Month: January 2013
Cant believe its Jan 28th already…where DID that month go!
But tonight was the first evening that I really noticed a stretch in the evening….it was nearly 5.30pm before it got dark here in dreary Dublin……even with all the howling going on outside!
I LOVE this time of the year, the anticipation of whats to come. All the time spent outside, weather permitting of course, although I go out in any weather. My 3 Westies have to have their walk every day!. But once I get out into the garden thats it….Im out and its hard to go back inside.
So long may it last I say!
Last call for Altamont for next Friday at 11.30.
Anyone who wants to join us just let me know.
Confirmed :- JoanG, Clara and Myself.
Possibles :- Hazel, TinaJ, PaulyG, Jamo.
Sadly poor old Scubber is not allowed out to play ;-(( next time maybe, if he’s good.
Those who are going can you please send me a contact number by PM if I don’t already have it.
Who would be interested in having some lunch in The Forge afterwards? I will contact them later in the week.
A little early to say yet, but forecast is for some showers on the day.
It’s seriously windy out there tonight. Hope I still have a glasshouse in the morning.
It’s funny the way one can unconsciously develop a fad for certain plants. Recently I’ve noticed that some members here have developed a fad for sedums. I, myself, have ALWAYS been a bit smitten with sedums. You can never have enough.
But my latest fad seems to be Euphorbias (see above title).
I bought a really nice one in Johnstown yesterday and God bless my innocence (or stupidity), but I’m hoping to plant it tomorrow before I go back to work.
Found this one when searching the web. I thought it was touching
Ransoms
(for Edward Thomas)
What the white ransoms did was to wipe away
The dry irritation of a journey half across
England. In the warm tiredness of dusk they lay
Like moonlight fallen clean onto the grass,
And I could not pass them. I wound
Down the window for them and for the still
Falling dark to come in as they would,
And then remembered that this was your hill,
Your precipitous beeches, your wild garlic.
I thought of you walking up from your house
And your heartbreaking garden, melancholy
Anger sending you into this kinder darkness,
And the shining ransoms bathing the path
With pure moonlight. I have my small despair
And would not want your sadness; your truth,
Your tragic honesty, are what I know you for.
I think of a low house upon a hill,
Its door closed now even to the hushing wind
The tall grass bends to, and all the while
The faroff salmon river without sound
Runs on below; but if this vision should
Be yours or mine I do not know. Pungent
And clean the smell of ransoms from the wood,
And I am refreshed. It was not my intent
To stop on a solitary road, the night colder,
Talking to a dead man, fifty years dead,
But as I flick the key, hear the engine purr,
Drive slowly down the hill, I’m comforted.
Leslie Norris (b. 1921)
I suppose a lot of us are always thinking ahead as to what new plants We would like for our garden and I am no different. There isn’t any plant in the garden that I dislike, but there are some like the Salix caprea ‘Killmarnock’ and the flowering cherry that I planted early on, which if I had my time back I wouldn’t have done. Mind you, one of our two resident robins always sits atop the Salix and it’s worth it for that alone. As I got more into gardening, I developed my own style and only planted those plants which appealed to me. Some are more successful than others, for instance there are a few Rhodo hybrids which are only okay.I know of people who got garden centres to pick out their trees and shrubs for them and thats fine, but at least all the mistakes in the garden are my own and I have learnt from them and am much the wiser for it. There is nothing I like better than researching about plants, particularly my beloved Rhodos and I spend hours reading up on them and checking on the net etc, but often it is only when you acquire the plants and they have settled in that you can fully make an accurate assessment. I have posted three photos of what have been great choices for me. R.niveum’s foliage is just divine, I could look at it for hours on end. A.quinquefoliums foliage is also magnificent, but at this time of the year aren’t the small red buds delightful and then there is the quite splendid R.barbatum. I am looking forward to seeing how Rachels one is doing.
We did get out a bit yesterday between hail storms. Al cleared along the front wall, and I potted up the gasping lupin corms, whose shoots were struggling out of the bag, and planted out rhe primmies, poor souls. But then it really threw it down so I wrote up the garden diary and we had hot chocolate and Tia Maria, because we deserved it after braving it out there!
January has been a mixed month weather wise. We have had a little snow and a touch of frost but that hasn’t put off the bulbs and it looks as if spring is already on the way. We have daffodils, snow drops, cyclamen, hellebores and witch hazel already flowering around the grounds. Our daffodil avenue is a real show stopper and it’s well worth a visit just to see that. The spring bulbs are a welcome splash of colour around the gardens, and we are adding to the collection every year.
There are a lot of jobs to do over the next few weeks in preparation for spring. We have already put in our indoor early potatoes and started sowing seeds including tomatoes, peppers, indoor salad crops, leeks, sweet pea and assorted bedding plants for this years displays. Put in shallots and garlic now if you didn’t do it in the autumn. We have just pruned our grape vines and apple trees and have also done an early prune on all of our roses as some had started to bud.
