Today we should have been flinging the garden gate wide open, boiling the kettle, slicing cake and putting plants out for sale – all to raise money for the National Garden Scheme. Sadly due to coronavirus the garden gate is firmly shut and locked and the only tea and cake served here will be for us and three of our adult ‘children’ who are in lockdown with us. There are worse places to be and the last few weeks have seen me gardening more than ever. There are still weeds that have evaded me, I see more each day waving to me from the borders but many have pretty flowers anyway, so some will be allowed to stay for a short while.
Some plants that I envisaged being at their best today have co-operated. Alliums are looking splendid and so far our two springer spaniels have managed not to destroy any of them as they charge round the garden. The spring borders are now full of Geranium phaeum Samobor, Queen Anne’s Lace (cow parsley), Comfrey and bumble bees! All looking just as I anticipated it would before it all slides into disarray next month. The first roses are just opening, Mme Alfred Carriere climbs up and through a partially hollow apple tree and the first couple of flowers are open right at the top. Rosa Gertrude Jekyll is always one of the first to flower and hasn’t disappointed this year. There are many buds on all the roses, promising a lovely display over the next few weeks.
The spring borders, taken over by Geranium phaeum Samobor
Geranium Mary MottramA barrel full of hostas – mainly miniatures
Rosa Gertrude JekyllJust some of the plants that would have been for sale
As I won’t be able to sell tea and plants this afternoon I’ll be in the garden anyway – weeding!
For more about the National Garden Scheme open gardens visit www.ngs.org.uk
A New Year and already the days are getting longer, no longer dark and gloomy at 3pm but actual daylight until around 4.30pm. There is hope that before long the garden will start to look green and vibrant again, no longer a muddy mess. What a treat to hear the birds singing again and to see them at the bird feeders and flitting along the hedgerow.
It’s good to take a walk around the garden each day to see what is happening. Plenty of buds swelling on trees and shrubs and already the first snowdrops in flower. I can keep pace with the daily changes at the moment but before too long everything will speed up and I will have to make sure I don’t miss anything growing. Most years the first daffodils to flower are a clump in the orchard under a willow tree, these are growing well with lovely plump buds. Other daffodils in the spring borders are also growing well with buds showing together with cyclamen coum and the first hellebores. A temporary protective netting fence has been put up around the spring area of the garden to stop our over enthusiastic dogs scattering flower heads as they carry out their own inspection of the garden. This normally works well, and although they have a tendency to push underneath it at least they are slowed down a little.
I enjoy working in the garden at this time of year almost more than in the heat of summer. I can set myself a task and complete it without feeling that I have to weed and tidy the whole garden in one day. I like to go outside with a particular area in mind to weed, maybe only a small area, but actually finish it and feel that something has been accomplished. I have so far cut down all the dead growth on perennials in the Autumn border, the long border in the back garden and three beds behind the greenhouse. Next task is to weed each one and then spread a mulch of garden compost. I’ve spread shredded plant stems over the Autumn border to try and keep weeds at bay and so far one bed by the greenhouse has had its mulch of compost.
The vegetable garden has its raised beds covered with weed suppressing fabric over winter which not only helps to keep weeds down but also warms the soil. The first crop has been planted this week – several rows of garlic, planted on an unseasonably warm, sunny day.
First snowdrops – Galanthus S.Arnott I am reliably informedHelleboreCyclamen coumNarcissusViburnum bodnantense DawnSarcococcaEuphorbiaMahoniaHamamelis x intermedia FeuerzauberBuds on Magnolia stellataPrunus autumnalis rosea just coming into flowerWith a little help from one of my friends – for a change not digging or sitting on anything precious!Camellia buds looking promising
Funny how it’s already mid-December. In my mind we are still in late summer/early autumn with jobs undone that should have been completed months ago. Clue to the onset of winter being the recent frosts! In reality I am probably still rooted in Spring, with too many packets of seeds remaining unsown. Some of course are the very welcome free packets on the front of gardening magazines, but I know if I look properly I will find some seeds from gardening society seed exchanges that have never made it into a seed tray. Maybe this winter instead of avidly scanning the seed exchange lists I should ignore them and instead find out the unopened packets from last year, at the same time making an early New Year’s Resolution to sow them. They may grow or they may not, they’ll have a better chance of germination in a tray of seed compost than in their packets!
Regardless of wet and windy weather with a few frosts thrown in for good measure, gardening continues. Three silver birch trees have been planted in the orchard, the variety “Snow Queen” which is renowned for its bright white bark. We bought one year old bare root trees so at the moment they are only around three feet high and very spindly. The rabbit guards around the trunks are more obvious than the trees themselves!
Betula Snow Queen – 11 year old trees, hope the new ones grow as well!
