November? Where did the autumn go?

October went by in a blur of holidays, family and work commitments and a fair amount of rain. All of which prevented me from doing much in the garden. I returned from holiday on 8th October to a garden which was full of the soft colours of autumn.

There were plenty of weeds too - particularly between the cracks in the paving. I quite like the way they soften the garden. I will have to get them out soon, but there's no hurry. The slabs themselves are not particularly attractive or well-laid. I wish I could get something like thyme to fill the cracks, but I've had no success with seeds.

There has been a lot of wind this week, and when I went out today, I found that my rose arch had come apart.

Fortunately, I was able to fit the pieces back together without too much trouble. The clematis which was growing up it had been looking quite dead, apart from a few green leaves. I took the opportunity to sort out the dead stems from the one remaining living stem and tie it back onto the arch. Hopefully it will grow strongly in the spring.

I finally managed to plant my tulips in pots today. I have planted:
2 pots of Black Parrot (deep purple, black and frilly)
2 pots of Flaming Parrot (yellow with red streaks, frilly)
2 pots of Red Shine (red, lily-flowered)
3 pots of Pieter de Leur (red, lily-flowered)
2 pots of National Velvet (deep crimson)
6 pots of Ballerina (orange, lily-flowered)

They are now in a sheltered corner, with wire mesh over the pots to keep the squirrel out. I enjoy watching the squirrel, and don't mind if he eats the bird food, but I draw the line at stealing tulip bulbs.

I have replenished my stock of bird seed for the winter. I am trying to attract a wider range of small birds by having a greater variety of food, so I have feeders full of niger seeds, sunflower hearts, peanut nibs, "woodland crumble" (which is a mix of seeds, insects and mealworms) and a "high energy, no mess" mix. I will see which are the most popular in my garden. I also have hanging fat feeders and tray feeders for dried fruit, cheese rind, dried mealworms and suet sprinkles. These are popular with starlings, pigeons and, occasionally, jackdaws, robins and blackbirds.

In September, I planted some bowls with bulbs and cyclamen. I am very happy at the way the cyclamen have grown and flowered well. They are a lovely shade of red, which is easy to see from the house even on dull wet days.

September already?

I can't believe its September already. The weather has been warm and a bit wet the last few weeks, so some of the flowers are having a second go at flowering. I have been very pleased with this Anthemis Tinctoria EC Buxton. I planted it in the spring and it was flowering by June, in spite of being molested by my sweet peas which grew over it. I cut it back a little in July and it is now covered in flowers again:

I went to the Wisley flower show yesterday, looking for some late summer colour. I was hoping to find Rudbeckia "Goldsturm" which has bold cheerful deep yellow daisy flowers. Instead I found a relative- Rudbeckia triloba. It is the same colour but has smaller flowers with more rounded petals and is much prettier. I hope the slugs don't eat it.

I also bought this Selinum wallichianum, which I hope will have cow-parsley type flowers next summer. It has attractive fine foliage and purple stems:

I planted up two pots with "Minnow" miniature daffodils and red cyclamen for winter and spring colour:

My Japanese acers, grown in pots on the patio, are showing their autumn colour now. This is acer nicholsonii, which is one of the first I acquired, over 10 years ago:

This is acer shirasawanum:

This is acer aconitifolium:

And here are some general views:

August catch-up

During the long drought, when the garden dried up and seemed to come to a complete stop, there was little to do apart from watering the pots and tidying up. It was too dry to plant new plants or seeds to fill in the gaps. Fortunately, the drought was ended with a significant amount of rainfall, bringing on new growth, and the garden now looks full again. There has been a second flush of roses in flower, and the late-flowering plants are just coming into flower.

I removed my angelica in July, once it had set seed and started to look dead. I was planning to replace it with an ornamental grass, calamagrostis brachytricha, which I have growing in a pot. However, the grass was growing strongly and producing flowering stems which would have been damaged if I had tried to transplant it. I decided to wait until next spring, which is the best time to divide and plant grasses. As a temporary measure, I bought a tender deep red grass, pennisetum setaceum rubrum, to fill the gap. This will grow well until late autumn, but I have never had one survive the winter. You can see it here, in front of the tiger lilies.

Talking of lilies, I have had mixed results with the bulbs I planted for this year. The tiger lilies above flowered quite well, but the stems were bendy - possibly due to being too close to the angelica. I purchased these Scheherazade lilies from a plant fair at Wisley last year, and they have flowered very well in pots:

The pink lilium cerneum bulbs I planted in a bowl in February have completely failed. Three of them were eaten by slugs in spring, and the last one has shrivelled and died without flowering.

One casualty of the drought, in spite of my watering, was a white penstemon, which had always struggled and finally shrivelled away. I replaced it with a mathiasella bupleuroides "Green Dream" which I had seen at the Chelsea Flower Show. This has settled well, and is putting on new growth. Hopefully, I will have exotic green flowers next spring:

I'm very pleased with my fennel this year. In previous years, I have had plants eaten to death by slugs. This year, I have managed to plant larger plants which have grown very tall and flowered profusely. I bought three plants grown in hairy pots which allow the roots to grow through without having to disturb them. I think this has helped them settle, so the extra cost was worth it:

 Another casualty of slugs was my caryopteris clandonensis which I planted last year. I have replaced it with a rudbeckia hirta "Cherry Brandy" - an impulse buy from Polesdon Lacey. It is an annual, I think, so I will have to replace it next year. It has lovely deep red flowers:

A lot of tidying up and waiting for rain.

