Month: June 2009

Just what I always wanted !!!!

Wisteria

bloom

Deer at Lough Dan

The Skip Bag!!

Bloom 2007 video

Some veg beds way in front.2009.

Fresh to the table

Jerusalem Sage

Planting

Visited Bloom today and was really impressed by the whole set up! we got there about 10am and the place was already filling up, stayed till about 1.30 and we both really enjoyed the few hours, picked up a few bargains with a 4 metal plant supports and a 7 1/2 ft metal obelisk all for 80 euro!! picked up 3 plants the pick of which was an Acer (autumn harvest) quite a large specimen about 4ft tall reduced to 25 euro!! also picked up a few lilium corms 12 for 20 euro, great value, great weather, great day and a few bargains thrown in! what more would you want!!!

Hi All,

Thank you very much for the kind words about Rusty – they do mean a lot and it helps – its hard to loose the first dog. He would not have been able to survive this weather. Anyway – I am sitting here in work wishing i was at home today.  There is so much work to be done in the garden.We spend yesterday faffing around in the veg garden, we put in two rows of strawberries and already I am looking at strawberry liqueur recipes – LOL, I was looking online for ideas for labels for my sloe gin from last year and came across it – Just imagine all those lovely strawberries being marinated in vodka!..Does anyone make sloe gin or have any well tried recipes for the kitchen garden? maybe we should have a recipe section?? I am patiently waiting for the elderberries to flower also. AND today i got my new electric jam maker which should make my life a little easier – as a beginner last year I felt i needed a little more help.Roll on this weather for a little more – its great for the veg i am trying out and even maybe my Melon will take off – i lost them last year to the cold, and I have one cucumber seed that held on for dear life this time so fingers crossed.How is everyone else getting on in these tropical weather conditions?

Can’t believe it’s been 20 days since I last updated the journal. Where did May go? Hot and sunny today. Please god let it last! 

Am working from home again today and keep on hopping up from in front of the compter to check on the garden, although the weeds have taken over again. I bit the bullet over the weekend and sprayed everything with a good dose of round-up. Bad, I know but I’ll try and make up for it somehow. Apart from the weeds, the spuds are going well, as are the other veg. I planted strawberries in a hanging basket earlier in the year and keep checking to see if they are coming out (not yet but soon). I bought some tiny yellow violas in my local garden centre on Saturday and planted the in a blue pot and they are a sight for sore eyes. Yellow and blue were just made for each other, like the sun in the sky. Although the colour is fantastic, the scent is even more amazing-fresh and young and beautiful. My other attempts at flower gardening are not so successful, however. I am having lots of trouble with three clematis, planted back in April. Although I have been given lots of advice on how to take care of them (Thanks Jools!), they are in very poor order. Apart from the fact that while my back was turned, the slugs dined in style, they just don’t seem to be growing at all. I might just have to move them and plant something else in their place. I have a bit of a history with clematis-they never seem to grow for me. I keep looking over into next door’s garden, green with envy (!) at the sight of their beautiful C. montana in full bloom!

Well , what glorious weather. We have started a new veggie bed, as I plant too many seeds in spring and  need somewhere to put them. hopefully will get it finished later this week, but work does get in the way !!!!!!!

Happy gardening.

after hearing about my wifes day at the beach  i got a beer from the fridge,  didnt feel like doing a lot in the garden. 8 hours in a workshop welding dampened my vigor. but then  AVON called, a neighbour, she is an entusiatic gardener(i cant spell after a beer} I showed her the back garden and glasshouse, my wife got worried when we didnt appear  from the glasshouse after 10 minutes. all we were doing was collecting  a few herbs in pots for her garden, but its nice to keep her on her toes………..ps. I love her so much , even after 26 years(that is bridget my misses!) love ya  10/ 6 /83  xxxxxx

I started with two little cotoneasters and two apple trees – old and furry and grizzled – and a huge  patch of strawberries infested with buttercup and beds dug out here and there for gooseberries and a peony (Sarah Bernhardt I think) planted in a bed of its own and a bank of catmint and most of the garden earthed up in furrows where potatoes had been. That was twenty years ago and I’ve been fighting ever since. More should have happened, I know, but little by little things have changed.

The cotoneasters grew to be monsters and the apple trees grew more furry lichen and I finally eradicated the buttercup. They are back this year. The fight goes on.

I often wonder whether I am more in love with plants than with the idea of a garden.

