Month: October 2014

As the (almost-drooling) lady said of Monty Don, Alan’s a lean, mean gardening machine. Give him a new bed to dig out on a bank holiday and he’s a happy bunny. This is the last, and biggest, of the Pond Garden beds, finishing that whole ‘room’. I put in 50 Dutch Master and 50 Tete a Tete daffs as well as Agastache, G. Oxonianum ‘old rose’ and g. Johnson’s Blue, foxgoves and Osteospermum. We’ll be adding more crab apple trees and shrubs as well as ferns on the shady north edge and hellebores. 

I managed to weed the rockery, but my back has been playing up so I had to give up, very frustrating! Oh well, every little helps. 

This bush, Coronilla valentina subsp. glauca, is coming into flower at the moment.

Its heady scent greets me each morning as I open the greenhouse.

I have this plant for years and yet i dont know its identity. It has a creeping habit thats vigorous. It has Paulownia like flowers, like foxglove  with 2 yellow strips running into the flower. Yet the leaf is not like the paulowia tree. Any help on this is appreciated, i have a photo of a leaf and a flower….J.

Fran gave me a small piece of Japanese Anemone labelled ” could be pink – or white” a couple of years ago. I was fervently hoping it would be pink as I had just purchased “Honorine Joubert” – a lovely white one!

I planted it in the border at the end of the garden where I collected a lot of plants given to me by my kind friends on this site. It duly flowered and to my delight it was pink – and it is darker than the pink one I have already. It has done really well, but in the way of these lovely flowers it was staging a bit of a bid for World Domination – it had spread all around the poor little plum tree that favoured me with a great crop this year and underneath them I thought I remembered planting a little Box hedge but it had completely disappeared from view!

So all of that led me to tackle shifting this lovely plant today. It took a while …. as anyone who had tried to lift these plants will remember … but guess what? I got a total of 14 plants from it!!!!

So now I have put some in the same border as Madame Joubert and the pale pink one I have from my mother’s garden. I’m looking forward to seeing how these three will look together next year!

And the little Box hedge was quietly flourishing under the whole lot 🙂

Fran – do you have a name for this Anemone please? The photo isn’t very true to the colour.

Gidday,

           just have to decide what border to put in around the new bed.

If I won the Lotto the first thing I’d do is make our neighbour an offer for this corner of his field. The land dips steeply down to a little dell against a limestone cliff which is surrounded by wild roses. It’s hard to get to although its so close as the path is churned up by cows and very muddy and rocky. But it’s a magical place. Sadly it’s becoming overgrown with brambles and you can hardly see the cliff these days, but it’s still beautiful in this soft light. 

Yes I’m afraid so…..but only for this year. 

Monty mentioned on Twitter today that the final programme of Gardeners’ World has just been recorded and will be shown tomorrow night. It’s the last in the current series. 

I hate when that happens. Because it’s now you know Winter is coming with a vengeance and the days are getting shorter and darker. And I really love watching him.

But Spring is only around the corner too, just need to get that big C…….s event out of the way ;). 

So dont forget to set your recorders and enjoy Monty for the last time this season 😉 

Ps I think it’s 9.30pm again too 

This Fuchsia has been in this container for a couple of years, and I had noticed grass and various weeds taking up residence with it, but this morning I spotted this Petunia putting out its first bud!! Near the end of October, I ask you. I wonder if I pot it up on its own and bring it into the house would it keep going?

Well, if we can have a garden view, we can have a house plant view!

A selection of streptocarpus currently in flower.

on the UPC box to protect anyone deleting Monty’s gardening programme that is been aired all this week.

I have not even watched tonights programme yet, but I have to say it makes for fantastic watching. Good down to earth people who simply love their gardens and want to see their dreams come true.

Much like ourselves really. These are programmes I will watch again and again in the future.

It is the end of October and all changes. Relish the colours as various trees put on their Hallow’een gowns and all are russet, red, orange or brown. And we do not live in an “either or world”. So they all carry delicious combinations of all colours to cheer us just before they drop their leaves altogether. The holly carries a great show of berries at the moment and so long as the weather stays mild the birds will not strip them. But will they last until Christmas? Usually not!

The apples fall and other flowers, such as the dahlias, spoil as their lives come to an end. Soon it will be time to lift and store the tubers until next Spring. We have an abundance of crocosmia and we will lift and seperate, to quote a certain old advertisment, and perhaps give away some of the spare bulbs. Irises are everywhere and they also need the thinning treatment.

