opinion.
From the beginning of the year, our 3 magnolia trees have steadily fattened their pointed, furry buds. Then in March they began to open. And I was hooked!
Not just big fat tulips on trees
We have 3 varieties: Magnolia x soulangeana (the one I most commonly associate with magnolias), Magnolia stellata (star magnolia) and (I think) Magnolia x loebneri. They are all gorgeous and, far from being ephemeral, they have gone on and on flowering for weeks. In fact, although nearly over, there are still a few flowers in mid-May.
This post is a celebration of these beautiful trees.
But then it snowed
Statistically we’re more likely to have a white Easter than a white Christmas. But it seemed especially cruel to have freezing temperatures, morning after morning of frost and snow, just when I had learned to love these delicate flowers. They took a lot of damage, but thankfully survived reasonably intact.
That’s it for another year
It’s mid-May and the magnolia trees are nearly fully in leaf. The final flowers are dropping their petals. And I’m already looking forward to them again next spring.
[…] in the hands of someone like Monty Don, but I can’t pull it off). I could go on posting about magnificent magnolias in the Spring, or gorgeous Autumn colours, but we’ve all been there, done that, in the past 3 […]