Astrantia major ‘Alba’

When I started this blog last year I had no idea how addictive it would become and apart from a blip over winter when I was in hibernation, hardly a day passes without drafting a post or two and it has definitely helped to shape  my thoughts and ideas. Taking the camera out into the garden regularly has also improved my photography skills and provided hundreds of photographs I otherwise wouldn’t have taken. By reading and following other blogs I have recognised the value and importance of good photography which can make or break a posting. I have learned about ‘depth of field’, the value of early morning sunlight, and by using both standard and macro lenses I have been able to get up close and personal with my fauna and flora.

Aquilegia vulgaris

Despite the wettest summer for 100 years, on the whole 2012 was a pretty good year for the garden. I got most of the digging and re-shaping work done in the warm, dry days of March and early April and once planted, everything grew twice as fast and twice as tall. Flower colours were brighter, less bleached by a hot summer sun, and the greenery was lush and sappy. Fortunately, my planting schemes were tightly packed, perhaps over-planted, and so supported themselves without much staking, although the discreet rusty hoops and girdles bought at Malvern in May came in handy for a few choice plants which had collapsed the year before and were even taller this year.

However, it wasn’t all good. The slugs and snails revelled in the wet conditions and gorged on my dahlias and hostas, caterpillars munched young seedlings of Sweet Rocket and my redcurrants disappeared one morning without a trace. The gooseberry bushes were shredded by sawfly and, once again, the Viburnum beetle turned leaves into lace doilies.

Back in the dark, cold days of January and February, I set about turning the old vegetable patch into a ‘cutting garden’ where I could grow flowers specifically for the vase. I went public in my Garden News column claiming that I would have flowers in the house from Mothers Day to Christmas Day. Well………maybe next year! The raised beds I made from scaffold planks were just right, the new top soil from Dandy’s mixed with compost provided an ideal growing medium, it was just that I grew too much! I squeezed in too many plants because I couldn’t bear to throw any away and then the staking and tying-in became impossible. What a mess! It all started so well and we did have flowers every few days from June to September but the Chrysanths were a disaster, some reaching 7 ft tall because I had failed to ‘stop’ them at the right times and when the wind blew in October I lost the lot. Snapped like twigs. Still, you live and learn, it won’t happen again next year!

As I reported extensively in another posting, the Autumn raspberries were a triumph, they loved the wet summer and the composted horse manure I applied in February. I left a few canes to see if I could get an earlier crop but it was not very successful. We did get some fruit but it was tasteless. Perhaps in a better year the sugar levels would have increased improving the flavour but I think Autumn raspberries are just that, for Autumn!

The plants which pleased me most last year were two perennials I had grown from seed in 2011 and planted out thinking they would get eaten by slugs or fail to re-appear. They were special because they were the only seedlings I had managed to raise from an entire packet of seeds from the Cottage Garden Seed Exchange and I had only seen them in photographs, never in real life. The first was Thalictrum rochebrunianum, a meadow rue with the most beautiful lilac petals and bright yellow stamens. It made me gasp when I first saw it in a photograph and I wasn’t disappointed when it grew to 5 ft tall and several stems produced a frothy mass of flowers as if to say “there you are, told you I was gorgeous!”

Thalictrum rochebrunianum

The other was Sanguisorba menziesii with 3ft tall bottle brush flowers on strong waving stems which I honestly didn’t think would survive as it was barely 6in high when I planted it. It turned out to be a stunning mid-border beauty which is already growing strongly again this year.

Sanguisorba menziesii

I suppose the highlight, and what most of our friends seem to remember, were the Sweet Peas in the front garden. Each year we have planted an obelisk with 9 mixed Grandifloras in the same spot and they seem to love it. I don’t have the time or the patience to go out every day from May to August and cut them, remove the tendrils, dead head them and tie them in, but Cathy does and she does it well.

