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On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 07:50:54 GMT, "Dave.C"
wrote:

In my local garden centre I saw a very nice climber which had small bluebell
like flowers. I'd not seen it before although it said "grown in the UK since
Victorian times". What surprised me was that it said it was "Frost hardy to
2C". I would have called that frost tender.
Also, the forecaster on News 24 (Jay?)said that today's rainfall would be
beneficial to gardens in the SE and also help the resevoirs. I wouldn't have
thought it would make much difference to either if there is only the
predicted 5-10mm.


You could have some more exotic flora in a few years' time, according to this:

http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=651912005

Green and pleasant land may warm to Mediterranean look

JOHN VON RADOWITZ

PARTS of England could resemble the Mediterranean scenes painted by Vincent Van
Gogh in 50 to 100 years, scientists say.

As climate change brings warmer, drier summers, olive groves, vines and fields
of sunflowers are likely to become common features of south-east England.
Experts doubt that the traditional country garden will survive in the southern
counties.

The rolling lawns and herbaceous borders that are so much a part of Hampshire,
Sussex and Kent may have to make way for palms, shrubs and eucalyptus, while
native woodlands of oak, beech, ash and Scots pine from Cornwall to Scotland
might be at risk.

Experts will discuss the impact of global warming on Britain's landscape at a
two-day conference starting today at the University of Surrey in Guildford.

They forecast that by 2050 summer temperatures in the south-east will be 1.5 to
3C warmer than today, while average summer rainfall could fall by 35 per cent.
If the current rate of warming continues, summers could be as much as 6C warmer
by the 2080s.

I'd be interested to see the mean surface pressure and upper contour
patterns that go with these predictions. Warmer and drier suggests an
increase in the frequency of anticyclonic southerlies i.e. relatively
high pressure over the near continent. That might mean that further east
there would be a cooling due to a higher frequency of northerlies.

I have no problem with the theory that global warming will result in
climate change (and undoubtedly is already) but I have a lot of
difficulty in accepting that the subject is sufficiently well understood
to enable fairly detailed predictions of the changes that will occur at
a spot location (on a global scale SE England is a spot location).

Norman
(delete "thisbit" twice to e-mail)
--
Norman Lynagh Weather Consultancy
Chalfont St Giles 85m a.s.l.
England