This year a special effort is being made to cut back and strip ivy from trees, fences and even from some gates. It is a chore but it would be too much in heavy winter gales and could cause damage. Several trees came down earlier this year because of it and we want to avoid a repeat of that.

The lawnmower is busy vacuuming the leaves and keeping the place generally looking a bit tidy. But it takes constant effort.

After complaining that my only blueberry plant produced no berries at all last year, I was rewarded with a brilliant (and delicious) crop this year. So much so that I decided to get more of these plants: I bought 2 more on Friday, and they arrived this morning. now I need to get some large pots and compost, and get planting!

Yesterday was really great here, warm and sunny. I got at a portion of the front garden which had defied me for a long time. Yesterday, I was feeling full of energy and got at that area. It is part of what I called The Secret Garden. Bringing along secateurs, loppers and a garden fork, I had a lot of items like briar, blackthorn etc removed. There is still a lot to be done. To day, it was so different with the wind howling, there was no desire to continue with same. I did some interior work like erecting a battery clock , obtained as a free gift from Bakker. Now the clock is up and it reminds me that time does not remain still.

I have had a long and soul-searching few weeks since Fran nonchalantly asked us to feature our favourite plant of 2014.

I mean, like this was on the tip of our tongues!

Like this was an easy, five-minute job!

Well, after trawling though my hundreds of photos, doing up a spreadsheet to weight the pros and cons of every plant and much agonising….

Actually, no. I didn’t do any of that. I’m not completely bonkers!

Instead, I am working on a ‘notion’. And this ‘notion’ has led me to say that my favourite plant of 2014 is…

Begonia luxurians

Why? Well, because it’s beautiful and exotic and unusual and reminds me of our mad adventurous holiday last year!

It’s not been hard to grow, as long as it was kept in shade. It’s completely tender of course. The only downside is that, despite three attempts, I have not managd to propagate it. So, if the weather turns bad, this will be coming into the house. Actually, I might just bring it in anyway!

It seems that one of my Trex, Tetrapanax papyrifera ‘Rex’, is coming into flower.

That’s a first.

This dahlia is one of some tubers/bulbs kindly given by Fran in early summer. It has produced a few gorgeous looking flowers. I love the really strong colour of it. Thanks a lot Fran. Last year was the first time I attempted and succeeded in keeping dahlias over the winter, and it worked well, so I’m definitely going to make sure that one is included with the other 2 I have!

Woken at 5 this morning by lightning and the wheelbarrow being blown over, though when I looked out the sky was crystal clear. It carried on lightning over towards Galway for a good half-hour but with no thunder, so there must have been quite a storm to the north. The skies are just marvellous, bright blue with fantastic tumbled clouds, and a molten sunrise. All the colours are really shining on the trees, though the leaves are rapidly disappearing. The photo doesn’t do it justice by half. 

We spent Sunday taking in the geraniums and burying the cutting pots in an empty bed, as well as taking down the pea and bean supports and collecting seed. Glad we did as it’s been quite wild. I do enjoy these ends of hurricanes!

This is growing at the edge of the Lower Pond. I’ve never noticed it before. It strikes me as being a bit like Pheasant Bush. But I know it’s not. Can anyone tell me what it could be please?

Yep, definitely autumn.

Not everyone likes to use green manures in the veggie garden. We usually plant Landsberger Mix from Fruit Hill Farm on empty beds in September, and the results speak for themselves, I think. 

What a lengthy summer we have had. And as a result lots of plants that we didn’t expect to flower so late are still providing us with colour. Another of my perennial poppies is still producing. So welcome during this showery weather.  

This morning was very mixed – great sunshine with very heavy showers in between  so before I ventured out into the garden i checked the “hour by hour” forecast on weather.com and was delighted to see that they thought we should have no more rain after 2 p.m. They were almost right – apart from a downpour at about 3 p.m. we had a really pleasant day here today.

So apart from having to hide out in the greenhouse while the downpour passed over i managed to have a really productive day in the garden!

The recent work on the new path had resulted in lots of earth being tossed up on the Shrubbery border so today I levelled out this area and I’m very pleased with the new level on this border. No photos as I was too busy getting on with stuff – but I’m pleased with the progress on the new area.

In between times I ran the mower over the grass so now i have all the components for my next “Compost Recipe”! – I’m very happy with the “30 minute lawn” that i have now 🙂

Having done that I decided to tidy up the Willow Fence and that took me until dark!

Since I have no photos of my progress today this photo is the chutney I made with my own apples!