We also joined the Which? Gardening trial team and grew Sweet Pea ‘High Scent’ for which we submitted our opinion on a number of aspects. I shouldn’t reveal our findings yet as the results have still not been published but all I will say is they won’t be top of our list! 2013 is Mr Fothergills ‘Year of the Sweet Pea’, so we are pushing the boat out and growing 20 different varieties in a trial to find the best cut flowers for length, scent and form. We might even enter a local competition!

We learned a lot last year, had success and failure in equal measure, knocked the garden into shape and enjoyed fabulous colour and scent which is why we do it. This year has started off slowly due to the cold weather but is now catching up fast. I am trying to keep a cool head as I race around with my constantly lengthening list of “must do” jobs so that I apply what I have learned and gradually improve my knowledge and skill in the garden.

I went on my annual pilgrimage to the Malvern Spring Gardening Show today and enjoyed every moment. There was far too much to see in one day, and certainly far more than my feet would tolerate, but by going armed with a list of essential “must see” plants, show gardens and accessories, I managed to see everything in just 6 hours!’ This was my ‘Plant of the Day’, Tulip ‘Flaming Spring Green’ which was simply scrumptious and definitely on my list for September.

Prompted by a post from a blogging friend, Helen Johnstone aka ‘The Patient Gardener’ this morning, I enjoyed a visit to the Alpine Gardening Society stand and found Helen’s exhibit in the Open Show which earned her a second prize and certainly deserved it. 

Nearby there was a winning exhibit of Phalaris arundinacea ‘Picta’ aka ‘Gardeners Garters’ which surprised me as it is so easy to grow I would describe it as invasive. I have it in my pond and popped some cuttings into some nasty thick clay where it has thrived and the clump is at risk of being dug up as it is getting so big.

This is a bit difficult to see but it is Anthriscus ‘Ravens Wing’, which I had previously lusted after, However, having now seen it in the flesh I am glad I didn’t lust too hard, it is what it is….just black Cow Parsley!

My major purchase of the day were ‘Plant Belles’, gorgeous rusty steel plant supports to help with my floppy herbaceous problem. Stop it! I am talking specifically about my lovely but wayward hardy chrysanthemums which, despite a ‘Chelsea Chop’ in June, grow relentlessly upward and then inevitably fall over in the slightest late summer wind. As they are in the front garden and on display for all to see I needed something a little better than my home-made woven hazel contraptions.

On the way home, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of three ‘Breeze Houses’ in a pub car park. Good idea to use wood and thatch for a smoking shelter!

                                                                                                                                                    Sometimes nature does the work for you. I had no idea this wallflower was going to be yellow or that the tulips would be cream and purple but they go perfectly with Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’.

It’s only 3 May and the roses are already covered in aphids. This is not a good omen. I read somewhere recently that it is going to be a really bad year for aphids, slugs and snails and it looks like they were right. Out with the soapy water spray!

This old stone sink has been kicking around the garden for years. It is very shallow and has a wobbly bottom but it is a little piece of history and I like it a lot. I have decided to plant it up with alpine plants like Sempervivums, Saxifrage, Phlox and Sisyrinchium. It is extremely heavy so my strapping son helped me lift it on to the corner of the pond where it is now neatly hiding the water inlet pipe. More news to come!

Ok, it’s not very pretty and I need more practice, but surely not bad for a first attempt! The sweet peas will scramble up no problem and it should look au naturel.

Funny how these things happen. I was chatting to a neighbour called Mike the other day and he mentioned that his ‘pension’ was a small 4 acre woodland he had bought as an investment some years ago and which he was now actively managing. “What type of woodland?” I asked him, “mostly Ash, Hazel, Birch, Chestnut and Sycamore with Hawthorn and Blackthorn hedges, it hasn’t been touched for years” he said. “I am gradually bringing it back into a good state, opening it up to let light in and getting rid of the rubbish like the self sown Ash and Sycamore which are choking out the good stuff”. He was obviously excited about it and it made me wish I had a woodland of my own. “I’ve learnt so much about trees that I never knew before” he said “and I am quite good at coppicing Hazel now too”.

