Month: November 2017

Mary, you are not alone in your addiction to bulbs.  They bring such joy every spring that I can’t resist either and this year tulip addiction seems to have taken hold.

Here’s what I bought for my small garden.  Some are to add to bulbs I already have but most are for new excitement.  Crocus ‘Blue Pearl’, Narcissus ‘Jetfire’, Iris ‘Katherine’s Gold’, Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ (as if I didn’t have enough already!), and the following tulips:  ‘Apeldoorn’, ‘Apeldoorn Elite’, ‘Ballerina’, ‘Curly Sue’, ‘Jan Reus’, ‘Gavota’, ‘Red Impression’, ‘Sweet Impression’, ‘Holland Beauty’, ‘Diamond Jubilee’ and ‘Spring Green’.

Photos are from last spring’s display.  Most of the above are still sitting in our utility room but will hopefully be planted next week.  So what has everyone else bought? Tell us please. 

Not sure this is Abutillon as its looking more Mallow like now ! Does anyone have an opinion ? It was grown from seed and is about 4’ tall . A nice looking plant which didn’t produce flowers this year . 

Yesterday my order from Ashwood Nurseries in England arrived. I had ordered a mixed packet of Helleborus x hybridus single flowering plug plants. I am very happy with how strong and healthy the plants are. Each plant has very good roots and so should get established very quickly. I did order plug plants from Ashwood many years ago and they all turned out to be beautiful coloured flowers and some were stunning doubles. With any luck this batch may have some of the apricot shades. The packet of three plus postage cost 13.49stg, so won’t break the bank.

I’ll try and keep this as short and simple as possible – please feel free to ask questions if I’ve missed anything.

1. You need to have your photos saved in “the cloud” – that means using something like Google Drive, One Drive, iCloud or Dropbox but there are many others also. These are places you can back up your photos so you can access them from a phone or someone else’s computer. 

2. Arrange the photos in folders – each folder will be an “album” once you share it. Don’t make one folder inside another because that will make it harder for people to  view the photos.

3. This instruction is for Google Drive but there will be something similar on the others – Right-Click on the folder name you want to share and choose “Share“. A new window will open up looking something like Picture 1. 

4. Click “Copy Link”. If you don’t have that option then select the link and copy it (CTRL C does it)

5. If you don’t have “Word” or “Open Office” on your computer you can just paste (CTRL V)  that link into a journal but it may not be “clickable” and people may have to copy the link to their browser to see the album.

6. Open Word (or Open Office Word) and choose “Hyperlink” from the “INSERT” Menu  and paste the link in the “Address” box  (or “Target” box)  You should see a box like Picture 2. 

7. Where it says “Text to Display” (or “text”) type in the title you want for your Album and then Click “OK” (or APPLY).

8. Your link should now look like the name of the album you typed. You can copy this entire link into a journal and it should be a “clickable” link.

Click the pictures to see more clearly what is going on. Give it a go and let me know how you get on!

I was very interested to read that Elizabeth (Liztai) cuts back her winter jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) hard every year and it keeps on flowering; while others have commented that this plant just doesn’t perform for them.

I’ve had winter jasmine growing along my north facing wall for many years now, flowering reliably every winter with scant attention, just cutting back the shoots that had flowered by about half every year and letting it hang down in a curtain.  By last year it had grown too far out from the wall, with a lot of dead wood behind, and I wanted to make a path through the back of the border, so for the first time I cut it back really severely in summer 2016 though with great trepidation.  I’m delighted with the result: good new growth this year and it’s flowering nicely again now.  So I will follow Elizabeth’s example in future and cut it tight to the wall every year. 

For those of you who haven’t succeeded with it, maybe it can take a few years to get going but for me a large part of the success is in training it along a wall, fence or trellis to make the most of it.  Left to its own devices, it tends to end up in a gangly unruly heap.

Well, not totally!

At our first meeting of the Borris-in-Ossory Garden Club for this year one of the members brought along some strange looking tubers which she assured us were truly delicious, easy to grow etc. She even promised spectacular flowers on tall stems!

So never one to pass up a challenge I accepted one of these tubers and duly planted it in the Small Pond border.  Probably not the best idea as they grew quickly very tall and the first decent wind they fell over!

