My Garden This Week

Posted on June 20, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

Unashamedly pinching an idea from other garden bloggers, I have decided to put up a selection of photos each week of the things I am most pleased with. These would not warrant a post of their own but deserve to be recorded and published for my records and others’ pleasure. So, in no particular order, a quick tour.

The Kolwitzia amabilis ‘Pink Cloud’ commonly called the Beauty Bush is in full flower and laden with pink and white blossom. It only has a faint scent but the bees don’t seem to mind. It is absolutely buzzing.

I love alliums and this Cristophii really captures the attention. It is not tall, perhaps 60 cm or so but the flower head is a good 25 cm in diameter, a perfect circle of tiny star shaped flowers. How does it do that???

The height and intense colour of Purple Sensation makes it stand out in the borders and I think it looks good paired with Nectaroscordum siculum, the Sicilian Honey Garlic, which is a major bee attractor and totally hardy.

The first red dahlia of the year is Arabian Night and what a stunner! Very early but one of the benefits of starting them off under glass.

The gorgeous fuchsia pink of Gladiolus communis ssp. byzantinus, apparently a good old English cottage garden plant despite it’s obvious Mediterranean origins. I bought a 9 cm pot at Malvern last year with one bulb in flower and popped it into the front border. This year it came up strongly and with 7 separate flower spikes so it seems to naturalise and multiply well.

It’s really difficult to get a good photo of this plant and despite several attempts this is the best I can do with my basic Nikon. It is Silene dioica ‘Firefly’, a cultivated double form of the roadside wild flower, Pink Campion. Very floriferous over a long period and fully 120 cm tall but needing support to stop it flopping. I put in some hazel twigs early which are now doing their job beautifully and inconspicuously.

The annual Skizanthus and Sweet Rocket are providing some colour in the front border while the late summer perennials are preparing to put on their show next month. I have kept some wallflowers going as well for the same reason. I hate ripping them out in full flower, it seems such a waste. Anyway, it’s only tradition that they are removed to make way for summer bedding so they can stay a while longer.

Aquilegias have been fantastic this year. They have popped up all over the garden and in every shade of pink, purple and blue. I let them grow wherever they want because their slender stems always seem to fit in and never get in the way of other things. This incredible self-sown hybrid has an amazing number of flowers and is 120 cm tall. If only they had scent they would be the world’s favourite cottage garden plant.

In the back garden, the poor dry soil in front of the beech hedge doesn’t support much life but it has been colonised by Geranium macrorrizhum ‘Bevan’s Variety’, Geranium magnificum and hybrid Aquilegias. I don’t care if the path gets covered for a couple of months, we walk on the grass and in August they get cut to the ground when I trim the hedge and then they grow back in a few weeks and sometimes give me another show of flowers in October. One of the hardest working plants in the garden and the least fussy.

And just one more Aquilegia, this one is ‘Nora Barlow’ one of the Barlow series of cultivars which is truly perennial and comes back true every year. It lacks the ‘spurs’ of the hybrids and species but has wonderful double flowers instead.

There is lots more about to happen. The Inula hookeri is in bud for the first time, the lilies are about to open and, best of all, we have started picking Sweet Peas!

Reds

Posted on June 14, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

Garvinea ‘Rachel’

There is something about red. I just love it. I seem to be drawn to it. It is warm and ripe and hot. I have a lot of reds in the garden. Here are just a few.

Salvia microphylla ‘Royal Bumble’

This pretty Salvia is in flower at the moment right outside the garden room window alongside the popular ‘Hot Lips’.

Red Pelargonium

Pelargoniums are such a reliable performer in a hot summer and I always buy a few to put in pots around the patio.

I love big blousy red poppies

And red dahlias…this is ‘Redskin’

And Geum ‘Mrs Bradshaw’ a chance seedling introduced by Perry’s nursery in Enfield

You might have read about my love of chillies and this particular Cayenne variety which grows so well in my greenhouse

Yum Yum!

And finally, our scrumptious and reliable autumn raspberry ‘Brice’ .

Just can’t resist red!

Where are all the Bees?!

Posted on June 14, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

Fear not! Apples are forming..the bees have been!

Davids Garden Diary

The apple tree is heaving with blossom and I am hopeful of a very good crop of our delicious apples this year except for one thing……..there are no bees! Last year it was the warm March followed by a cold and wet April and May which did for them. What is happening this year? We had a cold start but it has been warm and dry for several weeks now and yet there are very few bees flying. Even last weekend with several consecutive warm and sunny days I hardly saw any. I have a bad feeling………..

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The Plant Sale

Posted on June 14, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

Back in February I suggested to our Horticultural Society Committee that we hold a Plant Sale at the end of May or early June and was given the task of organising it. Me and my big mouth! However it turned out well.

One of our members was also organising a village Open Gardens weekend for 8/9 June and invited me to hold the plant sale, feeding off the publicity and visitors generated by eleven beautiful gardens and scrummy cream teas at the church. The weather was glorious, the people came in droves and we sold hundreds of plants donated by our members and local nurseries.

We generated £1294 in sales over two days, no mean feat with plants costing from 50p to £2, and donated £524 to charity. As always, our wonderful members rose to the occasion, grew extra plants, divided herbaceous perennials, helped me to set everything up, manned the stalls, counted the money and cleared up at the end. It was fun to do, worthwhile publicity for the Society and profitable for the charities which benefited.