 A burly man or two or, better still,  an army of burly men and a digger and a kango hammer thing and drills and flame-throwers and a scorched earth policy might do the trick. But I’ll fight on with spade and rake and barrow and hoe. I’m damned if I’ll let it beat me!

Bigger than small and smaller than big and I still can’t get to grips with it! That’s my garden. 

I still haven’t decided what I want and am falling foul of making it up as I go along instead of having a design in mind; a shape. But thanks to my brother, Joe, for all the hard work in 2007 to rescue my "maybe-one-day-this-will-be-a-garden" garden.

I am having a ball in my garden at the moment and the weather is to blame. This is the second year of my two little herbaceous patches and the difference is stunning. The bullies are, of course, having the upper hand but they are such wonderful bullies that they are forgiven on the spot – catmint, clematis recta (yum!), crambe, alstroemeria.

One or two of the dahlias have provided supper for the slugs. The melianthus survived the winter and is making a great comeback. Knautia about to flower. Creamy Californian poppies self-sown in the bed and the gravel path. Delphiniums bursting – must stake them before the rains come.

This is the first year that I feel I am on top of things before October warns of winter.

And there are blue-tits nesting in a box in the apple tree.

Hello to all.

Well I have eventually taken the time to upload some photos of my garden, which I took last year. I have been gardening here for about 6 years on a new site where we built our home.  In 2008 the hard work of the previous  5 years seemed to have paid off and the garden began to take shape.

So here’s June — not bad so far.  For fear that I might sound like a farmer who complains of too much rain then too little rain, I won’t mention that a little shower would be nice as the hosepipe and my patience are wearing a little thin.  We always seem to get this hot weather just when little plants need water the most. Remember April 2 years ago?  Last year, of course, was an exception.  But then again, last year I never left the door to the tunnel open the whole summer (if you could call it that).  But everything’s looking good despite the dry.  I just need to win the lotto so I can loads and loads of mulch.

Went to Bloom last Saturday.  Enjoyed the day.  Will go the first day next year as I could tell that a few of the plants I wanted to purchase were all sold out.  I did manage to get a few I’ve been looking for but can’t find locally — namely Astrantias and different Geums.  Also got a big lovely Iris but my friend Sharon took it to grow it in her garden then we will divide and share.  In fact, we’ll probably do that for all of our purchases.  I also went a little Dierama mad (got 4 in fact).  And much to my surprise i bought 2 primroses from the fellow from Down — thought I wasn’t a primrose person but these 2 have changed my mind.  And Cimicifuga simplex which I have coveted forever. 

So I was really happy to get my Astrantias (got mine from Mt Venus) but then got the same feeling that I did when everyone else in America discovered The Police and U2 in the 80s after I had listened to them for years.  I hope my love of Astrantias doesn’t diminish because of their newfound popularity.  I knew there could be trouble when my friend landed home with one and she couldn’t even pronounce it — not that I’m a plant name snob, I’m just pointing out that it could be an indicator of a plant’s popularity peaking… 🙂

Speaking of plant popularity and changes…. did anyone notice that the June issue of Gardens Illustrated had cottage garden pastels on the cover.  I knew this was going to happen.  It all comes full circle doesn’t it?  What’s going to happen to all of our dark reds and oranges and purple foliage??

My friend (who can’t pronounce Astrantia) bought me a rose because I helped her son print out a paper for school.  It’s a David Austin Gertrude Jekyll.  I am not a rose person really thought I did grow one at home in Virginia that I loved (‘New Dawn’).  But let me tel you, that Gertrude Jekyll who is stuck in one of those bin bag type pots is flowering her heart out and not a sign of black spot anywhere on her.  I have 3 other roses in pots and they all have black spot.  I don’t spray for it and won’t so seems to me like David Austin may just be the man for me and anyone else who doesn’t like to spray.  I always thought roses were so high maintenance — Gertrude has proven me wrong.

So back to Bloom.  Spent loads of time at the Kilmurray stand and it had, by far, the healthiest looking stock.  Then I find out they’ve won a gold at Chelsea.  duh, of course the stock looks good.  The show gardens were interesting.  I’m terrible for remembering names, but I did like the one with the hammock (how totally impractical in Ireland, at least where I live) and the one that one gold that had the drill of water up the middle and the water going down the wall.  The Mt Venus one was nice with all of the Japanese maples (again, how totally impractical in Galway).  But maybe it isn’t about the practical.  Guess you’re supposed to take good ideas out of it — like the sandbox that had a big lid that opened out to a seat and you could draw on the seat.  Or the one that used upturned pipe as planters along a fence (that was the same one with the yellow wall and the dead celtic tiger down in a pit).  Astrantias everywhere.  My friend thought the Bord na Mona one looked like a bad Diarmuid Gavin rip off.  I thought the planting in it was nice.  There was a really cool Persicaria in the garden done by that Austin fella.  And I did like the small garden that had its raised beds painted different colours — easy to do but very effective.

