Magnolia Stellata - my garden and colour

This is the magnolia shrub in my garden.  I always wonder why the flowers come out first, early in Spring, and the leaves only very much later, by which time the flowers are all but gone.  The flowers are mostly white, but white for me is a colour too - in the sun, they shine with a velvety touch.  The shadows give a variation of different whites.  The centres have a peachy colour to them.

There was a gigantic magnolia tree (the grandiflora type) at the bottom of my childhood garden in Buenos Aires.  The tree was in the neighbour's garden, on the other side of our back garden wall, but the tree was so large that most of its crown showed over the wall.  In spring, it was covered in imposing large white flowers (sometimes with a touch of pink) which gave a wonderful smell. In the summer, the dark green leaves also offered a lovely view.  The neighbour's garden and house were huge - its entrance was on the next street to ours - and I never met them, nor visited the garden.

In our house in London we planted a magnolia tree in the front garden, which also flowered beautifully, but it was much smaller than the one in Argentina - somewhere between a tree and a shrub in size.  Not sure what type it was - not a strellata, but a bit smaller than the grandiflora - possibly a soulangeana, from I can gather by googling 'magnolia types'.  I'm not really a gardener - the point of a garden for me is colour!  In Wells I choose the flowers for our garden by their colour - and they do not always survive the winter...  We only have a few daffodils flowering now - the snow drops have gone - but the whole garden is in bud, and the rose bushes - my favourite flower - are shaping up beautifully.

I just discovered that magnolias originate in Japan...  Glad of having the internet...

Thanks for reading - have a nice weekend!

Alicia