Whilst gardening today we were both amazed by how dominant the colour yellow seemed under a dark November sky – the yellow of foliage, late blooms and drying stalks. I’ll leave the photos to show what I mean.
Category: garden photography
Wandering around the garden this morning after feeding the chucks, I was struck by the similarity in colour of three different flowers but what colour are they? There are so many colours in the garden that are difficult to put a label to. These three blooms are salmony, yellowy, pinkish I suppose but whatever they end up looking so subtle and gently beautiful. They are also the colours of some smoothies or yoghurts.
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Added heat!
We have added more red to our Hot Border for extra zing! This extra red was provided by a crocosmia called “Walbertons Red”. The “Walberton” part of the name refers to the nursery in Arundel, West Sussex who introduced it. The nursery’s best-know introductions are probably Lavender Silver Edge and Scabious Butterfly Blue. We also bought Crocosmia “Walbertons Yellow” and both these crocosmias are richly coloured and flower strongly.
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The year of the clematis?
Should 2011 have been “The Year of the Clematis”? All ours have flowered so well and for so long, be they the usual climbers or the less-often grown and less well known herbaceous varieties. Just look at the photos! The first is a climber and the second an herbaceous type.
The buds on the agapanthus are still opening. They look wonderful at every stage.
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Bud Burst
We know botanists love to play around with plant names and recently there seem so many cases of this happening. Sometimes it seems to make sense, but why oh why did they change the plant family name of the umbels from “Umbellifer” to “Apiacea”? The original name reflected the character of these plants so well. They simply do look like umbrellas don’t they? Their inflorescences are usually scented and most definitely umbrella-shaped.
So many of this family we know as aids to our cookery – carrot, parsley, cumin, coriander, parsnip – a varied lot of vegetables and herbs. Just let some go to seed and watch them perform!
At Chelsea this year a flowering parsnip starred in Cleve West’s Gold Medal winning garden which was also rightly awarded “Best in Show”. He had dug it up from his allotment.
Today the brightest flowers in the back garden here are the fennel, its myriad minute acid yellow inflorescences held in umbrellas above the finest green lace of its foliage. Perhaps known best for its culinary value, it is also a brilliant border plant with its mouth-watering scent reminiscent of aniseed balls and its flocks of hoverflies in attendance. The magnetic attraction it holds for these insects make it a valuable garden companion – a living pesticide, for hoverflies and their larvae are predators of the highest calibre. Our fennel has self-seeded alongside the central path and is so large it looks down on its neighbour, a Mahonia japonica.
Another self-seeding umbel in our patch is the Cow Parsley. In the wild it appears as a thug growing in masses along roadsides where its sweetest of scents permeates our cars. However in the mixed garden border it certainly doesn’t deserve being served up with an asbo as one might imagine for it becomes a small delicate plant easily threatened by its neighbours. It seems to be that its smaller stature is due to this dislike of being crowded by neighbouring plants. It was interesting to see Monty Don showing Cow Parsley growing in his borders on Gardeners World a few weeks back.
The purple-black foliage cultivar “Ravenswing” is a real asset to any garden and its delicacy of stature and colour live comfortably alongside many neighbours. Ours look particularly good early on in the summer with another “apiacea” family members Astrantia “Hadspens Blood” and “Ruby Wedding”.
Now I must go and find out why the family of umbrella-like plants are now called “apiacea”.
A warm humid day brings out the best scent in the garden and roses are often considered the best blooms for sweet scents. But not all roses perform, with many hybrid teas completely without odour. When we began our garden in Plealey we wanted the best and most varied scented blooms so all our roses are New English varieties bred by David Austin. Luckily his nursery and trial grounds are not far away. The display gardens are amazing and give you the chance to fully experience the sight and scent of each variety. So chosing roses for our garden is so easy. We simply take a half hour drive, wander around the roses sniffing the blooms as we go and then make our final choice over a cup of tea served in cups decorated with paintings of roses of course.
We now enjoy here in our patch at Avocet “A Shropshire Lad”, “Falstaff”, “Teasing Georgia”, “Graham Thomas” and “Wenlock”. We grow them close to paths – close enough to enjoy their scents but not so close that we suffer from their thorns.
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Golden Spires
Each time the sun momentarily burst through the blackened skies which produced sporadic heavy showers all morning, it lit up the golden spires of verbascum and ligularia.
So what will the greenbenchramblings be? The green bench is a rather old faded green plastic garden bench. It is a little brittle now and suffering from age. Its feet are chipped and cracked but it is where I sit to write in my special notebook. This notebook is a “Moleskine” with inviting cream pages inside its soft black cover, and in here I write my thoughts on “green things” – my lottie, my garden, wildlife and conservation.
The green bench currently lives on our allotment at Bowbrook Allotment Community on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, and it moved with us when we gave up our lottie on the far side of town.
It is where I take my rests, drink my tea and coffee during my very frequent breaks and where I nibble my fruit at lunchtime. When I sit I look and think and when thoughts come to me I pencil them into my “Moleskine”.
I have been making greenbenchramblings for a few years now so sometimes my ramblings will be retrospective. So welcome to my ramblings – enjoy them.
greenbenchramblings 