Just wanted to post a picture of my Grandad’s chrysanths, grown on each year from cuttings taken from his garden when he died 22 years ago. I have no idea of the variety and it doesn’t really matter. I just call them ‘George’. They seem to get better every year. Thanks George!
This beautiful China Aster, Callistephus chinensis, deserved a posting of it’s own just because of it’s glorious deep purple colour. Definitely worth remembering and sharing. It was grown from a packet of seeds called ‘Big Boy Mix’ and certainly lives up to it’s name with strong, 90cm straight stems which make wonderful cut flowers. Oh, that colour!!
It seems from what I have read, that the smell of Fennel, Foeniculum vulgare (hence the pun!) is one of those you either love or hate. I therefore consider myself lucky at the moment because the acid yellow umbelliferous flowers have given way to thousands of seeds which are now ripening on the huge clump by the back gate and there is the most gorgeous smell of licorice / aniseed as we brush past it each morning to take the dogs for a walk.
The tall feathery foliage on thick branching stems makes a bold architectural statement in any garden. It loves a well drained poor soil in full sun and, unfortunately for some, seeds itself freely around the garden. I think the smell takes me back to my childhood eating Bassett’s Licorice Allsorts and aniseed balls!
I generally find that visiting so-called ‘good’ gardens which open for charity is great therapy. Some are better than others but they are all usually better than mine. They provide me with inspiration and motivation, a living catalogue of plants and design ideas I may like to try and, normally, a mixture of admiration and envy. We only visit a handful each year but I look forward to them all with great excitement and anticipation. Coming from a background of launching housing developments, showhomes and new products, I know first hand what goes on for weeks beforehand. The work rate is frenetic, all hands are at all pumps, long lists are made and worked through, lots of midnight oil is burnt all with the aim that at 10am on a certain day, everything will be perfect. So, I always imagined similar effort and energy going on behind the scenes in the weeks and days leading up to a garden opening, the immense pride and satisfaction achieved when the gates opened and people flooded in to admire and coo over beautiful plants at their peak, a manicured lawn cut early that morning, and not a weed in sight.
Perfection! Hidcote Manor Garden in July
However, this weekend we donated £10 to charity to spend an hour in a well known Gloucestershire garden and came away bitterly disappointed. If it had not been for charity, I would have been sorely tempted to ask for a refund. And the reasons for our disappointment? An almost complete absence of colour except green, rampant Alchemilla mollis everywhere , an uncut lawn infested with clover and daisies, borders awash with woundwort, nettles, brambles, sun spurge, chickweed, hairy bittercress and ground elder, and nothing unusual, special or experimental. In short, and my book of humble opinions, not a garden to be particularly proud of and certainly not a garden to put on show for money! My wife and I walked around the garden without a word, occasionally glancing at each other with a grimace or a look of disbelief, but mainly listening to the sycophantic and obsequious comments from what I call the ‘Emperors new clothes brigade’ who either couldn’t or wouldn’t bring themselves to believe the awful truth – the garden was dreadful!
Now, I’m not saying there aren’t any weeds in my lawn and borders, of course there are; but I’m not opening my garden to the public and believe me, if I was, there wouldn’t be any weeds! Talking it over with my wife on the way home, we assumed we must be wrong and that the rather unkempt and bland appearance must have been characteristic of a ‘country cottage’ garden at the end of August. In which case, we both agreed, why bother to open it? If it is a spring/early summer garden past it’s best and with few virtues to show, surely it would have been best to stop opening it in July? I looked at the leaflet when we got home and to my absolute horror, I noticed that the garden has further opening days until end of September!
The garden concerned was not open under the auspices of the National Gardens Scheme but according to them, the top two criteria for opening a garden are:
Those are the very least I would expect of any garden opening to the paying public. I would go further and suggest that anyone who takes the time, trouble and expense of visiting an open garden is going to be a pretty serious gardener themselves and it had better be at least as good and preferably a lot better than their own!
One of my mini trials this year has been to see if so called ‘pollen-free’ lilies are as worthy as the fully loaded versions. The main purpose was to find a group of lilies that I could grow as cut flowers but which did not have the usual annoying habit of dropping their pollen and staining hands, clothes, tablecloths and runners, and even furniture. Strong stuff that pollen! Incidentally, the last thing you do if you want to remove pollen from material of any kind is to use a damp cloth. This just makes things worse. The best thing to do is to use sticky tape and lift the pollen off without rubbing.
I bought 3 pink varieties for the trial; ‘Elodie’, ‘Miss Lucy’ and ‘Brokenheart’.
