End of month view – June 2009

Oh dear I’m abit late this month with the End of Month post.  We have had a very busy week as I have been visiting a friend on the South Coast and taking the boys to the Festival of Speed at Goodwood (fantastic). Anyway, better late than never – here is my back garden at the end of June.

Everything has shot up over the last month and the border at the top of the stairs is looking very full.  I think I may need to do some thinning at the end of the summer. In the above photo there are Penstemon, Salvia and Inula hookeri (yellow one at the back)

The new gravel path leading to the pond.  Because it was so bright this morning I couldnt get a photo of the new border to the right but it is filling out nicely. The slope at the back is looking full as well which is great as this time last year it was bare.

I re-did the sides of the wildlife pond this spring and it has really paid off.  However it now means that the planting is so lush that the pond seems to be disappearing from view.  Though this is no bad thing as it is full of duck weed which I just cant get rid off (any ideas).

My little veggie patch is coming into its own now.  We are harvesting mangetout and the autumn planted onions seem to be ready for lifting.  The fennel is looking fab and I love the foilage but I think I should be harvesting them soon.

As ever the patio is full of plants needing a home.  Luckily it has rained overnight so the ground might be more workable and I can get the last half hardy annuals out albeit very late.

The trays of seedlings in the greenhouse have now been replaced by tomatos.  I am growing three varieties in the greenhouse and I have decided not to pinch out the side shoots this year to see if this helps avoid blight. 

 

So that is my back garden (well the best bits) at the end of June.

For last months click here

Pots of delight?

I have been having and on off relationship with planting up pots for the last few years.  Sometimes I am pleased with the results and sometimes not.  In the past I have struggled financially so the pots have been one of the sacrifices I have made but in recent years things have improved and I have found myself in the position where I can afford to treat myself to these things without feeling guilty.

Yes I know some of you will be crying ‘Oh no not more blue glazed pots’ but I like them!  I planted these up for the winter and then decided to try and be clever and just replace the spring bedding with summer bedding.  However, I hadnt fully engaged with how big the Hebes would grow in such a short space of time so they are now languishing in pots on the patio looking for new homes.  The  Festucua ‘Elijah Blue’ is the only perennial to survive in the pots and it looks lovely.  On the other side of the front door I have another large pot (not blue) with a Fushcia Thalia in it, in fact I have two of these plants which I have mixed feelings about but they refuse to be killed by the cold in winter and I havent the heart to ditch them. 

So, when I went shopping for bedding plants to plant in the pots my main objective was to find something that would compliment the Fuschia.  Well, as I havent bought bedding plants for years I really couldnt make up my mind what to get.  My youngest was beginning to have a sense of humour failure and was getting to the point of screaming, ‘Just buy something’!  I had read that to get the best effect in pots, it pays to limit the range of plants you use to just three and to repeat the plants in several pots.  This was the grand plan.

Like all grand plans, it went slightly off the rails.  The Ageratum were meant to be white but they are blue, but in hindsight I do think they compliment the pots quite well and tie in the Festuca.  They also pick up on the lavendar behind the pots. I#m not at all sure if the Begonias are the right choice to go with the Fuschia, I think I thought the white of the flowers would be cooling compared to the orange flowers (yet to appear) but I have my doubts on this combo – time will tell

Wordless Wednesday – 1/7/09 The UnderGardener

Only 3 months for germination!!

I get pathetically excited when seeds germinate, I have even been known to talk to them!  Sad I know.  I get really excited when something which I had more or less given up on germinates.  This week the Clematis mandschurica decided that 14 weeks was long enough sulking and it was time to show its head.

I wouldnt normally consider growing Clematis from seed.  I think its going to be a long haul before I get a plant big enough to produce flowers but I was given these seeds so how could I refuse.  I got them at the Malvern Autumn show which I visited with VP last September.  A gardening mag were giving away free packets of seed if you subscribed.  We decided to fill in the form as we could always cancel the subscription, saying that I didnt ever receive anything so maybe I am getting muddled with why we were given the seeds!

Anyway, having acquired the seeds I cant avoid sowing them no matter how hard I try.  I have to see if I can get them to germinate.  So back in March on one of my mass sowing days I sowed the packet in a small pot, labelled it and made a note in my sowing diary.  As time went by other seeds germinated, were pricked out and potted up.  Nothing from the Clematis and a few other tardy seeds, until this weekend.

I tend to wait until something has germinated before I really look up the plant to find out what I have so I have been on good ol’ google images and below is what I can expect in say 5 years, or is that being optimistic.