It’s the time of year for renovation and replanting in the gardens. We are pruning some of our overgrown shrub beds and moving some of the overcrowded plants. The start of the year is always busy for us as we try to get things in place for the new tourist season. We have just received an order of conifers to further enhance the Pinetum and are expecting a delivery of rare trees and shrubs to be planted in the newly renovated areas. We are also in the process of resurfacing all of our woodland paths with newly chipped bark and mulching the shrub beds with old bark chips and compost. Nothing gets wasted here!
Another exciting piece of news is that we have just received a delivery of 27 varieties of the Kennedy Irish Primrose, a unique collection of Primroses bred over 35 years from old Irish varieties. They have been bred by one of Ireland’s leading amateur primrose breeders, Joe Kennedy, with the help of FitzGerald Nurseries. 18 of these varieties are as yet unreleased to the public and we are the only garden in Ireland to receive them. We will have a display bed at the main entrance with some information, but will also be planting them throughout the grounds and reporting back to the nursery on how they perform.
Our tree labelling project is going well and we now have 500 trees around the estate tagged with their botanical name. Only around another 1000 to go until we start on the shrubs!
I started a new facebook group in January ‘Friends of Blarney Castle Gardens’ and we already have over 100 members. Please join if you have an interest in gardening or want to keep up with the latest news from the castle. I update it most days with photos from around the grounds. I look forward to seeing you online or in the gardens. Adam
Another week-end with no gardening done 🙁 Yesterday by the time I was ready to do anything, the rain had arrived, and today was so cold that I was not brave enough to spend any time in the garden…
As we still wanted to spend a bit of time outside today while it was sunny, we decided to go to Powerscourt gardens. We often walk up to Bray head on a Sunday morning, but our most recent walk there was more like a mud bath than a walk, so we decided to give it a miss today, as it definitely has not got drier in the past couple of weeks! I suggested Powerscourt as we hadn’t been there for a good while – probably 2 years or more – and everybody liked the idea, so off we went.
We used to go to Powerscourt very often when my daughters were small as we lived quite near, so we have all seen all corners of the garden in all seasons and nearly all kind of weathers. One of my best memories is going there on 2nd January 2003, and having the garden nearly to ourselves. It was a cold and very still day and the Dolphin pond was covered in ice, and even the lake was frozen in parts, and the fact that the garden was nearly empty gave it a magical touch that I still remember today.
I love the walled gardens, and even though at this time of year there is not that much to see as most of the perennials are still “asleep” underground, today we could still admire some plants that we might not pay much attention to when the borders are covered in flowers. There were a few grasses that really stood out, miscanthus silver feather was one of them, and I discovered a plant I didn’t know and had never spotted there: bamboo sasa veitchii. Its green leaves with the white border are really stunning.
We spent a good hour and a half there, and went all around the place. We looked out for the red squirrels which apparently have returned to the garden, didn’t see any but in the end we decided that we have our own little red squirrel, a little 8 year old who came back with pockets full of pine cones, bits of wood fallen on the ground, leaves, etc 😉
All in all, a great walk enjoyed by all of us despite the bitterly cold winds, I think we will go back soon!
I saw the most exotic houseplant in Johnstown today. It was Medinella Belo. But sadly, priced at €18, I was racking my brains trying to think where I might put it.
I PUT IT BACK!!! 🙁
Please sign this petition to change a recent An Post restriction which may make many small Irish horticultural business go under.
The restriction will also affect us gardeners from buying plants from abroad.
The restriction stops the posting of plants to or from Ireland…
Thank you.
That Winter Heliotrope is an ”alien, noxious weed” and so invasive that even one ier who shall of course be nameless , would probably not grow it!!!! It grows vigorously on a roadside where I walk. The scent is wonderful and so unusual at this time of year to be walking along and enjoying the wafts of scent. But do beware and never let it pass your threshold!
Apologies again for not contributing or commenting recently. I thought I’d at least be able to keep up with other’s entries but I havn’t. There’s pre Junior happing next week and pre Leaving and I’ve taken on a night course two nights a week myself. I value very much this site and the friends I’ve made on it and it’s not that I’ve forgotten you all. In fact on my nightcourse which has to do with web design I was put on to a site called www.colorschemedesigner.com which is a shortcut to designing stylish websites and my first thought was I wonder would my gardening friends use this? I thought of Elizabeth’s red and blue borders and thought instead of looking at a colour wheel for hot, cool and contrasting colours, why not just input your main colour into this and it will provide complementary and contrasting colours. I’m a million miles from this kind of sophistication myself in my borders but I admit one night I did have a look at my wardrobe, scarves etc. (blush)
Some time back as it bruno or Corktony who wrote about plants they had that were on the ‘forbidden’ list. Now if it is neither of you please forgive Scrubber. I wonder was it brian Cross? Anyway I think i have one of these in my garden and i introduced it myself. Its definitely a garlic or an onion and spreads very easily. I have it down in the scrub so its safe enough. It grows alongside the blue bells and they make a nice pairing of blue and white. BUT the leaves are much thinner than the leaves shown in images of Wild garlic (ursinum). They are like fleshy grassy leaves much like the bluebell foliage in fact. Can anyone tell me what Ive got. I put in two handfulls about twentyfive years ago and now have colonies. They would be very bad in a flower bed but look well naturalised. And when I strim them later on the smell of garlic is humdinging. Luckily I like it. If anyone can name it id be grateful.