We already have two of these in one corner of the orchard and after 11 years they are splendid trees and their bark is wonderful. Let’s hope the new ones grow equally as well. A fourth tree to be planted is an apple, Laxton’s Fortune, to replace an Egremont Russet that died this year having been ring barked by rabbits.
I took advantage of a recent frosty morning to take photographs of some of the dead stems in the garden. For a change there were quite a few that looked good with a dusting of frost. Next job though is to cut everything back and mulch the flower beds with as deep a layer of compost as I can manage.
Helianthus Lemon Queen
Bronze Fennel Rudbeckia herbstonne
Acanthus
Plenty of Hazel catkinsLook carefully – Three squirrels
My favourite time of the year in the garden. Let’s hope that we get some dry, sunny days in order to appreciate fully the colours in the garden. This morning as I look out of the window the “autumn bed” in the orchard is positively glowing yellow with the low sun shining through it.
Creating this bed was one of the better ideas that we’ve had over the last 13 years gardening here. We mulled it over for a good year and finally last winter took the plunge, although a deciding factor was a mini digger sitting on the drive having been hired for another purpose. Its easy to lift turf over a large area with mechanical power rather than spadework! At the same time a large bed in the garden was being emptied of plants and grassed over – again a good decision. How satisfying it was to create such a lovely new bed simply by moving plants from one place to another and it would appear that everything transplanted is happier in its new position. Plants that were transplanted from the garden bed included Helianthus Lemon Queen, Acanthus, Echinops, Rudbeckia laciniata Herbstsonne and an Aster whose name has been lost in the mists of time. During the spring I added Achillea in various shades of terracotta and red and seed grown annual Rudbeckia. Given a place in full sun with nothing overshadowing it the Rudbeckia and Helianthus in particular have grown spectacularly well and have been in flower since mid-August. Bees and butterflies have been regular visitors.
Helianthus Lemon Queen with Rudbeckia laciniata herbstonne towering above
A Virginia Creeper growing up the west facing wall of the house started changing colour a few weeks ago and in fact once the leaves have turned a beautiful red they promptly fall off, difficult to take a photo of it when it’s at its best. A couple of years ago I planted some bulbs of Nerine bowdenii having admired those growing in a neighbour’s garden as I walked the dogs. These seem to be settling in well, not particularly clumping up yet but the flowers are huge and so pink!
Nerine bowdenii
The most wonderful scent in the garden at the moment is coming from the Katsura tree, or as our family has re-named it “The Candyfloss Tree”. It’s leaves are turning all shades of pink, red and orange and the burnt sugar smell that pervades the garden on a sunny day is amazing. Not something that you can smell by going up to the tree and sniffing a leaf, the scent envelops you as you walk around the garden.
“The Candyfloss Tree”Grasses positioned to catch morning and evening sunShocking pink dahliaChrysanthemumMichaelmas daisyCrab apple – Malus Gorgeous. Only apple tree in our orchard to bear fruit this year
Today, predicted to be the hottest day of the year so far, has started with mist wreathing the garden and the surrounding farmland. A nice cool start to the day for the plants in the garden – and us!
But the cool start didn’t last long …. by 11am blue skies and very, very hot. Luckily I watered potted plants thoroughly yesterday evening so having moved some to a shady spot I will keep my fingers crossed that they will be happy until watering time this evening.
The “hot border” is starting to look as it should and is actually sparkling in the sunshine. This spot receives the last rays of the sun on a summer’s evening, shining beautifully through the Stipa Gigantea across to the other side of the drive where a circular bed is planted with grasses and another Stipa Gigantea. Who says the garden is just thrown together?!
The Hot Bed with Stipa Gigantea, Crocosmia Lucifer, Papaver Laurens Grape backed by a Buddleia and Cotinus coggygriaDahlias with Crocosmia Lucifer and Stipa Gigantea
Hemerocallis Cherry RipeHemerocallis Cherry Ripe, Veronica Longifolia and Dianthus carthusianorumAnd bringing the heat down a little … Verbascum chaixii
Not long now and we’ll be opening the gates and welcoming visitors to our NGS Open Weekend. This will be the fifth time we have opened the garden in conjunction with others in the locality and we are hard at work. I can’t guarantee we will be weed free, in fact I can guarantee that there will be some weeds but hopefully we will have pulled out all the obvious ones and the garden plants will be looking lovely . Amazing though how you can pull out nettles and sticky weed and think you’ve cleared an area only to look out of the window and see a three foot nettle waving at you!
The other task keeping me busy at the moment is potting on plants for the Plant Stall. There should be a good selection available, the majority propagated from plants growing in the garden or from seed.
The roses are starting to flower mostly of the “old fashioned shrub” variety which are our favourites. This is a moss rose whose name is unknown to us – any ideas? Hopefully there will still be some blooms on Open Weekend!
