Month: June 2013

I had hoped to get a sequence as this lovely poppy opened. However it got stuck half way as the sun failed to shine! Maybe tomorrow it will open fully.

Had a great day at Bloom. Really liked the gold medal winning show gardens – notably the one with the wild planting including rushes!!! and Tim Austin’s.

I thought it was more packed than usual making it hard to see the gardens but then we were a bit later than usual.

Bought some great plants, mostly from Boyne Valley Garden Centre –

Dodecatheon meadia

Iris chrysographes

Persicaria bistorte ‘Superba’

Melianthus major

Aquilegia ‘Black Barlow’

Corydalis ‘Craigton Blue’

Dryopteris cycadina

Scented geranium ‘Attar of Roses’

Clematis ‘Miss Bateman’ flowers made an appearance in the garden today.  Very pretty I think 🙂

It looks like we all enjoyed our visits to Bloom this year and here’s hoping the weather stays fine for anyone going tomorrow or Monday. 

I can’t believe I was so restrained and only bought three plants, two that I wanted and one for good luck:

Aquilegia ‘Snow Queen’

Geum rivale ‘Leonard’s variety’

Dicentra spectabilis (pink, I already have a white one)

I’ve planted them but the light had gone by the time I finished so here’s a photo from the web.

Took these today with my fancy lens.

Today on our way home from Dublin we decided we would call into Japanese Gardens and National Stud for a look around as we have never been. I did really enjoy it and it was a beautiful place with dry weather so shouldn’t complain BUT i tought the Japanese Gardens itself was quite small but in saying that there was some gorgeous planting and trees and i def have gotten a few ideas from it. From there we went onto St. Fiachra’s Garden which was a lovely walk past a big lake where there was a flower bed by some house with the most gorgeous Poppies kinda like what Clara had posted up recently. Aslo nice mixes of aquilegias, acers, azaleas etc. From there down to St. Fiachra’s Garden which wasn’t much really it had nice bits here and there and A fantastic Fountain with tree stumps in with all the rocks as the water ran down it and one of the highlights of the place for me was the Horses and Deer made from Bogwood or driftwood. Again with the Japanese Gardens it was stunning but just tought it could have been bigger and with €12.50 each to get into the place i tought that was steap just for a walk around but all in all good day and glad i went…curiousty killed the cat and all that 😀

I am currentyl uploading an album which will take awhile so the photos can be viewed at your leisure.

This is a few garden shots that I took today in an idle moment or two

Nice to see the Color returning to various parts of the Garden

If anyone can name the “Old Rose” type from the photo I would be grateful?? It produces every year but they are delicate and fleeting…

I love the blue geranium and it produces masses of flowers with very little attention.

The Peonie again is so delicate and rain or wind quickly end their colourful lives, pity.

One plan in the pipeline for next year is to put in a second line of Alliums in the border on the right hand side of the path.

I think the effect will be good.

I spent most of this afternoon and evening in the garden. We had heavy showers of rain here in the morning, so no hedge or grass cutting, but an ideal day for planting and moving!

Planted were heucheras, cirsium, campanula, astrantias, Azalea, salvias, arum lilly, and some lettuce!

It is just great to see everything striding ahead and the next few days promise to get warm, even hot, so with plenty of moisture in the soil good growth should result.

Good weather too for slugs, snails and weeds but we will deal with those! 

I was at a wedding yesterday, really great day.

The table arrangements were fantastic.

My cousin gave them out as people were going home.

Well today was my day for Bloom and what a day it was….Im absolutely exhausted.

I went with my husband and Nicola, my daughter, her first time 🙂

Ive been to Bloom for the past 5 years and every years its exactly the same. You can guarantee that everything is there and always in the same place so you know where you want to go etc.

BUT!!! today was different….and what a great surprise too.

It wasnt the same as every year…..it wasnt the same route to take to see what I wanted to see, because some of the items were moved around. I thought this was so much better as it added so much more interest to the day, especially if you go every year.

Well it didnt disappoint. We got there at 10am into the Green carpark and it was filling up at that stage. It was crowded.

Bit of a drizzly day to start but that didnt matter as we ducked in and out of the various tents , tasting lots of delicious food ;)……and looking at all the animals, Nicola was fascinated being a city girl !….she loved all the animals.