June and July are too hot for gardening in a small west-facing garden with little shade. This year has been particularly hot and extremely dry from early spring. The roses and other early-flowering plants have gone over quickly, leaving tired, dry leaves behind, and nothing seems to be in a hurry to replace them. This last week it has been windy, which has battered some of the taller perennials and knocked over the allium skeletons so that they no longer look attractive. My time in the garden has been spent cutting back and tying up and hoping for some serious rain.

One job I completed a few weeks ago was the trimming of my little box hedges. These were formed from two clipped box balls and a number of smaller box plants sold for hedging which I planted about five years ago. I aim for an informal effect, retaining the natural curves of the plans, rather than straight lines.  This is how the hedges looked before I started clipping:

And this is the result of an hour in the sunshine with a pair of secateurs:

I quite like the irregularity of the two shapes and the fact that there are two types of box, with slightly different shades of green.

Other work has included the dead-heading of all the roses, and cutting back those branches which had grown too far away from the support. Most of the roses will have a second flush of flowers and will continue to flower until about November.

Taking all the self-sown poppies and aquilegias out of the bed on the left of the garden, and cutting back the other perennials has left a fair amount of bare soil to be filled. Fortunately, a trip to Hampton Court Flower Show produced a small number of suitable impulse buys to fill the gaps. I have planted three Helenium "Moerheim Beauty", which have orange daisy-like flowers in late summer, and a potentilla "Arc en Ciel" which has red flowers edged with a touch of gold.

I was delighted to see another of my wild flowers blooming -Centaurea Scabiosa (Greater Knapweed). It is quite a small flower, and much more delicate and attractive than its larger garden versions:

The allium sphaerocephalon are in full bloom now. These are small round flower heads on long thin stems. As the flower heads grow bigger, the stems start to bend and sag in a very informal manner.

The flowers also attract a lot of bees, particularly these little bumblebees with orange tails:

One plant which I have retained despite its obvious deterioration is the angelica. This has finished flowering and is producing its seeds. It has been attacked by blackfly aided and abetted by ants which farm them for their honeydew. This in turn has resulted in an infestation of ladybirds and their larvae, which feed on the aphids. With all this frenzied activity, I haven't the heart to take the angelica out just yet. The garden will benefit from the increased ladybird population.

Another predator of aphids is the hoverfly. Here is a picture of one on the oxeye daisy.

Also performing well this month is the trachelospermum jasminoides, which survived the cold weather much better than I expected given its reputation for being tender. It fills the garden with a sweet jasmine scent.

June Catch-up

I've been busy doing other things, such as bird watching and going on holiday, and now I find that I haven't posted for most of June, when the garden has been at its peak, with all the roses having their first flush, and many other perennials coming into flower too.

The irises in pots came out very shortly after I potted them up, and looked very pretty:

The roses were equally beautiful:

I am particularly pleased that the last rose pictured - Corvedale - flowered well this year. It was planted two years ago, but has been slow to establish itself.

I was also pleased that the dwarf hemerocallis, which I divided and planted in March, has produced some flowers - not many, but at least all three pants are thriving, and hopefully there will be more flowers next year.

Also in March, I planted two oriental poppies "Beauty of Livermere" and these are now producing buds. One has fully opened and is stunning:

Also new this year, the anthemis tinctoria "E.C. Buxton" has flowered, and is supporting the sweet pea "Matucana" which is growing forward. This wasn't planned, but is an interesting combination. I have added some support to stop the two plants falling too far.

Some old favourites come up every year, and are always welcome. This pink geranium is a little too enthusiastic for the available space and I may move it in the autumn.

This penstemon "Sour Grapes" is also enthusiastic, but is very pretty and long-flowering, so worth the space.

This alchemilla mollis edging was originally one plant, which failed to thrive in the front garden. I moved it, split it into small sections and planted it at the edge of the paving, in front of the slightly raised bed containing the ponds. It covers the unattractive edging and looks fantastic for most of the summer.

The stipa gigantea is at its best and looks fantastic as it catches the evening sunlight

And finally, here is a view of the whole garden, through the rose arch:

Wildflowers and some Chelsea Inspiration

I've been planting weeds over the bank holiday weekend. I was inspired by a day bird watching at the Wetland Centre in Barnes which celebrated its 10th anniversary last week. The Wetland Centre is an artificial, managed landscape, created from a disused reservoir. It is the ultimate wildlife garden, containing a wide variety of native trees, shrubs and flowers supporting a variety of birds, mammals and insects. I couldn't resist buying some of these wild flowers from the gift shop on my way out.