I think so. In our garden May is a lovely month. Plants in the borders are growing well and the fresh new leaves on trees and shrubs are in all shades of green (and purple!) Early morning and dusk are my favourite times to be in the garden and over the last few days the garden has sparkled with dew on the grass and the scent of Wisteria in the air. Bearded Iris English Cottage and Sable are both flowering along with alliums, a combination which I love. Pale coloured English Cottage has a lovely scent – evocative of playing in a childhood garden, when the iris flowered at my head height. A pink Clematis Montana is covering a wooden structure, the flowers are beautiful but this is a plant I would grow for its scent alone. It’s a scent that fills the air and you have to follow your nose to find its origin.
May also means hard work, at least this year it does. We are open again for Charity under the National Garden Scheme along with others in the locality. A quick cup of tea, a sit down and now back to the gardening.
I love old gardening tools, but how do you refer to them? Are they vintage, collectors items or just plain old and worn out? A favourite occupation if passing a junk shop or reclamation yard is to go and explore and see what gardening “treasure” can be found. We are now amassing a collection of interesting old tools and it’s fun to try and work out what some of them would have been used for. We bought an old hoe last year that has got a vicious looking spike on the reverse of the head. The obvious explanation, to me anyway, is that you hoe off your weeds and then turn the tool over and use the spike as a dibber. A bit of research brought up a website selling vintage tools and a similar hoe for sale – labelled as a “Field Hoe”. I think hoeing a whole field would be a job too far, but we are thrilled with our find and will use it very carefully! Some old spades are so heavy, just lifting them up would be enough for me, but imagine double digging with them. No thanks! What I find fascinating are the different sizes and shapes of spade heads and the angle at which the handles of some are fixed. Another recent purchase is an old turf lifting spade with a long wooden handle and a curved iron bar joining the heart shaped head. It is stamped with a makers name, C T Skelton, Sheffield, and again a little research tells me that company was founded in Sheffield in 1855 and traded until the mid 1960’s before being taken over. In 1914 there were 400 employees but by 1961 there were only 250. An interesting item to own and by doing just a little research a bit of social history is unearthed too. I think this turf lifting spade will be for decoration only but it would be quite interesting to see how easy or otherwise it would make lifting turf.
Display in 2017 of some of our collection
Some of our old tools have been inherited from both sides of the family, it is a nice feeling to use something that was once used by a parent or grandparent. It connects those that are no longer with us to our current garden. A set of long handled edging shears is the tool that takes me back to my childhood, with memories of getting completely tangled up in them as I tried to “help” my father edge the lawn and also of his exasperation as he tried to get the job done quickly. They still work perfectly and I use them every week during Spring/Summer. We also inherited a heavy old garden roller made of concrete and cast iron. It was back breaking getting it into the car, in fact I think it broke the piece of wood we used as a ramp! Luckily the car suspension remained intact! However with just a repair to the wooden handle we can now use it. It is heavy but once it is rolling is fairly easy to manoeuvre and is ideal for flattening the bark path through our Spring Borders. Luckily we aren’t on a hill so there’s no chance of it running away out of control!
Garden shears are the bane of our life, most new ones we find are absolutely useless whether it be for clipping a hedge, topiary or grass. We have one fairly new pair that are fairly serviceable as long as you remember to tighten up the blades every few minutes. We have one pair though that are relatively small, old and are a joy to use. Trimming the box topiary around the garden has become a much more enjoyable task.
I’m not sure if they count as “tools” but collecting old metal watering cans is becoming a bit of an obsession. One very pretty small can was bought as we wandered round an antique fair prior to bringing our daughter and her mountain of belongings home from University one year. There was no room in the car for anything else, barely room for daughter to squeeze into the back, however the watering can travelledthe 140 miles or so home on my knee and is now happy in the greenhouse. The only stipulation I make with watering cans though is that they must not have rusted through, if I buy them I want to use them. So much nicer than their plastic counterparts.
Again not “tools” as such, but we seem to have accidentally acquired a collection of old tin baths! Ideal for growing different varieties of mint but one has now been pressed into service as a small containerised pond. It’s been filled with rainwater, pebbles and bricks have been put in the bottom and it currently has three plants – Iris and Marsh Marigold, courtesy of a friend. More plants will follow and hopefully wildlife too. Years ago we did the same thing in an old belfast sink on the basis that we had toddlers at the time and didn’t want the worry of a “proper pond”, that worked well so hopefully this one will too.