Anyway, better get out to my own garden now and enjoy the sun.  They say the rain is coming. 

can you    believe this is ireland!!! the only gardening i have done this week is watering watering and then some more watering.

also did a lot of sitting out with a long cold drink ,  bliss.

long may it last    enjoy      

Hi Guys

We moved into our house April 2008 and it had a mature garden, I have no idea what I’m doing so I have decided to ask for advice on my front and back garden and see what I can achieve this year.

I am not into too much manual labour, have no problem cutting the grass every week or a little weeding, clipping etc…

I’m living in Lucan, My Back Garden is south facing and front is North.

I have 4 children all use the garden and a boxer dog who likes to wear a trail into the grass in the back also he tends to burn the grass with his pee (any ideas)

I have uploaded pics of plants that I don’t know what they are or how to care for them.

Thanks in advance.

Neal

we are definitely being rewarded for the rotten summer we had last year. I hope it will last a few months at least.

Got my first order from bakker today. I got a Chaemaerops humilis (dwarf palm), a sundial, and a miniature rose including a pot designed to fit onto a down-pipe. I usually forget to paint my gutters and down-pipes. So this miniature rose will hopefully obliterate at least a portion of this eye-sore. I was a bit disappointed with the size of the dwarf palm. It’s REALLY a dwarf. Posted a pic on my latest album.

My first Gazania appeared today after all the sun we have been having. I never realized that they could keep going for years. I have them in a pot near the pation for about 4yrs now. And they have really grown into a fairly decent-sized clump. I adore Gazanias.

I’m very pleased with my sundial. But it was also smaller than I expected. But I bought a pedestal that will go perfectly with it today. And it has raised it quite a bit. It’s not quite so ‘piddly’ now. Pic on my album.

Not much done today. Gravel mended where I dug up a large self-seeded rose – from Kiftsgate if the growth in one year is anything to go by.

A few more barrow-loads of weeds taken to the top of the garden.

A great deal of looking and mind changing. 

Some plants which were neglected in their pots and crying out for water have been saved. I must pop them into a nursery bed where they will at least get a chance to survive and can be moved next year when new beds are ready.

The weekend’s rain may be welcome. 

Glancing through members’ sites I can see everyone has been hard at work!! What a lovely week. So far, things are ok in garden, peas and beans are growing a bit and seem healthy, not too much evidence of snail and slug attack. Have been enjoying salads of lettuce spinach and rocket I grew myself – childish but what a thrill to go out and pick your dinner. Worked hard last weekend, planted 2 baskets for back garden, geranium, surfinias, verbena and bacopa, all in shades of deep pink and purple with creamy bacopa. Am riduiculously pleased with myself because usually I buy those filled baskets – nothing like doing it yourself! Also planted some bedding plants and potted on some godetia which I will plant in beds coming weekend. Tomatos are flowering (well, 2 tiny flowers) so I guess this is time to feed? Potatoes are massive explosions of green leaves but am not sure when I will be harvesting spuds – suppose they will flower first? How nice everything looks in good weather.

This weekend planning to finish planting bedding in back – some petunias and pansies – and doing a lot of tidying. (also going to do a lot of reading lazing and watching tv, feeling like taking it easy after very busy week at work). Hope everyone enjoys a great weekend.

My garden is small urban west facing. Front is very small, driveway, small oval lawn and surrounding bed with eipmediums, viburnum davidi, lavender, lambs ears, tiny geraniums, grasses, one weddingcake tree, 2 tiny copper beeches 2 acers – it is very easy to manage. Back garden is a bit larger and is a funny shape, sort of L shape with one long side and a short bit sticking out at side of house. Back is surrounded by high walls so is private which is nice. However due to high walls the sun seems to strike in spots and miss other spots – areas of the garden are like Newgrange and only get sun about once a year!! A lot of the soil in the back is really bad, very stony and dry. There is one small new bed which has great soil. I have had the soil improved over the years and am going to make a serious effort at vegetables this year. Most of the back garden is patio.