Spring Blossoms, April 3 2011

Join me in a walk around the garden this morning to share these blossoms with you. Please note, we do not hire any gardeners! Just Jean and myself.  Click images to enlarge.

Magnolia stellata

Tulips and daffodils

Fritilaries and narcissi

Bought as the daffodil Bravoure, from a famous company, these are clearly not. Short at 12 inches.
If you recognize them, let me know. My guess is Las Vegas.

 This is Bravoure, my only good bloom this year. It is the best daffodil visually, very tall.
I am trying to establish a long term colony, now set back another year.

Pieris forestii. We have very alkali soil, so grow acid lovers in an ericaceous bed. The red leaf tips are just beginning.

Camellia

Pulmonaria, "lungwort", once medicinal.

Symphytum, from the comfrey family. The Beeslove it, wonderful ground cover for shade, and when you hack it back, put it in the water tub to make free plant feed. This one is Hidcote Blue.

More daffodils - a spare patch for a bucket load of spare bulbs out of last year's pots.

Chaenomeles - Japanese quince

We easily tolerate lesser celandines, which carpet some beds with yellow flowers right now. When the flowers die, the leaves disappear too so they are the perfect weed. This green 'weed' is growing next to the broze leaves form "Brazen Hussey". There is a white flowered form just out of picture.

Primroses, seed themselves around wonderfully.

My favorite Ribes, flowering currant, "Alba", flowers for over a month.

Next to it a double flowered gorse, viciously spikey.

Spiraea, "Bridal Veil", well named.

Caltha, Kingcup or Marsh marigold

Another ribes, the yellow flowered form Rines aureum, golden or buffalo current. It has white berries.

Foreground, an epimedium, and behind it a tiny Japanese cherry.

More pulmanaria, here white flowered and blue flowered forms

and here with red flowers.

The evergreen clematis, armandii, white flowered form. We have a pink flowered form to go elsewhere.

The tree Amelanchier, this one canadensis (from Canada) which was pruned when little to become  multi-stemmed instead of single trunk.

Kerria japonica, double form, grows up to 12 feet

and finally today a flowering damson which flowers too early normally to fruit, 

though when it did bear tiny purple damsons, they were a bonus. A Prunus ornamental plum, probably Nigra is purple all through, even the wood. This form has pink flowers, while usual forms like Atropurpurea have white flowers. It is on a Prunus cerasifera rootstock  which suckers badly (green leaves and white flowers).

Springtime.

We have developed a spring garden, so these pictures illustrate how.

This was a dead area of poor soil and pernicious weeds - a lawn of weeds in fact. This now looks rather better. You can spot primroses, hellebores, bellis and daffodils, with a magnolia stellata in flower in the background. You make out a few wisps of a pink flowering ornamental damson - I know this because one year it fruited and the damsons were enjoyed. Mostly, the fruits do not mature.

The hellebores are at their best at the moment, many self-seeded.

Another corner, under lonicera purpusii, winter flowering and still flowering, this mix of herbs and flowers.

However big the garden, there is always room for containers which can be changed season by season.

These two delights are double hellebores, with thanks to Ashwoods nursery. The black and cream flowers look very good together, growing in full shade.

A very fine daffodil, very long tube and reflex petals. Named Pacific Coast.

The raised alpine bed with drumstick primulas and much else.

This picture shows closer detail.

And to finish, more hellebores and the promise of shrubs to come.

Sale time

This little lot has just cost me £10 - 20 plants at 50 pence each from Wyvale, Swindon. Delphiniums, ten coreopsis in different colours, a county ground cover rose rose (Lancashire, I'll be in trouble), pittospermum, tamarix, pelargonium, oleander, barbed wire bush, and cuphea. Not to mention a few other things half price, including an actinidia kolomikta.All at peak flowering, and all perennial so will stay around for a few years yet. Why pay more?
By the way, can you see the cat?

Talking points

A lot of people asked what this plant above is - one even asked why I had put foam rubber on top of a stick. It is of course the seedhead from last year's bulrushes, which the birds, especially goldfinches, use for nest-building.

One commented on the amsonia, above, as the most unusual plant in the village. Another plantaholic. Unfortunately a second one did not survive the winter.

A tiny hosta, hosta venusta, sitting next to a fivepenny piece. (That reminds me of a 1960s folk group). No flowers yet.

And finally, a little girl was looking for a fairy flag. She beautifully translated the elvish writing on this himalayan prayer flag. If the family are reading this, let me know where the idea came from and went to!

The rambling rose Rambling Rector is just beginning to come into flower. It will be stunning on Wednesday next. The white foxgloves in the foreground have been stunning. and this problem bed is showing promise.
.

Bhutanese Buddhist prayer flags give height to the back. The really need to have thick bamboo poles 20 foot high, but I managed 15 foot by fixing together two 8 foot poles. The yellow is mine, from my birth year, and represents earth. Very appropriate. Its usually on my knees. The year of the rat. Jean's is red for fire, the year of the pig. In the foreground is a bridge over the bog garden, finished yesterday. We have six natural springs in the garden.
.

