Hairy New Year to all

Morning all,
Happy New Year to everyone. I'm looking forward to a good one despite the potential stormy skies ahead. So many unknowns on the horizon and changes along the way, it should be an exciting year.
We ended 2018 with our own little flourish by managing to move out of the old office and into our temporary metal hut. It wasn't without its challenges, getting the rather complex IT and telephone systems out of the old site and into the new took a lot longer than planned. Having labelled all the cables very thoroughly to ensure a smooth changeover I promptly cut the main phone line by mistake and plunged us on the nursery and in the house into isolation on the phone and internet. I didn't find
this out until the weekend before Christmas when all was reassembled and we had no connection, oops. Luckily a very jolly engineer from BT Openreach got to us on Christmas Eve to connect us back to the outside world. It's only when you lose that link you realise how much you rely on it, especially when our mobile signal is so weak too.
Over the festive holiday we had our usual annual friends and family hockey and games day which was brilliant. A few stiff muscles the next day for quite a few of us, but a fab get together and just what I love over Christmas. There was an added bonus on the day after, when we had a few house guests left over, looking for something to do. The old office got stripped of just about everything, the last bits of furniture, electrics, internal cladding, and windows all came out, just leaving us a thin shell to pull over on Wednesday when we came back to work properly. Now the old site is clear and we should get the foundations levelled for the end of next week if all goes well. Can't wait, the temporary office is already a hit with a degree of warmth never before experience in our admin department (Caroline and I) so the new one, with a bit of extra room and way more insulation, should be a joy.
The young plants in the two propagation tunnels which had been overshadowed by the old Leylandii hedge have already responded to the hedge removal. Growth is noticeably better even at this slow growing time of year so feeling pretty smug about getting that task under our belt. Probably should have done it years ago. Just need to replant with a natural hedge mix now to replace and improve the available wildlife habitat. One great thing about having so much on-site natural cover is that I don't feel too guilty about taking out that hedge, there are plenty of other roosting sites available and the replacement habitat will be much more diverse and manageable.
Looking forward more generally, I'm desperately hoping the increasing interest in all things environmental maintains it's current momentum and doesn't get knocked off course by more short-term headlines. It might be my ever hopeful and naive nature, but I do wonder if the message about looking after our world is beginning to register higher up in more peoples priorities than before. That's my hope for 2019, let's see if we can look after each other and the future generations, rather than worrying about too much self gratification at other peoples expense. I reckon doing that in itself can provide a deeper fulfillment and reward anyway, but that's just me talking my way out of the consumer led society that buys our plants!

Availability highlights
Helleborus orientalis in a variety of colours are now well under way, for that winter interest and early exotic colour. Stonking bushy plants which are mostly from a strain (Crown series) that has a high percentage of first season flowering. I hardly dare mention it, but there are a few odd plants in bud already. I haven't put them on the list as being in bud as there aren't that many yet but given a few nice days they will be up and running.
The winter and spring flowering Cyclamen coum varieties we grow are now showing colour. The strain we grow has an exceptionally long flowering season with colour usually showing from November through to March and even April. They rarely get swamped with masses of flower at any one time, they just keep going on, producing a pretty and dainty show for ages. We still have a few of the hardy autumn flowering Cyclamen (hederifolium) left with attractive evergreen winter foliage. We have a load planted in the garden by a hedge and they make a lovely winter ground covering.
There are a few purple flowers beginning to show among the Primula Wanda, there will be loads more next spring. I'm not sure for how long they will continue flowering but we have late potted batches of Armeria maritima (both the pink and the white forms) which are in flower with more bud still coming. Compact and chunky Leucathemums are generally pretty evergreen throughout the winter. There are several varieties looking very strong.
Foliage remains of interest at this time of year and there are some good shows of colour from the Carex Evergold, Ajuga, Lamium and Euphorbia.

Have a great New Year from all at Kirton Farm Nurseries.