Month: June 2008

Well anyone who reads this will probably be cursing me for wishing for rain.  But here it is this evening, pelting down in bucket loads.  Aside from a few heavy showers about ten days ago we haven’t had a decent drop of rain for weeks now.  The ground really needs it as it has been drying out very quickly in the wind.   Its funny how the weeds are flying it and I’ll have to be on the lookout for slugs and snails.  Blighty potatoes! Aaaargh!!!

Just so you know i’m wishing for more sun from Thursday!!!!

I’m sowing seeds like mad again.  The greenhouse is still full.  I planted six melon plants in the greenhouse bed.  Blenheim orange and Hales best.  I’ve never grown melons before.  I put plenty of well-rotted horse manure and chicken manure pellets into the soil.  The plants are small enough but I’ll take good care of them.  The peppers are not big enough to go in yet.  I’ll have to feed the tomatoes soon.

Totally unrelated to gardening but I won the toss (between myself and my husband) to walk on the beach after a long journey the other evening (the kids were asleep).  It was sunset and I was just on time to watch a shoal of dolphins swimming out of clew bay.  I was snap happy for about twenty minutes.  This is the best one.

Well I’ve had the best weekend ever in Birmingham.  I got to meet the wonderful Monty Don and had him sign his book and i got pictures too.  He is such a nice man.  You could tell he is a sick man but for the love of the people and his commitments he turned out.  He will not be on tv again this year but he may come back in Jan ’09 if someone will have him.  This is a sign to someone in RTE to please start persuing him now even if it is just to have him chat to Pat Kenny etc etc.  It could be the best thing they get for a long time!!!!  He chatted to everyone equally and didnt rush us.  He is a true gent.

 The rest of the events were just as fabulous too.  The fowers and plants there made my eyes water.  I just love Japenese Maples, grasses and ferns and to my delight I was surrounded by them all weekend.  The Bonsai sections were really fascinating too in a way i had never considered before.  The whole show opened my eyes to some plant i have never considered before.  I had been to the Joe Swift theatre on Friday and found it quite interesting what he had to say about starting his allotment. On Saturday I went to the Monty Don theatre where he told us all about his trips to the 80 gardens programmes he did.  Very interesting also.  It made me realise that I am not the only one who keeps changing my mind on what I like as each week my ideas of "cool" change in the garden.  

The Good Food area was just a exciting and I got to see Gordon Ramsay.   My husband was very pleased to entertain himself in the Beers of the World area, so we both got lots out of the weekend.  

 All in all I would go back again in a heart-beat.  

 

 

This must be my favourite flower. I planted the orange one years ago and it has spread like mad. I bought this one at a charity open garden and the label said the colour was beige and pink!!! I’ve just planted red ones –watch this space!

We bought the house in 1999.  Both the front and back garden were covered in grass.  I began with the back garden and put in roses and honeysuckle by the back wall, a variegated wedding cake plant just beyond the back door and a variety of other plants.  Over time, we added a play area complete with painted brush handles so that they looked like colouring pencils.  However, once the first child arrived, it became apparent that the back garden was not of any use to us.  To add to this, the garden sloped towards the house, with the right-hand section being very wet.  So, in early 2008, we got a plan from a registered garden designer (Barry Lupton).  I asked for a large patio area, a play area, garden beds for plants, a bit of grass and somewhere for composting and planting up.  I did say to him to treat the garden as a blank canvas but when it came to uprooting some of the plants, I couldn’t so as a result, I didn’t stick exactly to his planting plan.

 

Hubby and father-in-law began in March 2008, working Saturdays and over the Easter break.  They completed it by mid May.  One of the biggest problems was the levelling, due to the severe slope.   The main flower bed is 6” higher than the plan so that a lessor amount of soil would have to be taken out at the very top.  The top itself is 6” lower than the existing garden.  The wet patch remains – my father suggested years ago that there was a spring there, which I dismissed but now I am beginning to agree with him.  Planted in the wet, north-west facing flower bed is the bamboo, acer, ferns, columbines, 1 hosta and 3 elephants ears.  Of the original plan, I changed from black bamboo to a green bamboo, as one web-site stated that black bamboo are poisonous and I didn’t plant the foxgloves either as they definitely are poisonous.  I planted instead a lupin and 2 delia bulbs. 

 

In the main bed (south facing), there was supposed to be Acer Griseum; again I didn’t plant this as it does grow to 10m (all be it a slow grower).  I simply didn’t want a tree of that size.  Instead, I planted a witch hazel (2m max, flowers Dec-Mar) and one of the plants that I didn’t dump – a tree I don’t know the name of but which produces blue bell like flowers.  I had also kept clemantis from the old garden and as I always loved the smell of winter jasmaine, I purchased that to correspond.  The rest of the plants from the planting list I have attempted to plant but the grasses I have not been able to get from any of my local garden suppliers.  Directly from the kitchen door, I have rosemary, 2 different types of thyme, parsley and chives.  I didn’t plant the sage, as per the list primarily because I don’t use it for cooking and it grows everywhere.  I got 3 new masterwort’s at the BBC’s Gardeners’ World show which were on the plan, I kept a mop-head hydrangea from the old garden and I bought a peony at the show.    

 

One plant from the old garden was too big so I took cuttings.  They were supposed to be planted in a container, as per the plan.  However, the plant in question is a rose that my late mother gave me.  When we were growing up, my mother would send us out to the garden to do something and would use various plants as a marker as to where to find what it was she wanted us to do/find.  One such rose was known as “your grand-mothers rose” as my mother brought it from her homeplace to our house.  Affectionately, we would call it “the Laffinsfolly rose” as the townsland that my mother came from was Laffinsfolly, near Drumbane, Thurles.  For years, the rose was known only as passing down from one generation to the next but not long before my mothers’ death, she and her first cousin were at a funeral, and they passed by their mother’s home place.  There, before my mother’s eyes was “the rose”.  So, it emerged that my granny brought it from her home place, my mother brought it from her home place and I was given it from my home place.  “The rose” is now known as “your great-great granny’s rose” by my children!  How could I put that into a container and leave it there?  So, it has pride of place, (even though there are only 2 tiny cuttings) in the front of the main bed.  The pink flower beside my name is a photograph of the rose.  However, it does not do it justice so when it is big enough to flower, I intend taking better photos.  

 

The top left hand corner, which gets sun all day, was supposed to have a flowering cherry (Prunus Kanzan); instead I planted one of the “saved” plants – the bottle brush plant.

 

The back garden is more or less done.  The garden shed is just outside the back door (approx 1ft deep, 5ft long and 10 ft high).  The clothes line moved to the side of the house, which is now covered in with a clear plastic roof.  The composter and wormery moved to beside the oil tank, and there was still room up there for a timber stand, to store containers.  

Apart from that, the back garden has filled out.  Mind you, why wouldn’t it with all that rain! The front garden has all the hot colours and the back has the calming colours.   A dahlia came up in the middle of the main border which will have to go out to the front, along with a couple of gladioli.  I have to give the lawn a good feed as it is starting to turn slightly yellow.  I have the spring bulbs bought and some of them planted up.