Things are springing to life in the garden, but it’s time to think about death. In amongst the new growth there are signs of death everywhere after a brutal winter. We thought we were badly hit last year, but this winter has been far worse. The biggest casualties have been the cordylines (Cordyline australis, sometimes known as the Torbay Palm).The victims have for the most part been the younger plants, those less than ten years old. Most of the more mature ones seem to be OK and in fact we seem to have fared better than the rest of Grange, where even large ancient palms have been hit, especially along the promenade. But in fact it’s too soon to talk about death with these plants because there’s a good chance that they will regenerate from the base so that, all being well, what has been a rather plain single-stemmed palm will become a handsome multi-stemmed one.

The photo shows a healthy mature palm surrounded by stricken younger ones.

This plant is a bromeliad, a member of the pineapple family. Most bromeliads come from tropical rainforests and are epiphytic, which means that they grow on the branches of trees. But this bromeliad comes from the coastal forests of Chile and unusually grows in soil like most other plants. Its Latin name is Fascicularia, which means “growing together in bundles” and it is the very same word from which the Italian “Fascisti” derives, which means “a group bound tightly together”. According to the RHS at Wisley it can’t be grown outside in the UK, but we’ve been growing them outside for years and when I went out to take this photo today I noticed that we have about 70 clumps, which must be upwards of 350 plants in all. At this time of year the leaves start to turn a brilliant crimson and the rosette in the centre opens into a pale-blue flower. The trick to survival, as with so many exotics is good drainage. Last winter the hard frost burnt the leaves quite badly and they looked rather unsighly for much of the spring, but they have pulled through nicely.