I have an oddly conflicted relationship with the wind. At once stimulating, annoying and frightening, occasionally helpful and sometimes strangely comforting – I can’t quite put my finger on it, or how I feel about it... and I suppose that’s rather the point. If wind has a point. We might learn that a body of air will move from an area of high pressure to one of low pressure, but that’s hardly an explanation that satisfies our enquiry. Why is the wind, we wonder, and where is it going?
There’s been rather a lot of the stuff around this past fortnight. First Ciara, then Dennis... I have no idea who this is now... Eileen? I hope it’s Eileen. With so much of the country battered and under water, we seem to have escaped the worst of it, the one sole casualty being the most venerable of the purple smoke bushes occupying the windiest spot of my windiest garden, up high on a ridge overlooking the North Downs.
This poor shrub got blown over around five years ago and, apparently undaunted, decided it would carry on producing a wonderful display from its semi-recumbent position. Large it may be, but never showy – its dark, plum coloured foliage providing both canopy and backdrop for more flamboyant and fleeting members of the border community. Since toppling over, it has continued to play this role without dropping a beat.
Then, in the process of inexpertly felling a silver birch, clumsy landscapers dropped a vast branch on it, breaking off one of the shrub’s more mature limbs. Like Monty Python’s Black Knight, it dismissed the injury – “’tis but a scratch” – and carried on. This week I arrived to discover the damage wrought by Dennis, another insult, another lost limb, and a great gaping wound. This plant is a survivor, but I’ll have to keep an eye on that. I’m not, for example, wildly enthusiastic about the dark stain creeping in to the left of the wound – is that rot that made these branches vulnerable to the wind, or tannins wandering into the bruised tissue of the heart wood? I’ve a feeling I know the answer, but will watch and wait a while. Woody perennials are wonderfully adept at compartmentalising damage to their structure.
Cotinus coggygria ‘Palace Purple’ is a hedgehog of a shrub, sending up many long, straight shoots from adventitious buds just below the bark when happy (I did once know a specimen that produced crazy wavy stems like Mr Tickle’s arms, and another that sported some rather impressive fasciated shoots fused together, but these seem to have been aberrations). And most of the time, it is happy – not too fussy about soil and, though it will flower best in the sun, it will tolerate a degree of shade. The flowers are tiny and appear on old wood, borne in number upon hazy inflorescences that make the whole plant appear to be shrouded in smoke when viewed from a distance. The evident vigour of the smoke bush means that it recovers well from wounds, whether made with purpose or unintentionally inflicted, which is why it responds so well to hard pruning and coppicing – a characteristic of which those of us who prefer the foliage to the flowers habitually take advantage. In the case of this individual, the onset and nature of this year’s spring will have no little influence on its ability to seal the large wound – perhaps I’ll decide to remove a significant proportion of the mature growth to give the whole plant the best chance of survival. But I’m attached the characterful old bark on these limbs, and would like to give it a good crack at mending itself.
Meanwhile, the breeze seems to be blowing itself out and, as clouds scud out of the sun’s way, a suggestion of spring is revealed. But March is close around the corner, and March is a particularly turbulent month. The wind’s not done with us, or the garden, quite yet.
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Hello! I’m Andrew, gardener, blogger, podcaster, and owner of a too-loud laugh, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way to Gardens, weeds & words. You can read a more in-depth profile of me on the About page, or by clicking the image above.