So I watched them patiently all Summer long waiting for these “spectacular Flowers” to appear but alack and alas! No flowers!

So during the period of non-gardening recently every time I went past that border I muttered “must cut back those darned things” but like everything else in the garden this ended up on a rather long finger.

But yesterday was the day! Helianthus Tuberosus was coming out! 

Much to my surprise when I dug it up there was a virtual forest of tubers on the root! Maybe the name was a bit of a clue?

Anyway, remembering what my friend in the Garden Club had said I brought the whole caboodle indoors and went and asked Mr Google how to cook the darned things!

So this evening my HelpX and I were treated to the results – baked for about 45 minutes they still didn’t look very appetizing to me! I tasted mine but really was a bit underwhelmed by them – but my HelpX helpers from France polished off the lot!

Now all the articles on them say that they will re-grow from the tiniest root left behind so this may well not be the end of the Saga!

Second few 

This time of year can be one of the busiest times in the garden with bulbs to plant, pruning, clearing herbaceous plants, weeding and of course the never ending collecting of leaves. This week the weather has been ideal for all these jobs and Paddy even managed to cut the grass last Sunday. Finished planting my tulips into pots today and of course I have promised myself not to buy anymore. I have dreaded the Visa bill coming through the letterbox over the last two months as I have bought so many bulbs. 

Had a break from my own garden on Thursday and went on a road trip to Kilmacurragh and Mount Usher and ended up in Wexford at a talk given by John Anderson, former head gardener of Mount Usher. It was a fantastic talk about the  gardens of Mount Usher, Inverewe in Scotland and Exbury gardens on the south coast of England where John has been head gardener until recently. 

I have started picking Iris unguicularis for the last two weeks and these will keep flowering from now until February/March. We are so lucky to live in a country where the climate allows us to have something flowering all year round. 

Hoping the weather continues to be mild for the next few weeks as I have lots more work to do.

I’m reading all the journals of Autumn preparations – clearing leaves, planting bulbs, cutting back the borders but I’m too far away to do any of it! Of course I am having a wonderful time with my granddaughter  – 6 years old already! 

Barcelona is also enjoying some unseasonal weather – much dryer and warmer than usual for this time of year!  

We have been checking the flowers that we planted last year and there are two healthy Anemones doing well. 

These Oxalis which prefer shaded woodland are doing well on the third floor balcony! 
I wish I could bottle this sunshine and bring it home!

I can’t believe it’s nearly a month since I put up a journal, though I have been reading everyone else’s, usually late at night.  Other priorities have taken over from gardening recently, so I’m hoping to get out for a day or two later this week to catch up with cutting back, tying in, dividing, leaf collecting, mulching, tulip planting etc, etc.  I bought loads of tulips this year, some for adding to those in the ground and others for pots, and now is the time to get them planted.

Meanwhile the garden is carrying on with the season and I took a few photos last weekend when the sun came out.  I’m pleased with how well winter jasmine on the north facing wall is coming on since its major hack back last year.  Also making progress, though very slowly, is the witch hazel planted a few years ago in the front garden and this year Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ is looking better than ever.  

Let’s hope we get some more nice days before winter takes hold. 

This morning dawned very cold and frosty with a beautiful blue sky and as the morning when on temperatures started to rise, but about an hour ago the rain arrived. Three seasons of weather in less than twelve hours. It is no wonder the plants that we grow flower out of season. Yesterday, I was clearing the borders in my White Garden when I noticed Clematis ‘Miss Bateman’ with a flower. It had the same green stripes on the flower which lead to much discussion in May when a number of members on the site had it flowering. 

When I walked in the garden yesterday as well as the nice bits of late colour I also spotted some of my winter colour coming into view.

Of all the winter plants in my garden I love Helebores best. Mine are now starting to mature nicely and provide interest for much of the year. Some of them are starting to flower already – not really surprising because after all, November is the first month of Winter in the Irish calendar!

I togged out in the rain-gear today and went out for a very short time just making a start on the Winter Tidy-up. I tackled the Pergola area which includes the plants I lifted from the Main Herbaceous border during the recent work on the Patio. My heart lifted when I saw some growth on the two Clematis I lifted as well as the old-fashioned Paeony Rose I got from an old garden and the pretty Sidalcea Little Princess that I hope will benefit from being removed from the competition of the Anemones and other tall plants that are no more! – No photos of these as it was far too wet to chance taking out the camera!