It was when he said “coppicing Hazel”, that my ears really pricked up and I thought of all those lovely bean poles and pea-sticks. And sure enough, he offered me as much coppiced material as I wanted – delivered to the door, free of charge. “Glad to get rid of it” he said. What a bloke. Mike, my new best friend!

I have never woven hazel supports before but have often admired them in ‘posh’ gardens and thought how natural they look, much better than bamboo canes and string. I paid a lot of money for rusty steel supports at Malvern last year and they are unobtrusive but somehow I like the simplicity of Hazel even better. I have yet to find out if my ham-fisted attempt at weaving them together is going to work!

This tall Knautia macedonica is particularly floppy and can grow 1.5m high so it needs good support for it’s waving stems and dark red flower heads. I know it looks a bit rough and ready at the moment but in a few weeks it will all be hidden by foliage. It’s like an old fashioned ladies wired underskirt keeping everything where it should be!

I’m back! I know I have been absent for a while and I hope you didn’t give up on me. I think I hit the infamous blogger’s ‘six month wall’. For reasons which are difficult to explain, a lot of bloggers lose the enthusiasm or the desire to continue their blogs and often stop altogether. The impetus stalled and I felt really guilty. Admittedly, I have also been more involved with committee business for the Cheltenham Horticultural Society for which I am now Publicity Officer, but that is probably just an excuse. Anyway, I have a number of ideas for keeping the blog fresh, interesting and entertaining and I hope you will stick with me.

I hope you like the new header picture; it was taken last week at the garden of author and gardening journalist Mary Keen at The Old Rectory, Duntisbourne Rous near Cirencester. I have admired Mary’s writing in the Daily Telegraph and The RHS Garden magazine for many years and looked forward to her NGS Open Day on Monday. It was….disappointing. This deserves a blog post of its own and I will put finger to keyboard very shortly on this topic.

It has been a long, wet, difficult winter and I have to confess, I have been a bit depressed about the garden. Living in a bungalow with the garden on three sides gives me the opportunity to move from room to room and see every aspect regardless of the weather. This is generally a good thing. It enables me to look out and plan the work to be done, often very early in the morning in pyjamas!

This picture reflects my most recent activity, getting the raised beds ready for a variety of cut flowers and vegetables. I am going to try tomatoes outdoors this year having built new staging in the greenhouse over winter where the tomatoes and chillies used to grow. I once had an allotment and grew tomatoes outdoors very successfully there so I am hoping the same will be true in a raised bed.

The electric propagators are all full of emerging seedlings in the greenhouse and as usual I will shortly run out of space. I always end up juggling between the main greenhouse, the tiny Wickes ‘overspill’ pop-up greenhouse, cold frames and the big risk…..planting out early! I check the detailed short and medium term weather forecast every day and it looks like we may have seen the last of the frosts so this weekend will see the dahlias planted out in the cutting garden.

A friend suggested I grow my sweet peas up ‘outward facing’ 8′ canes this year for a change. The theory is it allows a row of strawberries to be grown in front of the sweet peas and the flowers rise above and out towards you for easy picking…my wife (the sweet pea fairy who does all the tying-in and picking) is not convinced yet!

One of the wonderful side benefits of our old Labrador who constantly sheds hair is the copious amount of free nesting material it provides the blue tits at this time of year. I put it into a fat ball spiral feeder and it’s gone in days.

Hoping and praying for a long hot summer, the next most important job is to install 100 metres of ‘leaky pipe’ irrigation which has been in the shed for nearly 10 years waiting for this moment. Like a lot of things we own, it was bought on a whim, an impetuous moment of weakness, but I still think it was £65 well spent. I planned to install it last year but, as we all know, it turned out not to be necessary!

This is pretty Chinodoxa luciliae ‘Pink Giant’ which usually follows the snowdrops and accompanies the ubiquitous grape hyacinths, Muscari armeniacum, but this year it sits in the cold and wet soil, reliable but alone.