My garden in January and February

All looks lovely and well advanced in the garden your primroses in the garden are well ahead of mine

All very nice Sheila, as with Brian, your primroses are ahead of mine too. I think the drier summer has made them slow here this year.
BTW, we each bought G. Little Ben last year at The Linns - it was the one you thought we had the labels mixed up with G. Bertram Anderson and we each had 2 of either plants. Both mine are up, not flowering yet, and the foliage is quite different on both plants. Therefore you must have one of each too.

Great to see the season up and going. Beautiful.

Wonderful irises there, I am jealous! Love the pale blue primrose too. You have loads of colour for February, great stuff!

Enjoyed your blog :0)

Linda if you are free on Saturday Dunblane is the place to be. Opposite the Railway Station the SRGC bulb group are holding their Spring event.

Way ahead of mine as well but things are happening gradually, thankyou for sharing, I do like the Iris's .....

Thank you all for your kind comments. Bjs and Scottish I like Primulas because there seems to be one or other in flower every month of the year. Scottish I looked back at your blog on Sophie North and decided the one I was not sure about was a G Sophie North. I hope I am right. I bought the new ones because I fancied some more G. Little Ben and there seems to be several flowering stems in the pot. Stera the secret of growing the iris reticulata and I. danfordiae seems to be in ensuring they are grown in a well draining compost. Pots and raised beds are ideal places for them and I am glad to say last years iris are coming in to flower now as well as the new ones. No sign of flowers on my river of iris but there are plenty of shoots. The primula is P. vulgaris subsp. sibthorpii. It is a native of eastern Europe. Linclass I think the weather has been kinder to us here in the central belt of Scotland. It has been very wet but also very windy which dried up the wet a bit. We have had cold days and nights but very little snow. I fiddled around with my camera and find by changing the settings a little I do not need to do much editing. I have been stuck since getting a new computer and have been very frustrated with it.

Is there anything more frustrating than knowing what you want a computer to do, know that it will, but not being able to find out how?

Your plants are lovely, Scotsgran. My primroses are only just beginning to show - I have lots in the wild area. I might get some new ones for containers

Very little is as frustrating, Stera! I am still trying to get to grips with Windows 8 - I don't find it very intuitive. OH gave me an i-Pad for my birthday, and I find it so much easier. It has an excellent camera as well.

Much worse is the fact that no matter what I do I cannot easily replace the picture manager which was standard on my old computer. I have found a way of loading it but am too timid to risk using something that I feel should be a Microsoft option. Primroses are very good value for money. Some of the ones above have been in the garden since 2008.

You have some lovely collections there, I particularly like the colourful primulas. The local GC has some last time I visited and they seemed very reasonably priced - I might have to make a return trip! I wandered round my garden in the rain/snow this morning and spotted what I think might be dwarf irises - fingers crossed :)

My son persuaded me to change over to Linux as everything is free. Problem for me is that I used to use Adobe elements, which did everything I wanted and a lot more. It took ages to become reasonably confident with it and now I have a system which theoretically does all the same things but there is no handbook, only a very long list of contents, and don't understand what they all mean. The result is I just don't edit pics any more, and I used to love doing it.

That is my problem too Stera.I had a chat with Scottish about it and she has suggested I download Piccasa from Google. I explained my worry about downloading is partly that they ask for email addresses. I'm not happy about that being freely available. She explained how to set up one which I can use exclusively for just that situation. Goy friends are invaluable. Gee if a primula likes your garden it will increase quickly and can then be split up. If you buy a pot of primulas look for one with lots of growth which can be split off and planted any time. Just take a bit of root with an identifiable offshoot. You can either prise them apart or use a sharp knife to cut them up. Good luck with that.

I love that Lilac coloured Primula.
Lots of lovely colour.....just brown and green in my garden!

Prims spread easily Paul. When you are doing your gardening job you will probably need to lift and split clumps of them. If the owner does not mind then you can replant some in your own garden for a good show next year. I know people often throw them away when they stop flowering but they do last for years. If you want special ones the best place to find them will probably be The AGS shows. http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/shows/dates-and-venues/ find them on their website. There is one in Harlow on 28th February if that is near you and not too short notice. Their members stall will probably not have primulas on sale but you will get an idea of what works in your part of the world. You might be lucky enough to get seeds. I dk what the AGS sell their seeds for but the SRGC charge 20p a packet or 6 for £1.00.

Yes, I had lots in my old garden which had been self seeds in a couple of my customers' gardens.
They wanted them thinned out. They certainly spread and seed around my front garden...particualrly the rockery.
I don't think they'll fit with the kind of planting I have in mind for my new garden.
Apart form a few in pots, perhaps!

they are useful as colour over the winter months and pots are a great way of placing colour where it is most effective. What are you planning for your new garden?