My Holly bushes are finally starting to mature and I was delighted to see some berries on this one!

Months after I gave up putting up journals because the site refused to upload albums, I’ve just gone to upload and it’s exactly the same! Obviously Gerry, Craig et al have lost interest altogether. How sad. It was so great to be able to keep all the collections of memories from our gardens. Anyway here are a couple more of today’s photos. 

At the beginning of last week, I looked out the window as a blink of (very rare) sunshine caught a large plant with red flowers.  I had never seen this one before and it took me by surprise.  I didn’t manage to get out to see what on earth it was as the rain came on again.  

It was two days later that I went across a squelchy squelchy squelchy lawn to  investigate. The plant seemed to have appeared from nowhere.   Such beautiful fine red tubular flowers with a slight yellow tinge at the edges, which seem to give the whole plant a lively look.  The branches are quite long, the plant being about 3-4ft H.  What is really lovely are the side branches that just spread out and on these the individual flower components of the long flower spike face upwards.  Like candles on a cake.  I cut some of these as I was making a table centre arrangement for a friend and had already quite a selection of flowers from all over the garden. These were mainly in the soft pink and lilac colours, a few springs of a delicate pale pink fuchsia, etc etc. A bit of myrtle with blossom and the black berries.  Unexpectedly, I found that those side shoot upward facing  flower stems were quite simply magic in finishing off the circular arrangement like spokes of a wheel.  

So then, I remembered that this was the tiny plant of pineapple sage, salvia elegans, I had been given in a wee pot a few years ago, had totally neglected, then planted out and kept treading on it.  But it did not bear me any grudge and I am so impressed.  

The cosmos in front of it only started to flower last week too.  It grew to be huge and until recently there no signs of flower buds at all.  

 I have just uploaded the photos  and you probably think that “upward -facing “ flowers is a load of nonsense.  There were some further round at the back!!  And also as they matured in the arrangement, they turned the little flowerlets upwards.  The photos do not do the plant justice.

Does anyone grow this plant? I’m sure you do.  It is lovely to have a surprise such as this in the month of November.  By the way, when the weather is warm and sunny, there is a great smell from the leaves.  

I am now going to rant about the weather we have had this Summer and Autumn on the N. Coast.  May and June were v. Dry.  Drier than down South.  Then that was it!  Dull, warmish, nothing above 17°C on a good day, and showers and more ahowers and rain and deluges, and storms and wind and flooding.  And so it continues.  There hasn’t been a dry day in the past fortnight.  The pavement has never dried in weeks.  Bc Yesterday there was a heavy shower every 45 minutes.  But nonetheless, I just persevered and took shelter in the shed.  I managed to set 250 crocus corms. Only 750 to go!  Mary from Gracedieu, you are to blame for this madness.  

I have finally finished taking out all the tall plants out of the herbaceous border so I can take advantage of the view from the new patio! It was a much bigger job than I thought – but then, isn’t that often the case with our gardening tasks? 

Of course the new home for the tall plants isn’t ready yet, so they are just “heeled in” in the new raised beds! At the moment my gardening seems to be all about doing one bit but can’t finish because something else is waiting to be done.

So today I was determined that at least ONE task would be completed. I have been working on this border on and off since the work commenced on the patio because I had to remove some plants to allow for the construction process so it really has felt like a terribly long job.

The bright sunshine was encouraging although it was really cold and there was a really sharp wind – but wrapped up warm I was able to get on with it all!

So now its done!

And I have a HUGE bit of space for planting!!!!!

I already have a load of low-growing plants waiting to go in, and those poor bulbs I unearthed in the process of sorting the border will be able to be replanted! 

Only one more task to do – I have a clump of Acidenthera that I planted in one of those bulb-planter things but they didn’t flower so I’ll just lift them and see if they do better next year!

I’m talking of course about Mother Nature……….

