A mystery shrub sends GINA PARKINSON scrabbling through her books and the internet. She thinks it is probably a honeysuckle.

ON A sunny Saturday a couple of weekends ago, I spotted the first bee in the garden, visiting a shrub that had come into flower unnoticed.

This twiggy shrub has looked unremarkable all winter, a mess of thin stems four or five tall, and that’s it.

Now the dormant buds have opened into clusters of small white blooms hanging along each stem, the warmth of the sun and scent of the flowers enticing the bee from its winter hideout.

The shrub looks to be Lonicera fragrantissima, right, although it is unlabelled and research in books and on the internet has been unhelpful, since a number of species and varieties are very similar.

However, I am sure that it is a shrubby honeysuckle, a member of the family whose fragrant summer-flowering climbers are more familiar.

For much of the year, this shrub has been barely noticeable even when in leaf at the end of summer when we moved here; but from December, depending on the temperature, sweetly perfumed flowers have appeared in increasing numbers.

In mild areas, the leaves may be evergreen but in our area it is more likely to be deciduous with flowers appearing before the foliage.

Lonicera fragrantissima needs little care once planted and although it will grow in semi shade, this shrub will flower best in an open, sunny site.

Little pruning is required as it will look best left to grow uncut to its full size, which is around two metres with a similar spread. One or two of the oldest stems can be removed occasionally at the base from a mature specimen to encourage new growth.

Other winter-flowering shrubby honeysuckles include Lonicera x purpurii which is a cross between L. fragrantissima and L. standishii and its popular cultivar ‘Winter Beauty’.


In the veg patch...

OUR rhubarb plant has been joined by two others. It was already planted in the garden when we moved, so we haven’t been able to identify the variety, but the new ones are ‘Timperley Early’ and ‘Victoria’.

These have been chosen to give a long season of picking with ‘Timperley Early’ being a good variety for forcing for a crop in February and March.

We won’t be doing any forcing this year, having left it a little late, but unforced stems will crop until early summer.

‘Victoria’ is a popular old variety and will extend the season into August with thick pink tinged green stems.

Rhubarb will grow in most soils, although it doesn’t like to dry out in summer. It needs space and will tie up an area for several years once established since it dislikes being moved.

Plants bought at this time of year need to be planted out straight away since they will already have started into growth, but decent sized specimens in big pots will soon recover and produce a few stems for cropping this season. Small plants are cheaper, but they need to be left to grow on unpicked for at least one season in order to feed and develop a good root system.

Well-rotted compost added to the planting mix and a good soaking will give newly planted specimens a good start and an annual thick mulch around the crowns of the plants in late winter will keep them healthy and productive for many years.


Weekend catch-up

FOR a number of winters, I left dahlia tubers in the ground the whole year as our winters had been relatively mild.

However, in the winter of 2009/2010 I lost all our plants, some several years old, and ended up with none last summer.

If we had any in our new garden, they are sure to have been lost this winter. So I am starting again with a clutch of tubers donated from the garden of a sister of a friend, together with one from my mum. This is often how gardening works, a plant is lost and unknowing of this fact, someone else has an excess of that very thing.

This is a roundabout way of saying that it is time to start off dahlia tubers, either the ones dug up from the garden last autumn or new specimens on sale in nurseries and garden centres.

Dahlia tubers are strange dusty beings at the beginning of the year and looking at them it is hard to imagine the glory of their flowers in a late summer garden.

To get them to this distant point, they need to be put into pots of compost, watered well and placed in a cool, frost-free room. Here they will slowly absorb the moisture, swell and eventually begin to shoot.

In May, they can be hardened off and put into their flowering position when the danger of frost has passed.


Gardening TV and radio

Sunday, February 27
8am, BBC Radio Humberside, The Great Outdoors with Blair Jacobs and Doug Stewart.

9am, BBC Radio Leeds, Tim Crowther ad Joe Maiden.

2pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. Pippa Greenwood, Matthew Biggs, Anne Swithinbank and chairman Peter Gibbs answer questions from gardeners in Cobham, Surrey. The gardening weather forecast is at 2.40pm. (Repeated from Friday).

Friday, March 4
3pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. Eric Robson and his team of experts help with horticultural problems in Northumberland. Matthew Wilson looks at the progress of the 2012 Olympic Park and Eddie Wardrobe visits a community allotment in Prudoe near Newcastle. The gardening weather forecast is at 3.40pm. (Repeated on Sunday at 2pm). Saturday, March 5
7am, BBC Radio York, Julia Booth. Presenter Julia and plant expert Nigel Harrison hold their weekly plant surgery.