I have two small ponds in my garden, made from plastic bowls 2ft in diameter, placed next to each other. The surrounding area is rather poor sandy soil and I haven't established any long-term planting there. Last summer, I planted some grasses - pieces of Panicum Virgatum "Hanse Herms" - which I had divided from a larger clump. These have survived, but need time to thicken up. The other perennials I planted there last summer have failed to thrive and been eaten by slugs, leaving gaps. I have placed my wild flowers in these gaps, since they should thrive in the poorer soil, and will look good among the grasses. I have planted Leucanthemum Vulgare (Oxeye Daisy), Achillea Millefolium (Yarrow) Centaurea Scabiosa (Greater Knapweed) and Tanacetum Vulgare (Tansy). I'm looking forward to seeing how they grow. They join the self-seeded poppies and campanula to make a very natural corner.

 

Last Tuesday I went to the Chelsea Flower Show. I go every year and always come back with lots of ideas to try. This year it was the three large bowls of irises on Andy Sturgeon's "Best in Show" garden which caught my eye. His irises looked like this:

 

I went to the garden centre and bought some irises and put them in pots. Mine look like this:

I think they will look better when the buds open.

Pests!

There's not much to do now that the warmer weather is here, other than a little light weeding. One constant job is keeping an eye out for pests. I try to garden organically, so avoid using sprays. Most pests have a natural predator, and they usually turn up before the infestation gets too bad.

I always have greenfly on my roses, but it is a joy to see the blue tits, coal tits and sparrows hopping around cleaning them off, and taking them to feed their chicks. What they don't find gets eaten by the ladybirds and their larvae. The roses are usually clear of aphids by the time the buds open.

One pest which is a nuisance is the scale insect, which arrives on my Japanese maples each spring. They have a protective outer "shell" and seal themselves in with a sticky white substance. They look like this:

Nothing seems to eat them, and if left they can kill the trees. They are easily controlled in the early stages by wiping them off with a tissue and squashing them.

Another regular pest is the lily beetle. These are bright red and oblong and seek out lilies and fritillaries. Their larvae are slimy little blobs that look like bird droppings, and they can strip a lily of its leaves in no time. The best control is to patrol the lilies regularly and pick off the beetles before they get a chance to mate and lay eggs. Their bright colour makes them easy to spot from a distance. Their main defence is to drop to the ground on their backs, exposing their black bellies, which makes them difficult to find on the soil. If you put one hand underneath them, before knocking them off with the other, they are easy to catch as they fall. Then I drop them on the paving slabs and squash them with my foot. These beetles have arrived recently from continental Europe, and as far as I know have no natural predators in the UK, apart from gardeners.

Slugs and snails are always a problem in my garden and I have found nothing that works effectively to eradicate them. Some of them get eaten by the frogs and birds, but there are simply too many to control completely. My main defence is to buy things they don't like eating - hairy plants like alchemilla  mollis, sappy plants like euphorbia, and grasses, lavender and box. This year, I have managed to establish some fennel plants, which usually fall prey to slugs, and there are considerably fewer signs of slug damage than usual. I assume this must be due to the cold winter and cool dry spring. One plant that has fallen victim to the slugs is my sunflower. From my sowing in March, I had one seedling which avoided being slugged in its pot and grew to about 10 inches high. As soon as I planted it out, it was reduced to 5 inches high, and it has now disappeared completely.

On a more positive note, the garden is now looking good with the borders filling out. The alium hollandicum "Purple Sensation" has taken over from the tulips to add a bright burst of colour into the borders. They cover a gap before the roses bloom in June.

Darling Buds of May

The last two weekends have seen a return to cool breezy weather and showers or persistent rain - not very pleasant for gardening so I haven't done much. Instead I've been out and about, and in my travels I have acquired several plants to fill in gaps in the planting.

From a trip to Polesden Lacey, I acquired a Thalictrum "Black Stockings", which has tall dark stems and lilac fluffy flowers. I have planted this in the shady border under the trees. It isn't open yet but here it is in bud:

A walk to Petersham Nurseries produced two more new plants. The first was Anthemis Tinctoria "E. C. Buxton", also known as "Golden Marguerite". It has pale yellow, daisy-like flowers and I have planted it in the border on the left, which I am developing into a white, yellow, orange and red border (with a small amount of purple for contrast). The second plant was a Salvia Nemerosa Tanzerin, which has spears of purple & blue flowers. I have planted this next to the deep pink "Gertrude Jekyll" rose which grows up an obelisk in the bed on the right.

This year has been a good year for my apple blossom, which seems to have lapsed into a two-year cycle, with alternating good and bad years. In a good year the blossom looks like this:

A fortnight ago, I blogged that my New Zealand tree fern was starting into growth. The emerging frond has now started to unfurl, and now looks like this:

 

My Vitis Coignetiae is also in flower. This is not spectacular, because the flowers are very small and green, but I like them anyway.

Also in flower now is a little wild welsh poppy which I introduced to my garden from seed collected in a friend's garden where it grows as a weed. This has seeded itself into many gaps in the borders and in the gravel round the sundial. I like the relaxed effect of self-seeding plants.

And finally, here is a view of my garden from my bedroom window.