I have a feeling I will be doing it again next year!

Just because…….

Posted on June 12, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

I am looking at colour combinations which, until recently, I was hopeless at. My wonderful wife would say I am still hopeless but I am striving to improve. I would plant anything with anything without a thought for how it would look. I tend to look at plants individually rather than in groups. However, all that has to change in my ongoing search for enlightenment.

I downloaded a colour wheel and taught myself what should go together so that I could plant borders and pots with some co-ordination. I wouldn’t ordinarily put orange and wine red together but the Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ and Cotinus coggygria seem to blend together well. Perhaps this colour combining thing really works! Normally I would have kept orange with yellow and green but because it is next to red on the wheel it is ok.

Perhaps it’s the blues, purples and whites of the geraniums and the yellow/green of the Tellima which soften the whole thing and bring it together in a cohesive combination.

Any thoughts???

Beauty and The Beast

Posted on June 11, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

Have you ever looked at a dragonfly close up? It is exquisite. The detail is quite extraordinary. Click on the picture and have a closer look.

Where are all the Bees?!

Posted on May 28, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

Small White – Big Trouble!

Posted on May 28, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

On Sunday, in the early morning sunshine, I noticed this Small White butterfly just emerging from it’s pupa and pumping blood into it’s wings to expand them. Shortly, it will be off around the garden laying eggs from which will emerge hundreds of tiny green and black hairy caterpillars which will then eat their way through my precious plants like they did last year!

Hesparis matronalis (Sweet Rocket) seedlings munched by Small White butterfly caterpillars in August 2012

It’s a dilemma I have every year. I love wildlife and try to garden organically by encouraging natural predators rather than using chemicals but it seems these caterpillars arrive too late for the birds to forage for their young. Either that or they don’t taste good!

Kiftsgate

Posted on May 28, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

The unique Water Garden at Kiftsgate Court Gardens

We met some friends for lunch on Saturday at the Three Ways House Hotel in Mickleton near Chipping Camden, home of the famous ‘Pudding Club’, where we had a catch-up and a delicious lunch. The reason we chose Mickleton is so that we could enjoy our first visit to Kiftsgate Court Gardens in the afternoon. For anyone reading this from another planet, Kiftsgate is the famous house and gardens created in the twenties by Heather Muir, carried on in the fifties by her daughter Diany Binny and now in the care of her Granddaughter, Anne Chambers.

Rosa filipes ‘Kiftsgate’ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The world famous Kiftsgate rose, Rosa filipes ‘Kiftsgate’, claimed to be the largest rose in England, is now grown by those select few with the vast space needed for it’s rampant but beautiful climbing and sprawling habit. The original rose planted in the 1930s is still going strong at 20 metres high and 25 metres long and now covering three trees in the Rose border.

On arriving at Kiftsgate you are greeted by several tables of plants for sale including, of course, the Kiftsgate rose whetting the appetite for later! The house and gardens stand high in the Cotswold Hills overlooking Malvern and the Vale of Evesham to the south west. Built in 1887 by Sydney Graves Hamilton, the design is a strange mixture of Victorian and Georgian with a grand Italian inspired high portico moved piece by piece from nearby Mickleton Manor.

The house was bought by Heather Muir and her husband after the first world war in 1918 and she set about terracing the hillside and installing stone paths and steps winding their way down the banks to begin what was to become one of the most famous and important gardens in England.

As everybody knows, Spring has been a month late this year so the gardens were not quite into their stride but nevertheless there was still lots of colour thanks to bulbs, magnolias and rhododendrons which were a surprise given the almost certainly alkaline conditions. It was the carefully planned colour combinations that impressed me most and reminded me that gardening is, after all, an art form. Colour, light and shade, shape, form and texture create pictures and images which, for me, are just as valid as anything painted by an artist.

I found myself making mental notes of plants which worked well and noted the accents and punctuations which made the whole thing hang together.

These orange ‘Ballerina’ tulips were used extensively with darker colours and muted tones like the Ligularia and the Rodgersia to make stunning combinations.

The red tulips in this border will be followed shortly by red roses ensuring a seamless transition and maintaining continuity of the theme. Clever.

It was subtle touches like this simple pot of lilac tulips against the green box hedging and grey paths that inspired me. Kiftsgate is literally next door to Hidcote Manor Garden which we will visit several times this year with our National Trust membership. It is always good to go back to a garden in different seasons and we will certainly be back to Kiftsgate for the roses in a month or so and again later in the year.

A truly elegant and thoughtfully created garden.

Dahlia Delight

Posted on May 28, 2013 by davidsgardendiary

You know when you thought you had dug up all the Dahlia tubers from last year?

I dug them up, dried them off and carefully stored them in a frost free place keeping them ‘just moist’ so they wouldn’t dry out, checked every week and carefully brought them back into growth on the heated bench in the greenhouse in April. These were the ‘Bishop’s Children’ dahlias grown from seed and much admired in the front ‘hot’ border. After lifting them I dug over the border between the perennials, added compost and left everything to nature which then kindly provided three very cold months with frequent heavy and prolonged frosts. And yet…….up they have come again! The couple of tubers I missed, left in the open ground all winter with no added protection and probably speared with the border fork!