Winter 2008/9 forecast for UK

The days are much shorter now, it gets dark about 4pm and the trees are dropping the last of their leaves.

Yet, the temperatures continue to be very mild  -around 11/12c. No sign of any frosts in SE England yet  which has allowed many plants to continue flowering much later - all of these wonderful flowers are still peforming in my garden. Is anyone else having the same experience ?

This seems to be the norm over the past few years - early winter frosts are less common and have been replaced by wetter conditions allowing UK gardens to stay looking good well into December.

According to the Met Office, the 1971 to 2000 average winter temperature for the UK was 3.7 °C.  The average winter precipitation for the UK was 332 mm. The winter 2007/8 saw an average UK mean temperature of 4.9 °C and average UK precipitation of 386 mm and they predict a similar situation for this winter.

Probability that UK winter mean temperatures will be below, near or above average.The observed frequency of each of these three categories over the period 1971-2000 is equal at 33.3%. For this winter the warmer category is forecast to be most likely (40% probability), the middle category second-most likely (35% probability) and the colder category least likely (25% probability). Last year the UK winter mean temperature was in the warm category at 4.9 °C. The 1971-2000 average temperature for the UK is 3.7 °C.

This is all good news for more tender tropical plants that don’t cope well with the drop in temperatures but can survive  heavier rainfall.

Let’s hope they are right as I have decided to let my bananas and a few tropicals spend the winter outside this year. This is on the advice of Will Giles of the Exotic Garden http://www.exoticgarden.com/ who says he has been leaving many plants such as cannas and gingers in the ground for the past 8/9 years and not lost any. He covers them with a mulch of straw which seems to keep them protected and still manages to produces fantastic results like these photos taken just a few weeks ago in In Norwich.

I was visiting Will’s wonderful garden to make a DVD about gardening in a changing climate. It was great fun working with Ben at Dreamweave Productions http://www.dreamweaveproductions.co.uk/, who shot and edited a brilliant piece of film that will hopefully inspire many more visitors to this blog to engage in Global Gardening. http://www.globalgardening.org/

Tags: Exotics, Met Office