We then headed into the Plant Pavillion and gosh the plants were amazing…..

Ive being buying plants for months now so didnt really know if I wanted to get anything else, plus money is tight lol…..well we are doing an extension and filling up the garden ;)….but…..of course I bought something!…..this was what we came away with……

Aquilegia Vulgaris ‘Black Barlow’

Veronica Gentianoides ‘Alba’

Primula japonica ‘Miller’

Primula japonica ‘Meadow Mix’

Primula Vialii

And Nicola bought a pink Lupin 🙂

So happy with my lot……

The gardens were ‘ok’ much of a much for me, although I did like the Woodies ‘neighbour’ gardens….and some of the arches in some of the gardens took my eye…..

I didnt get to see anyone, well I dont know any .iers except Jacinta and Hazel, so I was looking at everyone seeing if I could recognise anyone lol, Im sure some people thought I was odd…..well I am a bit….but seeing if anyone recognised me!!! they didnt…

Anyway It was a great day and we got to see it all. A good day had by all……

Have a few photos that I took which I will put into an album!

The CHEEK of that Cherub Cymbals, back to his boldness again! But this time he has really overstepped the limit. And just when i thought there were sparks of redemption-I still have hopes for him! Cherub really spoke quite sharply to him and told him that one NEVER refers to the people in garden.ie informally. That Rachel should be spoken of, as Mrs. D. and in most respectful tones and that the phrase ‘a touch of the Rachel’s’ is completement inacceptable!. (My French phrase book turned up that one last week!)

What happened was that Cherub overheard Esmeralda quacking ‘-ouch ‘o d’ -achels’     ,  ‘-ouch ‘o d’ -achels’ and asked her what she meant. Apparently when Scrubber went out today and eyed the other side of the stile steps, he spent a long time pondering. It was reasonably ok, but, the day before when his son viewed it (He being the only member of Scrubber’s family quite content with being dragged down the garden to see the latest creation-grandchildren excepted!) he said. ‘Dad there’s a huge drop on the other side. One would want to be careful using it’. He was thinking of his Dad but his dad began to think of the grand children! And so this morning Scrubber took a hammer to the last few days work and replaced the steps with broader finer ones and one extra on each side to help balance. While doing so he was thinking aloud-‘I’m a bit like rachel here, not being satisfied unless something is done perfectly right. You know the way she prepares the one bed for irises another for different species and everything so thorough and complete-I’m convinced that if a plant needed Elephant Poo to thrive, Rachel would be parked at the back gates of the Zoo the next morning!.-she does everything so perfectly and here am I trying to do the same!”

Well Scrubber spent most of the day getting two new stones from the friends, setting them up and then cementing them into position. And he thinks he was overheard by Cherub Cymbals who sniggered across to Cherub Lute ‘Mr Scrubber has ‘a touch of the Rachels’ which was where we came in above.

Anyway there is a much more stable footing on the other side now as I have tried to show in the photos. And do you know I think ‘a touch of the Rachel’s is actually a rather nice compliment to have  paid to one! Maybe he’s not that bad after all???

Unless you take hundreds of photos, I think you come away from the Bloom Show Gardens with a personal impression of what plants seemed to recur in a number of the gardens.

Of course, the choice is limited to those that look good in May/June, but I felt the following seemed to be popular this year – French lavender (Lavandula stoechas), scabious, alliums, lupins (one or two new varieties), camassias and cirsium.

I wonder what anybody else thought ?

well almost, i have been gettng four terracota pots a week in woodies they are the small ones but they are perfect to display my pelargoniums. i pulled out the climbers that were in the bed in front of the diesel tank, they were tangled and in a real mess  and put in better ones 

this area has been tidied up and i added echinacea mix, achillea, the pearl and summer berries, rudbeckia, orange crossmia. the alliums are really doing well, also added astilbe, aquilegia and primula capitata to the stubbery end 

this one took hours to do but it looks alot better now. i put in echinacea, large shatsa daisy, oriental poppies, and day lillies.

i took out the pampas grass out of this bed and move the miscanthus to the middle and added large shatsa daisy,achilliea, lynchins,also some rudbeckia and echinacea. need to mulch this bed also

I took a little bit of a gamble last year and moved a Sitpa gigantea into the gravel area out the back.