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, something else to astound you. I’m constantly in awe of what lives and survives in my garden. I’m not an expert, I get by with a bit of weeding here, mulching there and the odd prayer that it will survive. But I don’t go with the rules, well I’m not too sure of them if I’m really honest, but I plod along and see what happens. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t, but when I weigh it all up, it seems it works better than I thought. 

Here we are in the middle of November…WINTER….I believe and still there are some gems from the Summer 

Campanuala ‘Elizabeth’ which I bought in Bloom this year is not going anywhere just yet. This is her third time to reappear this year!! 

This Salvia ‘Neon’ has been flowering away since I got it last year in B&Q. I planted it up in early Summer. I never took it in in the Winter and it’s still flowering. 

Lavetera ‘Barnsley’ another one that just keeps giving. It’s been chopped back here and there as it was getting a bit unruly but still producing flowers. 

So much still going on and all to do with the beauty of nature!!

Amazing this gardening lark!! 

Its cold and frosty here this morning and what a fabulous day we had yesterday. Bright blue skies and sunshine. And warmth in the sun too. 

Trying to organise the garden when the weather can’t quite make up its mind can be a real headache. A few days ago I padded out my Tree Fern and then covered it in fleece to tide it over the Winter. It has really grown so well this year and I want to make sure it survives. 

I would love nothing more than heading out there and chopping everything back, but I’m being careful for a change!! 

So when I can I’m taking a small area at a time and doing some cutting back. The bending just kills me so its little by little. I tidied up the greenhouse bed and the pathway that runs up to it. It’s looking so much better. I also cut out a load of Geranium that I got from a lady up the road. No name for theGeranium but it’s a bit of a traveller. So instead I planted up G Ann Folkard in its place at the base of the pergola. 

It looks like it’s another fine day so I may tackle a little bit more. I also got some new shelving for the greenhouse so that needs to be sorted with some help from himself!! Sounds like a weekend job! 

Still some colour too in the garden. This little Geum is still flowering away since Spring. And I noticed new buds on my Californian Mallow which I grew from seed last year too. 

Have a great weekend whatever you do !!

It was a very frosty morning here this morning. But it cleared quickly and turned into a nice bright day. I had the window and door open in the glasshouse for about two hours. I’m still bringing in bits and bobs, and shifting things around to avail of every free corner inside. I never bother to bubblewrap the glass. Instead, I generally let things just get on with it. It’s mainly Pelargoniums, Begonias, Hedychiums, Cannas, and my Brugmansia.

I love Acer ribesfolium at this time of year. I have a few Acers here, and this one is always last to lose its leaves.

Mary had mentioned that my blueberries were lasting quite a long time, but looking back on last years journals I noted that my last lot were picked on 6th November, only 11 days later this year. Today was definitely the last of this years crop. But there are already new shoots growing. 

My white Hydrangea  out the front is still producing some flowers.

It’s to be a cold weekend, so keep warm.

I had a bumper crop of gooseberries this year. I had quite a  lot picked when things went wrong. The plan was to make gooseberry jam which I had made for decades. I put over 8 lbs into the fridge and hoped that i would get the time to make the jam but  between hospitalisation and other factors, the jame was not made. So between the fruit which I picked in June and the others which were devoured by the birds, none was made at the appropriate time. Recently when I seemed to have the time, the only thing I could do was to throw them into the compost heap. 

Roses seemed to be very good in June, then things went wrong. I still have a few. Normally I would have them until December. The recent frost didn’t do much for them. Some of them, on the rose tree were almost as big as my hand.

My feathered friend, the robin,  comes to me quite often  Sometimes he comes in the back door for his food. Often when I go outside he is there waiting for me so when some bird seed is put in his box, he is in. Recently when I raked the leaves, and we seemed to have a lot this year, he comes along to pick up any live objects which probably is his favourite.

It’s finished!

The new non-lawn was completed today between the showers – thanks to the help of my two current HelpX friends Laura and Loic from France!

It was quite a project and took some real hard work to complete but I’m utterly delighted with it!

I hope the photos are pretty self-explanatory but just in case you miss the point – its a ZEN GARDEN – for contemplation when I’m not gardening. Oh but when am I not gardening? Usually when its raining or I’m away from home!

