Spring is late this year. So late that my garden has no daffodils in flower apart from the very early ‘Cedric Morris’ and this little charmer has been with me since Christmas. It’s so late that the Spring Show at Cumnor has had to be moved from the March 17 to April 10. The show, which relies heavily on spring flowers, will hopefully get plenty of entries by then. (The schedule is available from Cumnor Post Office.) Late springs are good for the garden because everything is held back until warm weather produces a surge of growth. As a result, spring gets concertina’d into a shorter gap so I can promise that this year’s will be glorious. The worst springs begin in January and last for two weeks before being reined in by winter and once this happens the stop-start pattern is repeated with devastating results to flora and fauna.

Spring starts with magnolias for me. The first to flower is Magnolia x soulangeana, a large tree-like shrub with upright blush-pink tulips that usually arrive in early March. This grew on poor soil in Hook Norton and I have seen it all over the country so this is one of the magnolias that doesn’t need acid soil – although it does resent chalk. It is our most widely grown magnolia, but this hybrid was crossed at The Royal Institute of Horticulture in Paris by Etienne Soulang-Boudin in 1820. He hybridised M. denudata with M. liliiflora. The first seedling flowered in 1827 and plants were soon introduced into Britain and more hybrids followed.

M. x soulangeana produces flower on very young plants which is an advantage. Unfortunately the goblet-shaped flowers often catch the frost and discolour in most areas of Britain. If you’re lucky enough to visit Anthony in Devon or Bodnant in North Wales you will see glorious displays and often, in these maritime areas, the flowers escape frost. Bodnant’s display is particularly fine because the magnolias are planted on the steep sides of The Conwy Valley. The cold air slips to the bottom, so frosts are rare, and you view the flowers from above as you look over the valley.

Luckily, the spidery flowers of Magnolia stellata resist the frost much better: the cold air seems to slip through the petals. This small Japanese magnolia, first introduced in 1861, is more like a multi-stemmed shrub and therefore ideal in smaller gardens. The deepest pink form is ‘Rosea’, but most are blush-white. ‘Waterlily’ is a fine form.

In the 1960s, Frances de Vos and William Kosar bred a series of hybrids using the pollen from M. stellata ‘Rosea’ on M. liliiflora ‘Nigra’. They produced eight scented hybrids. ‘Susan’ (pictured) has the darkest flowers of all and, as it flowers in late April or early May, it often misses the frosts.

The hybrids are collectively known as The Eight Little Girls and ‘Betty’. ‘Judy’, ‘Randy’, ‘Susan’, ‘Ricki’, ‘Ann’, ‘Jane’ and ‘Pinkie’ are the others. ‘Ann’, ‘Susan’, ‘Betty’, ‘Jane’ and ‘Pinkie’ have all won the prestigious AGM award. They all vary slightly in flower colour and form; the girl’s names were chosen for their association with The US National Arboretum in Washington DC – where these magnolias were bred.