The purple weigela has produced an interesting sport. I have tried to root it for two years, without great success. These shoots look more robust and I will try again, but will also try a dry layering on the branch.
.

This viola in the viola display is named Nelly after my mother, who is a customer of Victorian Violas, Chelsea medal winners in Lincoln, who named new crosses after various customers, . It is a robust plant with pastel colouration. We also have from the same company Isobel, our niece's name.
.

Finally these bamboo cane tops we found in Spetchley Gardens Plant Fair. This dormouse is fantastic, and we have a merecat, butterfly, owl and bear.

Garden Opening 12 June

Brilliant hot day today with about 80 visitors. Here are the hostas on display. Most we have had for several years, but were not in flower. On Tuesday we found half price hostas in flower at Wyvale Gard Centre. Two in flower just finished off the display. There is some slug/snail damage, but not much. The plands are on gravel in pots, and pots have been sprayed with WD40. Snails hate it.

Next to the hostas are alpines in pots, Jean's passion. Space in the alpine bed ran out long ago. Here are the pots, with violas behind which gives a colourful display.

A scarecrow theme ran through the village. We put up a Himalayan tea picker theme, using Buddhist prayer flags bought recently from Bhutan, a shalwar shamez we bought at a bazaar in Lahore, and an umbrella from China. We saw this scene in Bhutan many times. The bushes are lonicera nitida, trimmed to resemble tea trees. The hat was bought in Bali (we think...)  On the post is a tin of Darjeeling tea, and on the bush a box of Napal tea sent to me by a Nepalese student. The flags are blue (water), white (air), red (fire), green (vegetation), yellow (earth). The prayer is for an integrated understanding.

Pieris

A nice shot from six weeks ago. Our alkaline soil cannot grow  acid lovers so this Pieris tree is a treat in our village. It grows in an ericacious bed from which lime is kept out of the top 18 inches. These gorgeous leaves start in April. There are three Pieris in the bed in total.

Garden Opening minus 2

Last opening time (2008) the rose Paul's Himalayan Musk  was glorious (see pictures below). This time, same weekend, not a flower. Two days of sun should do it so Wednesday perhaps. Too late. Still we say we are tidy for one weekend every two years and we are not far off, if tidy is interpreted vaguely. A last minute effort with lawnmower and strimmer should make a difference. This year, there is a scarecrow theme - see later post. The picture above is one the punters won't see - the crab apple which flowered a month ago. Now the flowers are white Wisteria sinensis, who was first discovered (I am reading) by John Fortune in Ning-po, China, around 1840, and the rambling rose Rambling Rector. Thw wiateria is on the way out, the rose just starting. I will take a photo tomorrow.

Pocket Handkerchief Tree

The Davidia discovered by Pere David in China (or Pocket Handkerchief Tree) produced its bracts in May for the first time (although we noticed a few two years ago). Situated near the road, it looked spectacular from the road. Trimmings root easily as hardwood cuttings (use them as plant supports and you will have a baby tree next year. Expect bracts in 15 years.

Garden open June 12-13 2010

Working hard to get ready for the open weekend...

March 19th

This is when beds are dug over, noxious weeds removed, to get us ready for planting. A lovely sight. This is the bed we optimistically call Hidcote. To the right, Sweet Williams have survived the winter.


The spring flowers are doing well, daffodils a bit slow but primroses and anemones are doing well. And almost Easter and the snowdrops still looking wonderful. These ones are galanthus flore plene (the double flowered form).

Wildlife

Small birds took a hammering in the heavy frosts - a sudden disappearance of tits, sparrows, wrens etc. The frogs have failed to arrive in the pond this year - for the first year since we arrived here in 1983. Normally there are hundreds, starting around March 10th but for several years spawn has not been maturing. Maybe it is the late winter. Spotted the first brimstone butterflies a few days ago.

Garden waste recycling.

I helped a neighbour this morning put brambles into a green recycling poly bag. The thorns of course punctured the bag and only a small pile filled the sack. Another neighbour has ten sacks outside his gate. Whoever thought up the green bag garden recycling scheme was not a gardener. Whatever fits in a green bag would go on my compost heaps (I have 6) and whatever won't go on my heaps will not go in little green sacks, like branches of trees. I shred what I can, but...
At my mother's house in Lincolnshire, houses who need them are given a large green bin just like the black refuse bins. A friend in Leicestershire gets the same, but in brown. Then you can chop branches up to go in and not have to resort to a garden bonfire.
It is important to recycle not only to reduce smoke (though to be fair barbecues are more persistent smoke/smell producers) but to return organic matter to to impoverished soil. Bonfires reduce soil's goodness to ash, which grows nothing. A plant is made of the goodness taken out of the soil, and this needs to be returned. Councils can compost in bulk what individuals cannot handle.
So, councils, instead of littering the green compost we buy from you with bits of green polythene, consider a proper garden waste collection system to reuse this valuable resource.