I just might have to designate a special time for the contemplation bit – I can always pretend I’m gardening as I rake the gravel into whatever shapes takes my fancy …. I reckon the granddaughter will also enjoy making patterns – much mor fun than grass!!!!

Hazel, you did warn me that retirement was busier than work. How right you were  – I had no idea. I am constantly running after my tail. I am ever hopeful that it will settle down very soon.

Anyhow, news of my garden. I haven’t actually had as much time in it as I thought I would have – just a day or an hour here and there. It’s looking very soggy and sorry for itself at the moment.

I’ve made lots of garden friends and we’ve been around to many of the gardens in the Donegal Garden Trail.

I recently attended a course in the Organic Centre delivered by the no dig expert Charles Dowding which was great and I am continuing to go to Jimi Blake’s wonderful plantsperson’s course. Oliver Schurmann and Carmel Duignan have given presentations on it which were fab but a real highligh of the course are the other participants. So much experience and skill.

That will do for now. Here are some photos of my garden at the end of October.

I hope you are all well and I will post again very soon.

We wanted to accentuate the new Forest Garden and contrast with the broadleaves with a couple of Irish yews. The variety is Taxus Baccata ‘David’ and I really love the way their vertical shapes pick up the vertical rocks. One is skinny and the other is burlier so I thought we’d christen them David and Victoria. No offence intended!

It’s wonderful to see crocuses and narcissi popping up already in the new garden. All the plants seem to have settled well, and G.Rozanne has come into bloom despite being divided up, trimmed back and replanted. You can’t keep a good geranium down! We’ve planted a lot of native primroses along the banks of the raised beds below the beech/hornbeam hedge along with bronze bugle and white woodland geraniums.  

To say that we can’t wait to see it all come to life in spring is an understatement. Never mind Christmas, we’re gagging for spring here!!

Sadly we now have two trees in the garden planted in memory of young people. Josh’s Betula Jacquemontii is doing well, and the most recent is a Prunus Subhirtella Autumnalis planted for our friends’ daughter Eimer, who died in a tragic accident two weeks ago. I have a lovely memory of Eimear as a very tiny tot. She thought my English accent was the funniest thing she’d ever heard, and every time I spoke to her she literally fell over laughing. When I went to photograph the tree, I noticed that its first blossoms had opened. She could brighten a dark room when she walked into it, so we thought a tree in her name to brighten dark winter days would perhaps give her poor parents a tiny bit of confort.

We were very sad too to hear of the death of Matt O’Connell of the Doolin Garden after a long hard battle with cancer. We spent a happy afternoon some years ago admiring his gorgeous garden and chatting plants with him, and came home with some lovely plants which have been divided and dotted about in the garden, with some slips going to other .iers too.

Gardens have a lot of purposes, but ours contains a lot of memories of people we’ve known and loved, however fleetingly: Mum’s rock garden, Dad’s forsythias, Alan’s dad’s terrace Matt’s plants and the Memory Trees. I like the feeling of continuity, of a bit of people going on in those memories.

I would like to invite you to the official launch of Rachel Darlington’s “Journal of an Irish Garden” on Saturday 2nd Decembe 2017.
The event will be launched by Wexford’s very own, Gerry Daly, and will take place in Bunclody‘s coolest venue, the Art Bank, from 17:30 where Rachel will do a reading from the book and will be signing copies. The book is for sale at €13.
Hope to see many of you there.

Journal of an Irish Garden (with forward by Helen Dillon) is a collection of columnist and plantsperson Rachel Darlington’s articles in the Irish Garden magazine from 2007 to 2015. It details her development from amateur gardener to owner of a garden open to the public. This book is, in essence, a horticultural journey. It is an odyssey of discovery, knowledge and fulfilment, while taking the not-so-occasional foray into the realms of iffy dress-sense, hypothermia and muck. This journey contains elements that most gardeners will recognise from their own endeavours.

“We follow the author’s development as a gardener and that of her garden, Douentza, which is a joy to visit, full of well-grown unusual plants and one of the up-and-coming Irish gardens.”
—Helen Dillon, the Dillon Garden

“What really makes the book for me is the clear and ever-present love of plants. From the mundane to the rare, the plant mix is eclectic and the book peppered with handy tips for growing them.”
—Jimi Blake, Hunting Brook Gardens