Heady scents

My patio is full of heady scent at the moment exuding from just two roses which grow in the border running along its edge.  The one above is Chinatown, a Floribunda rose.  I love this rose, it just keeps on giving.  Its only fault is that the flower stems get very heavy and in the heavy rain we had last Thursday the weight of the wet flowers dragged two of the stems to the ground.  I have had to tie them up which is a pity and as you can see the flowers haven’t quite recovered. However, there are more buds to come and hopefully as the stems are now staked these will not look so bedraggled.  The scent from this rose is quite heady, I have no idea how to describe scents but it carries for quite some distance.

This rose, Handel, is climbing up an obelisk just down from the previous rose.  Its scent is not as strong but very sweet.  I have had this rose for about 4 years and this year seems to be its best with more flowers than in previous years.  Both roses seems to be fairly resistant to disease, unlike a white rose I have which is definitely going.  Handel shares the obelisk with Clematis viticella  Etoile Violette, one of my few clematis. 

I am only really beginning to get into roses and having seen so many roses last weekend in the gardens we visited I think I will have to invest in some more.  I particularly fancy some of the David Austin roses but I would also like a large climber.  I have wondered about growing one up the wall of the house but the patio goes right up to the wall so I suspect the soil underneath is just builders rubbish.  The alternative is an arch or pagoda which I quite fancy at the top of the steps.  I just have to get my head around moving other plants to make it happen – a project for the winter I think!

No GW – come with me to Barnsdale instead!

 

As theres no Gardeners World on tonight I thought I would post about my visit to Barnsdale, one of the former homes of GW, last weekend.  I wasnt sure what to expect.  I came to Gardeners World towards the end of Geoff Hamilton’s time and I wondered how much I would remember.  But it was amazing how familiar so many of the gardens seemed.  At one point in the Artisans Cottage Garden I could almost hear his voice while he explained how he had finished off the obelisk with a toilet ball valve.  We say the rockery made with artificial stones, the Japanese garden, the Woodland Garden and of course the Cottage Garden.

I was particularly keen to visit the Ornamental Kitchen Garden as I have had the book that he wrote on it for many years and I have tried, although not successfully, to incorporate vegetables in my flower borders.  But my favourite part of the garden was the ‘Versailles’ borders and the Rose garden, which is surprising as I’m not a real rose fan. 

Whilst there were some gardens which weren’t Cottage style, like the Japanese Garden, the overwhelming feel to all the small gardens was that of cottage gardening.  Not only because of the planting, with vegetables and flowers together, but because of the way things had been recycled to make compost bins, obelisks, trellis etc.  Geoff Hamilton was an archetypal Cottage Gardener, which is probably why he was President of the Cottage Garden Society, a role his son, Nick has now assumed.  Gardens like the Meditterean Garden just did not have the same feel about them as the cottage gardens, and to me it seemed that the passion and enthusiasm was missing from them.  Dont get me wrong I’m not saying they werent lovely but they just had that certain something missing from them.

 

Having spent several hours going round the gardens, we had an ince cream and adjourned to the nursery.  I had made a list of plants that I liked while going round the garden.  Virtually everything is labelled, although you have to rumage around abit sometimes to find the labels. Someone had told us that everything in the garden was available in the nursery, I thought at the time this was a rather sweeping statement and it proved to be so. The nursery was very well stocked but there was no Geranium pratense ‘Victor Reiter’ or Clematis heracleifolia.  Never mind I still managed to buy three plants, 2 penstamons and a crocosmia.  I would tell you their names but it is raining heavily and I have no desire to retrieve their labels in this rain – I will post about them another time.

All in all it was a lovely visit, and brought back lots of memories but also prompted me to rethink some of the plantings in my garden

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Wordless Wednesday – 24/6/09 Oh for the space

A real Cottage Garden

As I said in my last post I spent this weekend visiting gardens with my garden club.  The second garden we visited was a real cottage garden which was very apt as the Society is the Cottage Garden Society. 

We were told there were over 250 roses in the garden and I have no doubt in believing this statement.  The shed above is smothered in what I believe is Rambling Rector (apologies for the slanting aspect my chair must have been leaning back more than I thought!)

This view is from the far end of the garden looking back at the house.  Again more roses, along with Delphiniums, Thalictrums and Penstamons.  The owner, Stuart Dixon, gave an illustrated talk the next day to the AGM on cottage garden plants which was very good.  His knowledge of plants was exhaustive and exhausting.  I dont know how many slides he got through but it was alot.  Not only did he name the plants but in some cases add when they were introduced to Britain.  He is a real plantsman.