Beneath the granite gravel is another layer of old gravel with plastic beneath. This has been down for nearly tweny years. I was a little worried about the qualily of the soil.

I was happy to see new grawt earlier in the year, but there are now twenty flower/seed heads forming.

Really pleased with this result, this is a great grass form giving effect to an area.

i added lilies to this bed and more astilbes, it should be full of colour in a few more weeks, need to get some more bark for this bed

this was one of the first beds to be planted up was really happy with it and i got bark to put on it so it has really showed up the plants even my son christopher said he loved the bark but hated the stone that used to be in it, i have to agree with him it really does show up the plants better. there is erysium, ceanotus, photinia, spirea arguta, the perennial candyturf( sorry the name wont come to me), a load of hostas and fern and dicentra. and helianthus 

been so busy the last couple of weeks with weeding and planting, almost there now just have one bed to do and its the worst one, thats mondays work. i also tackled the veg beds last week so they are sorted for now.

last friday i went on a planting blitz and got alot of stuff planting in the beds that were weeded. there is still more to be planted hopefully after monday i can get that done by next weekend. i am just dying to be able to relax and only have watering to be done for a few weeks.

taking it easy today, catching up on magazines and just relaxing so tired and not feeling the best, felt like i was hit by a bus when i got up this morning, hope i am not coming down with the flu.

another relaxing day tomorrow should feel better by monday then

Of course we are all looking for different things in Bloom but I thought I would just list a few of the plants that caught my eye this year, in case you are heading off and are similarly interested 🙂

1) Alstroemeria ‘Verona’, Kilmurry Nursery. This is a fabulously coloured, tall Alstroemeria that I tried to buy last year when I visited the nursery (Fran, Mary and Paddy may recall this). However, Kilmurry took it off me and immediately chopped it up for propagation material. I was devastated but the kind owners took pity on me and gave me a propagation piece free of charge. It has done brilliantly! Kilmurry have lots for sale this year.

2) Sinningia leucotrichia, The Carnivorous Plant Sellers (sorry, no name). This is an amazing plant that I saw in Dhu Varren Gardens in Kerry last year. It is tender but has soft grey foliage and bright orange flowers. Google it! You will want it. It is expensive though at €9.50 for a small plant. PS It’s not carnivorous but is just being sold with carnivorous plants.

3) Podophyllum?, Mount Venus. I spotted this plant on the Mount Venus display. It looks like a podo but I never got to ask what it was. Someone should ask. Maybe they have it for sale.

And I also saw a plant that Jacinta has been after for ages but I am not revealing its location until I know that Jacinta (who’s going in today) has successfully bagged one 😉

It was my turn to visit Bloom yesterday. I went with my daughter and husband.

First of all, apologies to anyone I met as you may have noticed I’ve got a really bad cold and my voice is affected.

The first person I met was Joann, by the Eremerus and Allium display in the Plant Pavillion. She was a gal on a mission but we exchanged words of mutual encouragement  before embarking on our separate ways.

Then I bumped into HeadGardener at the Mount Venus stall. He looked like he was going to spend more than €25 there so I have him my voucher from the Irish Garden magazine 🙂

And that was pretty much it for ie-ers! I chatted to a few people I knew in nurseries but even missed a proper chat with Gerry Daly as he had left by the time I got back to the Irish Garden stall.

So, here’s what I got…

1) Trillium kurabayashii, €15, Rare Plants, Ireland (wanted chloropetalum but went with this).

2) Sinningia leucotrichia, €9.50, from the carnivorous plant seller (don’t know their name). I saw this plant in Dhu Varren last summer and was completely awestruck!

3) Lewisia cotyledon ‘Rainbow’, €3, a seller outside the Plant Pavillion, quite fashionable considering the African Concern Show Garden!

4) Eryngium agavifolium, €6, I got this from Terra Nova before and rotted it. Time to try again!

5) Lilium ‘Manissa’, 5 bulbs for €7, a trumpet/oriental cross of tree lily proportions

6) Gloriosa superba ‘ Rothschildiana’, 5 roots for €5, I chose roots that are in active growth as we all know what happens with the Lidl ones!