January in the Lodge Gardens

The Lodge grounds in the centre of the town is a park looked after by East Lothian Council Amenity team. There are lots of flowers in the gardens this month including some unusual and sweetly scented ones. 

 At the back of the car park (entering on East Road) there is a huge bank of strange mauve flowers which scent the air with vanilla. It is the winter heliotrope Petasites fragrans. It was planted by the Victorians who liked its sweet smell as do early insects  but it is not native. All the plants here are male so it doesn’t set seed but spreads by underground rhizomes and unfortunately it has become very invasive and difficult to control. It is also poisonous to dogs.

More delicate are the pink flowers of the hybrid Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ named for the famous Welsh garden Bodnant. These are large shrubs in the herbaceous borders south of the rose garden and the winter garden to the west of the children’s swings.

 The third plant to look out for is the sweet box plant Sarcococca which looks very understated in the corner of the tropical bed just inside the arched entrance from the car park. By the end of the month it will be in full flower, releasing the wonderful scent which gives the plant its common name.

There is lots of winter colour from the red (Cornus alba sibirica) and orange (C Midwinter Fire) dogwood stems, the yellow sprays of flowers on the Mahonia bushes and the unusual white stems of the white stemmed Chinese bramble, Rubus cockburnianus.