First mistake was ‘Elodie’. Absolutely no scent! What a waste of time and money. It looked like a lily which should have had pollen but had it washed off. The style and stamens were in place but there were no anthers or stigma and no pollen. Weird!
‘Elodie’ a pretty lilly and no pollen, but no scent either!
Next to open, two weeks later than ‘Elodie’ and thirteen weeks after planting, was ‘Miss Lucy’, a beautiful white and shell pink lily with an intense fragrance. Unlike ‘Elodie’, the reproductive parts are hidden by sepals which do do not open but form a central ‘cone’. Two stems in a vase filled the room with scent.
‘Miss Lucy’ pollen-free and highly fragrant.
A week later than ‘Miss Lucy and fourteen weeks after planting, ‘Brokenheart’ finally opened and is pleasant but not as striking as ‘Miss Lucy’ in my personal opinion.
‘Brokenheart’ was certainly the most branched and with the most flowers, approx 6 on each stem, but the buds opened pointing downwards and gradually lifted their heads to reveal their beauty and amazing scent.
Overall, I would rate this trial a success because it has proved you don’t need the pollen to get beautiful scented lilies. However, the colour palette is currently limited and would therefore not satisfy every occasion. There is also one slightly worrying aspect which I need to investigate further. Although there is no pollen, the flowers appear to exude a colourless sticky residue which falls on to the leaves and then on to the surface holding the vase. In our case, this was an expensive oak side table! Fortunately, it does not seem to stain and is easily wiped off but annoying and unsightly nevertheless.
Being around 60, I came to Information Technology a bit late in life and I have to admit, I found setting up this blog a bit tricky! It is, of course, entirely logical and “easy when you know how”. Trouble is, I didn’t know how and my brain is not tuned in the same way as those born after 1965.
My very own Tech Support Manager!
Fortunately, I have children! And my eldest in particular not only works with computers every day for a large bank, he also takes pity on his poor old Dad! So, my very own Tech Support manager came to my rescue and helped me find my way around. He is cheap, always available and patient with old people – just what I need!
My plant of the day is Gladiolus callianthus commonly known as the Peacock Orchid. It is a simple, beautiful, pure white flower with a maroon centre and strappy leaves. Unlike the usual gladioli where a straight stem is a must, these charming cousins from the high mountains of central Africa droop modestly.
Sometimes also called Acidanthera murielae or Abyssinian sword lily, they have a light scent, especially in the evenings, which may indicate it is a moth attractor.
The corms are not fully hardy but it will be easy to lift them in November and store them in the shed in a paper bag with some shredded paper until spring. I will try them as cut flowers when a few more come out to see how long they last. They are supposed to be good and, being white, would work on their own or with other stronger colours.
Update 31 August 2012
The blooms work well as cut flowers, particularly against a dark background as this photo shows
I look forward to mid August when the Heleniums finally open their tight fat buds to display a feast of bold bright colour in the late summer border. Their timing is perfect. The monardas and echinaceas are just beginning to look a little tired, the crocosmias are over and the foxglove spikes have been chopped down. And then, suddenly, this happens!
Talk about making an entrance! I am looking forward to a similar happening in a few weeks when hundreds of chrysanthemums begin to unleash themselves and start a riot!
My first Carnations, Garvineas and Alstroemerias from the new cutting garden. Delighted!
The autumn clear-up has begun today with the obelisk of sweet peas being removed from the front garden. It has been fabulous this year with several hundred flowers picked from just 6 plants. They are old fashioned strongly scented Grandifloras from saved seed and are always very prolific in pink, purple, red and blue. Strangely, no white ones appeared this year so I guess the seed must still be in the packet! This year we mixed them in the vase with Ammi majus flowers and Thalictrum foliage (a bit like Maidenhair Fern) and it set them off a treat.
My friend Bob Lawson has kindly given me two seedlings of Lothospermum scandens sometimes called Asarina. The common name is ‘climbing foxglove’ and that is exactly what it looks like. A twining climber reaching about 8 ft in a single season and covered top to bottom in shell pink foxglove shaped flowers in mid summer. It self seeds everywhere. Bob has them coming up in his tomato pots! I have kept one and given one to my friend Paddy who has a huge heated Hartley Botanic greenhouse so we will see who has the best plant next year. I love a bit of competition!
In my view, this is a very underrated annual for the cut flower garden. It is easy to grow from seed, is self branching and comes in shades of white, cream, blue, pink and purple. I grew several varieties this year from the dozens available and was not disappointed with any of them. The main attraction is their similarity to chrysanthemums but on smaller stockier plants that don’t need staking. They last up to a week in a vase with a water change every two days and fade slowly without dropping petals everywhere. I love ’em!
Callistephus chinensis, the China Aster
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