‘MEBRUARY:’ NO LONGER WINTER BUT NOT YET SPRING; A PLEASING SEASON IN THE GARDEN

Most gardeners, when pressed to name their favorite gardening season, will say Spring, when the world bursts into bloom. Or they may say Autumn, if they love fall color, and the cooling that relieves our torrid summer heat, like a balm over Gilead. I love those seasons as well, but there is something so pleasing for me about transitions in the garden, and this time of year – late February into March – represents an enormous transition that always thrills me. This is when we stand on the cusp of the growing season, with one foot in freezing winter dormancy and the other resting carefully on ground that will soon begin exploding with new growth. This is ‘Mebruary.’

Camellia x 'Crimson Candles'

I say ‘soon’ with some equivocation, since upstate South Carolina is whipsawed by a volatile jet stream this time of year, one that bounces up and down like the stock market on steroids. When the stream moves north in the early months of the year, we experience warmth – even unseasonably hot periods. And when the stream drops south, weighed down with arctic cold, we freeze. This becomes worrisome for the dedicated gardener when an anticipated freeze is preceded by days -- even weeks – of warmer than average weather, which boosts the growth of tender perennials and swells buds on trees. We watch this growth with dread, knowing that it will be killed back if the nighttime low actually drops to 25 degrees F, the projected low temperature for next week in our area. I cannot forget the day in early April of 2019 when I filmed snowflakes falling gently on the garden, on the tulips and Chinese snowball flowers in bloom, the redbud and the apple blossoms. The upstate gardener does well to remind herself that freaky weather is the norm, not the exception at this time of year.

My garden on February 1, 2026

In the past, I would be out for hours on the day before a late-winter freeze was projected, placing black plastic pots over the stalks of emerging lilies and Hemerocallis, wrapping fabric tarps around staturary, and moving potted plants with excessive tender growth into the half-basement that functions as a kind of oversized cold frame. As I grow older, however, I have let many of these precautions slide, as my perspective has widened and I realize that weather will always fluctuate and most plants adapt, either by bearing up under the cold, or, if they’ve been killed to the ground, trying a second time with new growth. They won’t always flower if they’re trying to catch up later in the season, but that’s also the new reality I’m teaching myself to deal with. Growing old gracefully is NOT compatible with perfectionism.

Statue wrapped for sub-zero temperatures

I’ve discovered that this altered attitude produces silver-lining moments. Consider the mature arborvitaes that were brought down by Hurricane Helene’s mighty gales in late September, 2024. When I finally had the trees cleared out at the border of my retaining wall, a large empty space opened up in full sun, visible from the kitchen window where I spend so much of my time. I planted a pollinator garden there early last summer, and the resulting bower overflowing with Mexican petunia, lantana, coneflower, Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and beautyberry surpassed expectations for me as well as the hummingbirds and bees who darted in and out of it through the long hot season. 

   

The pollinator garden, September 2025

 

Even more surprising was the spot on the opposite side of the garden where an arborvitae had been providing privacy screening but had outgrown its space before the winds flattened it. For years I had been trying to tend a Magnolia liliiflora ‘Jane’ just down the slope from the evergreen there, but the small tree lacked adequate air circulation and suffered so badly from scale in September that I had more than once considered chopping it down. Amazingly, it grew to fill the spot vacated by the arborvitae and leaned into the increased sunlight with enthusiasm. About a week ago it began putting on the most floriferous display I’ve seen yet on the little tree. Dozens of purple goblets stood upright on the leafless branches and opened into incandescent pink flowers with darker pink stamens. Gorgeous. 

    

Magnolia liliiflora 'Jane'

Now that Miss Jane has breathing room, it will be easier for me to crush the scales by hand when they appear and to apply horticultural oil in winter before the buds appear, the only effective treatment for the insect. (‘Jane’ is one of the Little Girl series of lily-flowered magnolia cultivars produced by horticulturists at the National Aboretum in D. C., which include ‘Susan,’ ‘Anne,’ ‘Judy,’ and ‘Pinkie,’ among others). In a weak moment, haunting the aisles at Wilson’s, the big nursery in Rock Hill, I discovered a small Magnolia stellata all by itself in the wrong section, and thrilled to think that I had found a deciduous magnolia to add to my collection. When it bloomed at the end of February, the strap-petaled flowers were a shade of baby-blush pink that melted me. Star magnolias can be tricky because frosts at bloom-time often destroy the flowers, but this potted M. stellata ‘Royal Star’ dodged the cold spells in early March and put on a spirit-lifting show.