He did keep apologising for the state of his garden as he had been away from home so much giving talks.  Below is a shot of an area that was still under development but I think it has a certain charm to it.

There was another greenhouse which was full of cacti and succulents and a lovely summerhouse that had cost Stuart a £5 to make out of reclaimed material from the demolished village hall across the way.  The sign of a true cottage gardener!

A weekend of sheer indulgence

This weekend I completely indulged in my passion for plants, to the extent that by 4pm on Sunday I couldn’t look at another border or take another photo.  This weekend was the AGM weekend for the Cottage Garden Society.  It was held at Barnsdale Gardens in Rutland, thanks to our President, Nick Hamilton.

I haven’t been to one of the AGM’s before but as I am our local club Secretary I thought I should give it a go and the prospect of visiting Barnsdale and two other gardens during the weekend was sufficient incentive.  Needless to say I have taken loads of photos, bought a few plants, met lots of nice gardeners and absorbed lots of ideas and I will be sharing some of these with you over the next couple of posts.

The weekend started on Saturday with the option to visit 3 gardens in Nottinghamshire.  Our small group decided that two gardens would be more than enough in one weekend as we had quite a long journey before.  The first garden was stunning, that is the only word for it.  It is called Dumbleside and opens for the NGS so if you are over Nottinghamshire way make an appointment to visit.  The owners are very welcoming, offering to dig up any plants we wanted which we thought was a joke but it turned out to be otherwise.

The photo are the top shows the view as you come up the garden from the stream.  There is a steep slope to the garden and it has been carefully terraced with narrow walks along a stream. 

The planting is made up of ferns, trilliums, hostas, hardy orchids and then as you come up you are confronted with a sea of candelabra primulas.  The path meanders through these and you come across irises in abundance and more primulas.  To be honest there is such a wealth of plants that you would need all day to take everything in but we were short of time. 

Back up  the top of the garden and there is a well maintained lawn with herbaceous borders. The large tree at the back of the photo is actually covered in one rose and the scent was quite intoxicating.

At the end we found the plant sales area and I asked the owner about a plant I hadn’t recognised (below).  It turned out to be a Phytolacca.  Do you want one he says and proceeded to dig me up two seedlings which he potted up and presented to me telling me I would regret it in a couple of years as it really self-seeded!!

They were so welcoming it made a lovely start to the weekend and set us up for the next garden which was completely different but more of that another day

Pond in a bath

I am always looking for an excuse to increase the water in my garden apart from the stuff that comes down from the sky.  I have been thinking about having a small pond on the patio for a while now.  We have a reasonably sized wildlife pond which seems to be thriving if the size of the tadpoles is anything to go by but its up the garden and I wanted something that we could enjoy closer to the house.  I also think its important to provide lots of watering spots for wildlife.  They have quite a selection here ranging from a hanging bird bath to the wildlife pond.

The other weekend I took my sons to a flea market at the Three Counties Showground in Malvern.  I have to say it took alot of imagination to see this as the same venue many of us enjoyed in May at the Spring Show.  They have these markets fairly regularly and it never ceases to amaze me how many stall holders there are and how much ‘rubbish’ they have to sell.  I think this is an ultimate form of recycling and am constantly amazed at some of the things people buy.  Saying that I came away with a number of purchases including a tin bath at a cost of £18 (a bargain).  ‘Why’ was the cry of my mother who throws everything and anything away.  My response was I’m either going to use it as a herb garden or a pond.

The herb garden meant drilling holes in the bottom and this wasn’t very appealing at the time as it was quite warm so I went for a pond.  I have had great fun selecting some plants to go in it.  The waterlily is Perry’s Red Glow.  I know its not the smallest but I had to go with what was available at the garden centre and this one had the smallest eventual growth.  I also planted a Sagittaria japonica (Japanese Arrowhead) and a couple of irises (any excuse) and some good ol’ oxygenating weed.  I had to use some old house bricks to bring the marginal plants up to a suitable height and also some Malvern stone to make a landing spot for the birds. 

I am really pleased with the finished result – my only concern is that if we do indeed have a hot summer (I doubt it personally) then will the tin make the water too hot?  Hopefully the size of the bath will stop this happening.  If this does happen I will revert to plan B, put the plants in the big pond and plant the bath up as a herb garden.