I spotted this in Stephens Green the other day.
I think it may be a Grevillea?
Can anyone help please?
As you know I am a fair weather gardener, but early today the weather seemed OK, so I went out to the garden. I tried to take some photos, but the light was not good enough. Then rain came and I went in.
I sorted out the list of plants I have on my computer, alphabetically and chronologically (when I got the plant). Then I looked at old posts in garden.ie for the last few Januaries to compare years.
A problem emerged because my mahonias may be wrongly indentified.
Looked out this morning after all that horrid, heavy, overnight rain, and realized that the top of the cave was about 2 ft lower, or maybe more. During the night, we had an almighty landslide. Steve didn’t want me to post this journal as he thought lots of people would be thinking at the beginning of the project that his plan was NEVER going to work.
However, this is MY journal.
The problem CAN be rectified by applying the last two layers of fibreglass, or maybe more, with the help of a supporting post underneath while the fibreglass is ‘going off’. The early onset of bad weather put a sudden stop to work on this area during autumn. But it’s going to have to wait until the garden dries out quite a bit. But my main worry is that the shrubs I planted up at the back wall have now come slightly adrift. And it was impossible to get up there today to firm them in again. Hope they will be ok for a while.
I have every faith in Steve sorting out this minor problem. But it’s all ‘weather dependant’.
I got this beauty in Johnstown on the 13th and am so happy it has flowered and it has about 10 buds , but I did not plant it out yet hopefully tomorrow.I love the colour .
My son has being giving me some lessons on my new Camera and am not as quick as the young ones at learning ….so much to learn …first how to adjust the tripod so that is ok then to put the camera on …ouch .
Ah ! but its lovely .
I suppose many have come across this problem before, but as this is my first time, i need help. I have packets of seeds everywhere and all are opened. i know these packets have dates on them, and granted most of these packets are in date, but I like an eejit left them in a shed over winter. I want to know if I can still use these seeds? I know there is a trick, by putting them in water, but as I have a lot of different seeds, I want to know if there is a faster method of testing whether a seed is good or not
I’ve been there three times in as many weeks. The day before the Get-together to hang all my paintings, the following day, and today. No time to browse for plants on the first visit, as it took so long to get the paintings looking right. At the Get-together, we had my Dad with us, and he was anxious to be home asap, so I was very restricted.
But today marked the end of my exhibition. I told Steve if he got fed up waiting for me to pick out a few plants afterwards, that he could go home without me. 🙂 Happy enough with the few plants I chose. And I didn’t have to hitch a lift home. 🙂
Very cold, and blustery with torrential downpours, and snow most of the way home.
A plant I am most happy with, though, is this lovely clump of Lithops (Living Stones) and ALL FOR JUST €2. What a bargain, as I can share some around.
New An Post regulations have just been introduced.
They prohibit the sending of plants abroad. I think this does not apply to internal Irish posting but I’m not sure. This is not an EU directive. It’s an Irish one…
The UK Royal Mail has responded by respecting Irish restrictions and will now not allow plant material to be sent to Ireland…
I know at least one Irish business that is seriously affected by these new restrictions and is likely to go bust as a result.
Of course you can decide not to declare what is in your package but businesses can not do this.
Besides Irish horticultural businesses going bankrupt (just what we need in a recession), this also means that we, as gardeners, will not be able to receive plants from the UK and probably other countries abroad.
I feel very strongly about this and intend writing to An Post.
Got seeds of this in Lanzarote last year. Only now am I sowing the last of them. They are soaking for sowing later on today. So I’m actually wondering are they Datura, or Brugmansia (even though they are labelled as Datura)? Too lazy to Google. Whatever they are, I only hope I can do them justice.
Reluctantly I cut my Solanum down the other day.
It was totally hiding a cherry blosom given to me by Jacinta that I hope will blossom this year.
There is plenty of shoots on what remains so soon this plant will be back to normal self.
I just remembered I promised seeds of this plant to some people, I will sort that out shortly, sorry about that folks,
Wasn’t it great to get a couple of dry hours this morning.Felt so good to be able to get outdoors at last.
Following couple of hours of preparing for spring I headed out to Malahide Village for a spot of lunch followed by a visit to the walled gardens in Malahide Castle. Not really into the whole Avoca thing they have done there but the gardens have some amazing plants that deserve another look in a couple of months. They have restored the beautiful glasshouses too but was disappointed that they were locked up. Not sure if this is a Saturday thing or if they are totally off limits to the public. Not a lot of colour at the moment but plenty of signs of great things to come. The big Snowdrop tree should look amazing in June.
No plants on sale in the castle but popped into the nearby garden centre for a look, honestly just a look! Somehow a trolly was attracted to me and before I knew it a Euphorbia Ascot along with some pots (great sale on in pots) landed in the trollly. By then the rain was coming down heavy so home i went. Doing housework at night makes far more sense!!!!