Magnolia stellata 'Royal Star'

I try to limit my plant purchases at this time of year, knowing how hard it will be to resist the temptations of nurseries and plant sales once spring has fully sprung. However, on a recent trip to Raleigh to visit my daughter and son-in-law (and to help prune and fertilize their own garden; what are mothers for if not that?...) I saw a flowering almond at a local garden center and had to stuff it into my trunk to bring home. This small shrub (technically Prunus glandulosa 'Rosea,'which sounds like a thyroid disorder) is now blooming with delicate pink flowers on bare branches, and remains in its nursery pot while I decide where to plant it. It would be a good fit for the pollinator garden, as it serves as a larval host to the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, the large yellow and black butterfly that is native to the Carolinas. But while it is drought tolerant, the flip side to that attribute is that it cannot abide wet feet, and my pollinator patch tends to be boggy when thunderstorms are too frequent in summer. For now, it will stay potted, attracting early bees and adding color to the landscape on the bleaker days in Mebruary.

Prunus glandulosa 'Rosea'

A back injury I suffered in January meant that I could only do the most essential garden tasks on a limited number of days this winter, and only then if I was buckled tightly into a full back brace, so many of my routine seasonal chores had to be chucked out. One of these was trimming the hellebores and feeding them, but I discovered that I needn’t have worried. The flower display was as thick and breathtaking as ever by the first of March, and now that the redbud is bursting out in clusters of hot pink buds (Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’) the creamy ivory, pink and dark mauve hellebore bells blooming at its feet make for a glorious tableau. As I’ve gained back my mobility I’ve been cutting off the dead hellebore foliage bit by bit. No worries.

Clemmie with Tulipa chrysantha 'Cynthia'

The hellebore flowers have been joined in my garden by summer snowflake, Leucojum aestivum, the American southeast’s substitute for Britain’s Galanthus nivalis, or common snowdrop, which doesn’t grow well here. (As with most things imported here from the UK, including people, snowdrops can’t handle the heat.) Snowflakes are an economical plant because they are vigorous spreaders, growing to fill moist, partially shaded spots that are high in organic matter. In sunnier sites they are joined by varieties of species tulips (true perennials that bloom with less drama, perhaps, but great reliability). I favor Tulipa clusiana, for their tall, slender stalks and nimble blossoms that unfurl to face the sun in the morning and close at night. T. clusiana ‘Lady Jane’ is the most accommodating of the lot, displaying beautiful candy-striped petals wherever it pops up, while T. clusiana ‘Cynthia’ is displayed to greatest advantage where sunlight will strike it and illuminate its stained glass colors of yellow and red.

'Forest Pansy' redbud in bloom

Camellias are blooming now as well in some southern gardens, but in mine there is only one I can depend on for winter color. I grow a sturdy white-flowered japonica that never fails to produce its flowers at the coldest times in the upstate calendar, with the effect that the buds never open but look ‘toasted’ on the branches. What makes up for that is my Camellia x ‘Crimson Candles.’ Neither a japonica nor a sasanqua, this hybrid camellia is supposedly a chance blending of two species in the wild. That may explain its outstanding cold hardiness and disease resistance. The flowers are small and not exactly crimson but more like a very dark coral. But they are borne in abundance on the pliant branches over a long period of time, and when the flowers are shed to fall on the mulched path in the woodland portion of the garden, surrounding the white snowflake bells in a lush carpet of color, the sight makes my heart swoon with delight.

Hellebores range free in the shade garden

Writers have seasons of transition, just as gardens do. Through most of last year I was ‘growing’ a novel, and last week I finished it. Now the tricky transition begins for the text: my husband, my first reader, reads the draft and gives me notes. I incorporate those, and if he thinks it will pass muster, I send the draft to my agent. Susan is a tough audience, and she will turn down a manuscript if she doesn’t think it will appeal to publishers. For that reason, I’m planning to work with a professional editor on this one, rewriting the novel if needs be. Let’s say it might be ready to go out to prospective publishers by early summer? At the same time the garden is exploding with color and fragrance? That will mark nearly a full year developing and writing the story; I have that in common with Mother Nature.

Writing has seasons of its own

Rose blossoms are a long way off yet. The peonies have barely poked their scarlet fingers above the soil, dreaming of their starring moment in May. But in the month of ‘Mebruary,’ this jaded old writer/gardener finds much that is pure and pretty and pleasing. I am learning, like my garden, to roll with the seasons.

Abandoned chair with forsythia: a typical sight in my town in Mebruary

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