The garden is open for the National Garden Scheme every other year. We were open in 2017 and displayed some of our small collection in the lean-to shed, along with other gardening ephemera. We plan to do a similar thing for our NGS opening this year. Details at http://www.ngs.org.uk – Astley Country Gardens
A mild start to 2019 has seen us eager to make changes and improvements to the garden. The orchard is bounded on three sides by a native hedge, two sides we planted around ten years ago with a mix of hawthorn, hazel, viburnum and blackthorn and the third adjoins the lane and is mostly hawthorn. This latter hedge is very sparse at the base, filled most summers by nettles and bracken and cut most years by a man in a tractor with a flail (if we happen to spot him in the village cutting other hedges). Although this method of hedge cutting gets the job done and instantly “tidies up” a straggly hedge we are never happy with the “chewed ends” on closer inspection. This is the year to lay the hedge properly, my husband and younger son have made a good start and there are heaps of prunings all across the orchard awaiting disposal. A bit of clearing up first I think before the next stretch is laid. We will feel very on view to the walkers of the village and their dogs for a year or two but hopefully we will end up with a much thicker hedge with growth all the way from the base rather than just a thicket at the top. Two more hedges to go in following years ……
With all this activity going on with the hedge, I have not been idle. Grass clippings from the orchard have been piled up in the corner underneath the hedge for years and are now well rotted. This heap is high and could give the dogs a launch pad for escape over the hedge so my task has been to start digging away this compost and barrow it away to use as a thick mulch on both the asparagus bed and a new bed filled with autumn flowering plants and grasses. I have yet to decide whether it is better to fill the barrow too full and do fewer journeys or half fill it and do more – I walked nearly two miles back and forth with a too full barrow one afternoon as it was.
This morning there is a sharp frost (minus six degrees), so maybe no digging today. However there is plenty to enjoy in the garden with Snowdrops now flowering along with the first Hellebores, Cyclamen and Iris unguicularis. Winter flowering shrubs are in flower including Viburnum bodnantense Dawn, Lonicera purpusii and Hamamelis, all with a lovely scent.
The garden is open for the National Garden Scheme in June along with others in the village. There is at least one flower bed that needs a complete overhaul before Spring not to mention the vegetable garden. No time for slacking!
Peonies are definitely my favourite plants in the garden at the moment, closely followed by the roses. The peonies have been in flower for weeks it seems and just keep going. The scent coming through the open sitting room window from Peony Monsier Jules Elie (the huge pink one in the photos) is so strong. The double white is Duchesse de Nemours and the beautiful deep red one is possibly Karl Rosenfeld. My favourite though is the single white flowered variety – it was bought as Duchesse de Nemours which it obviously isn’t but what a find! It is such a clear white and the scent is amazing. A quick search on the internet shows that it might be called White Wings, but who knows. Sadly it only has one flower this year, I think many years of mulching the flower bed caused the plant to be too deeply planted and it didn’t flower at all last year. Last autumn I dug it up and replanted it and it has grown better, I will be careful not to mulch too deeply round it in future and hopefully with patience (mine!) it will be covered in flowers again in future years.
Then the roses. We have sandy soil which is not ideal for roses, but we have planted old fashioned shrub roses mainly and picked those which are meant to be good for poor soil. This year they are flowering so well, I am hugely impatient, not good for a gardener, but the wait for masses of flowers has been worthwhile. The photos show Rosa Louise Odier, Gertrude Jekyll and Charles de Mills. My absolute favourite though is Rosa Tuscany Superb which is only just starting to flower. There won’t be so many blooms on the plant this year as the shrub was moved last autumn, it has survived and is growing but I will have to wait patiently for it to go back to its former glory. Last year we planted two roses in huge terracotta pots – both David Austin roses recommended for growing in pots. Rosa Olivia Rose Austin was a must as we have two daughters with middle names Olivia and Rose and Rosa Desdemona which is a beautiful creamy white with an amazing scent. Both are growing really strongly and a perfect addition to the garden.
Who knows what will be my favourite plant in a week or so – I can’t wait to find out!
Today we should have been flinging the garden gate wide open, boiling the kettle, slicing cake and putting plants out for sale – all to raise money for the National Garden Scheme. Sadly due to coronavirus the garden gate is firmly shut and locked and the only tea and cake served here will be for us and three of our adult ‘children’ who are in lockdown with us. There are worse places to be and the last few weeks have seen me gardening more than ever. There are still weeds that have evaded me, I see more each day waving to me from the borders but many have pretty flowers anyway, so some will be allowed to stay for a short while.
With all this activity going on with the hedge, I have not been idle. Grass clippings from the orchard have been piled up in the corner underneath the hedge for years and are now well rotted. This heap is high and could give the dogs a launch pad for escape over the hedge so my task has been to start digging away this compost and barrow it away to use as a thick mulch on both the asparagus bed and a new bed filled with autumn flowering plants and grasses. I have yet to decide whether it is better to fill the barrow too full and do fewer journeys or half fill it and do more – I walked nearly two miles back and forth with a too full barrow one afternoon as it was.
Tales from a Country Garden 