Balmy winter fools nature into early bloom

Roses in bloom and daffodils lining the riverbanks in August? No, your eyes aren’t playing tricks – something strange is afoot at the Botanic Gardens.

The normally dormant winter flower beds are bursting with colour, the roses are still blooming and awash with fresh growth as the pruners get to work, and daffodils are swaying on the riverbanks.

The issue?  It's the first day of August but the plants have skipped their winter sleep and gone straight into spring.

“Some of what we’ve seen over the last month is just unheard of,” says Botanic Gardens Collection Curator David Barwick.

“One of our cherry trees has already flowered – it’s been and gone and it was only July. At this time of year you expect the plants to be lying dormant.

“The irony is that for humans, this has been a damp, dismal, overcast winter and we’re all struggling. But biologically, it has been an incredibly benign winter with no decent frosts or cold weather. The plants are confused and while their growth has slowed a bit, we’re seeing plants all over the gardens that just haven’t gone into their normal winter state. They’re either skipping into spring growth a month early or they never stopped growing at all.”

Azaleas are blooming, the usually latent grass is thriving, the weeds haven’t stopped growing since Autumn, and the vibrant purples and yellows of the crocuses are filling the flower beds.

“This isn’t just happening at the Botanic Gardens – we know this is widespread in gardens across the city. We just haven’t had the frosts that we normally would and the ground temperature is still right up there. Unless we get a run of frosts now or snow on the ground, we’re going to have a spring of unprecedented growth where the weeds will proliferate and we’ll be snowed under with lawn mowing.”

Mr Barwick said while the Botanic Gardens team had seen warm winters over the years, the fate of the spring flower beds was still unclear with the usually unpredictable August weather yet to come. 

“We’re not out of the woods yet as far as potential frosts and cold weather goes. It could still cool down a lot and we get hit with a run of frosts. That would put all these plants in a holding pattern until the actual spring weather arrives. Or we could have a case where we get some very late frosts in September and that could do damage to the new growth. So it’s still too early to say what this means in terms of our spring displays.”

For now though, the unseasonally warm winter means there is still plenty of colour to enjoy around the city as we attempt to lift ourselves out of the winter blues.