Lathyrus latifolius ‘White Pearl’

I have been absent for a couple of weeks due to holidays and a very poorly wife who contracted a nasty dose of Covid courtesy of Easy Jet! Air travel still carries risks, and several friends have succumbed to the pesky pandemic in recent weeks. On a lighter note, Dahlia ‘David Howard’ looking resplendent in the morning dew and new to me this year, but I am disappointed to find that the flowers do not go over well, hanging on in tatters unless I am extremely diligent with deadheading, removing the spent flowers as soon as they go over. This is a shame as I love the beauty and art of the flower.

I have a love-hate relationship with Ivy. It is making a takeover bid on my western boundary fence and is quite a nuisance. However, when it matures and turns arboreal, the flowers are a magnet for bees, wasps, and butterflies at this time of year, and the black fruits are a favourite of Blackbirds in the winter. On mild days it is literally buzzing with life. I think the wildlife will win this one!

It has been a bumper year for grapes and the harvest from my single vine was 11.3kgs which is astonishing. The variety is Vitis labrusca ‘Isabella’, the Pink Fox Grape, predominantly used for jam making in the US but sweet enough to eat as a dessert grape, if you don’t mind the pips!.

The fruits look more like blueberries than grapes!

The stand out pollinator food plant this year has undoubtedly been Salvia uliginosa, which has constantly been covered in bees, particularly bumble bees, since May and is still going strong. It is very tall and ethereal, swaying in the slightest breeze, but the bees hang on determinedly. As I have mentioned previously, due to their size, the bees do not enter the flowers, they make a hole in the base from the outside to sip the nectar. Clever little bees!

We all make mistakes! Some years ago I planted one small pot of the tall grass, Miscanthus sinensis, at the back of the shrubbery where I naively thought it would stay and provide a nice backdrop for other, shorter shrubs. It has now spread throughout the shrubbery, popping up everywhere and taking over. A real survivor, it is totally bombproof and makes the very best of whatever conditions it finds itself in.

The seedheads are also beautiful at this time of year and will stand throughout the winter, looking particularly good after frost.

Another casualty of last year’s harsh winter was my only remaining Canna ‘Tropicana’ which I leave in the ground under a good mulch of compost. This would usually flower in August but here we are in October and it is only just beginning to flower. It only has two flower spikes this year instead of the usual three or four which probably means part of the enormous tuber turned to mush due to the cold and wet.

Finally, surely the purest white of all pure whites, (with just a hint of green!) Lathyrus latifolius ‘White Pearl’, planted many years ago and almost forgotten until these perfect, but unscented, everlasting Sweet Pea flowers adorn the arch over which they mingle with the delicate pink rose ‘Dorothy Perkins’.

Have a great weekend

David

You know it’s been a ‘funny year’ when your perennial sweet peas don’t flower until August! This one, Lathyrus latifolius ‘White Pearl’, is normally out in June but it will flower right through until October now. Sadly, it has no scent, but the brilliant pure white flowers shine out from the gloom of the arch where it is competing for space with Clematis cirrhosa ‘Freckles’ and Rosa ‘Dorothy Perkins’.

I may have found a good reason to keep the Phlox! It seems to be a favourite flower of the Hummingbird Hawk Moth. This is the best pic out of the 32 I took! The wing beats are so fast, my ageing digital camera had no chance. I felt quite privileged that it came to visit.

When he came to my Open Day in June, a kind friend gave me a small seedling of Physalis peruviana, the Cape gooseberry or Peruvian groundcherry. From these little green lanterns it will produce the familiar orange fruits in papery cases. It is a very thirsty plant but very productive. I enjoy growing something new each year, something I have never grown before, and often something a friend introduces me to, as in this case.

This little houseplant is the well-named ‘Mother of Thousands’. It’s proper name is actually the impossible Bryophyllum daigremontianum or Kalanchoe daigremontiana, a tough tropical succulent from South America and Mexico, and its clever trick is to produce its baby plantlets on the edges of its leaves! These babies then drop into the pot or on the ground in the wild, and produce new plants.

This Michaelmas Daisy just popped up all by itself in the front garden. I certainly didn’t plant it and I don’t think any of my neighbours have it in their gardens. How it came to be here is a mystery but in a good way. No idea which one it is but a good guess would be Symphyotrichum novi-belgii, the New York Aster, which is now widespread in rough grassy areas in the countryside, although it is flowering a little earlier than normal, Michaelmas Day being 29th September!

Some of the repeat flowering roses are putting on a second flush of flowers. Rosa ‘Roald Dahl’ and ‘Boscobel’ are just two of many. Sadly, most of my roses now have the dreaded blackspot and are defoliating. I will once again try to pick up all the fallen leaves but it is tricky getting under such large prickly bushes! I don’t like spraying chemicals in the garden but a few friends have recommended Garlic Wonder from Solufeed, a concentrated solution derived from garlic and other natural plant based compounds which is diluted into a spray and applied throughout the season. Those who have tried it say it is excellent as a natural alternative to insecticides and fungicides, and they don’t get blackspot or mildew!

In early 2020 I began to eliminate all the pink Japanese Anemones from the garden and just keep the white ones which I believe to be ‘Honorine Jorbet’. The pink ones were spreading like mad and dominating the borders so they had to go. It has taken me 4 years but I have not seen any this year so I think the garden is free of them at last. The white ones are much better behaved and stay in their allotted space without spreading unduly. The little patch has doubled in size over 4 years which is what I wanted and expected. If only all plants did what you expected!

Have a great weekend

David