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.

What a difference a fortnight makes!

Today, I went out into the garden to plant some plants I had purchased  last week "to fill the gaps" The only trouble was, nature had already done the job and some of the gaps no longer existed! April is always a fast-growing month, particularly this year, with the cold snap being followed by sustained fine weather. This is a view of the garden today - showing how much fuller the garden is now.

I managed to fit my new purchases in somehow. I put some orange Imperial Fritillaries at the back of the left-hand border, near the bright yellow euphorbia. They match the orange in the tulips and the euphorbia "Dixter" which is also in flower, and the orange in the emerging Japanese maple tree leaves. I am aiming for a bright spring garden, full of yellows and oranges which look good in the spring sunshine. These are the fritillaries in their pots before I planted them.

And these are the euphorbia "Dixter"and the maple tree leaves:

I planted a fancy blue anemone nemerosa robinsoniana in the woodland border near the rose arch at the back of the garden

I also did some "editing", moving a verbascum and a sedum which were being swamped by their neighbours, and some weeding.

My sweet peas, sown in March, had grown quite well, although the ones in the John Innes seed compost did better than the ones in the Westland multi-purpose peat-free compost. I decided to plant them out in the left-hand border, using some home-made compost to improve the soil first. These are the seedlings in the pots:

And these are the seedlings in the ground (with the new fritillaries on the right of the picture):

There were a couple of surprises at the bottom of my garden in the shady corner under the trees. The first was the discovery of a clematis growing strongly next to the apple tree. It had started life in a large pot but didn't thrive, so I planted it next to the apple tree, hoping it would grow through the tree. It struggled for two years, never flowered, and I thought it had died. In fact it has started to re-grow, so I have put in some bamboo sticks to support it and guide it towards the tree.

The other surprise was finding that my New Zealand tree fern was still alive. It is supposed to be tender, and since I didn't wrap it up I feared it would have been killed by all the frost and snow in January. I had a good look at it today, and found new fronds curled up ready to grow. They are covered on hairs.

Two of my clematis are in flower now - not as many flowers as I expected, but at least they have survived their first year in the ground. This is clematis alpina "Columbine"

And this is clematis alpina "Helsingborg" (with a nice view of the tulips behind) The colour is a deeper purple than the picture shows.

I'll finish with some tulip pictures:

Spring Sunshine

After a cool Easter weekend, there has been a very sunny and warm few days, which has brought the bees out to feed on the spring flowers. It was warm enough in the sunshine to sit out and read a book - which is what I did yesterday for the first time this year.

Today I did a little tidying - deadheading the daffodils, removing some dandelions and other weeds, and general pottering. I also watered the pots with a liquid seaweed feed.

The warmth has brought out the flowers which were in bud last week, and the garden is beginning to look very pretty.

This tulip is particularly pretty. It is a little ahead of the other tulips of the same type.

The snakes head fritillaries are now fully out as are the little woodland anemones (anemone nemerosa)

I planted this Euphorbia Polychroma last year and it has established well at the back of the border. I love the acid yellow/green flowers.

Easter Break

I didn't do any gardening over Easter - I was away visiting family. When I came back I did a tour of the garden to see what was going on. Here are some of the highlights:

The first of my tulips is showing colour - a lovely bright red.

My other tulips are not far behind, and should all come out over the next few days if the weather is nice.

This is a small flowering cherry - Prunus Kuriliensis "Brilliant", with a birch tree above it. The cherry is growing in a large pot at the end of the garden.

The rose pruning I did earlier in the year is beginning to produce results. Here is one of the rose branches which I trained horizontally against the fence. You can see how this has encouraged upright shoots along the length of the branch and these should produce flowers.

These are the sweet peas which I sowed a few weeks back. I am quite pleased at how well they have grown.

The sunflowers have also germinated, but I think the slugs have had a go at them. The mouldy nasturtium seeds have (unsurprisingly) not germinated. In my heated propagator, the nicotiana and eryngium seeds have also sprouted. I'm quite pleased with the seeds so far but I'm not good at getting seeds to flowering size - that's the tricky bit.

I've got a number of flowers in bud. This is a snakes-head fritillary - I created a boggy patch especially to grow these. I'm glad they are surviving.

This is a clematis which is growing over my rose arch.

These are erythronium "Pagoda" which thrive in my front garden in a very dry shady spot.

This is a shoot from one of the pink lilium cerneum bulbs I planted in a pot in February. I like the spiky pinky-orange shoots.  Two of the bulbs have come up, but I think a squirrel may have stolen the third one - I found a hole where the bulb should be when I went out this evening.

This is Angelica Archangelica. Last week, it looked dead and a bit sad. This week it has trebled in size. It is a biennial which failed to flower last year so this is its third and probably final year. It should grow quickly to around four feet tall, and flower in May, before setting seed and dying. I love plants that do dramatic things.