I visited the station gardens for the first time this new year … 2014. We’ve had yet another very distinct winter: this year, warm, windy and wet, wet, wet.  Many parts of Southern England are suffering again with floods, after very high winds and very high tides along the coast.

Here, in the station garden, though, the marigolds in Marlene’s hanging basket are still in flower, and the daffodils we planted in pots in August are coming up, even if everything is looking rather sodden.

The bulbs we planted in the shady garden as part of the RHS ‘Wild Gardens’ week (more like wild weather week) are showing too. The acanthus mollis  – off-shoots from a plant I thought I’d removed from my garden – are loving the wet. They are growing strongly, as is the fatsia japonica.

It’s all somewhat different from this time last year: the picture below was taken on 11 January 2013, when the first snow fell.

2013 was suddenly cold and then stayed cold, right up until June. It is true that the temperatures were falling this afternoon when I was out checking the composting area, but I can’t believe we’ll get snow. The challenge is not so much the frost as rotting and mould.

We have lots of cuttings in the greenhouse for our herb planters and the Preston Circus planters. Most are doing well, but it’s proving hard to keep the geraniums from going mouldy. We also have lots of seedlings which are just waiting for more light and warmth: basil, parsley, lettuce and mustard leaves. I’m loath to plant them out just in case we end up with sustained frost and snow, as in previous years, and in any case, the soil is very, very damp (and the squirrels vandalous).

I am always very impressed to see gardens that manage to get leaf vegetables overwintering. Our neighbours, Stanford Avenue Community Garden, have some lovely lines of mustard and lettuce doing well in their raised bed. And even in the pouring rain, RHS Rosemoor’s vegetable garden (above) was an inspiration when I visited just before Xmas: pretty rows of abundant leaves everywhere.

Perhaps we should experiment more and plant out a few of our seedlings, protecting with a plastic cloche … But this may simply be evidence of that dangerous impatience that seizes gardeners in a mild winter. Snow may be just around the corner.