Category: Shropshire

First walk for months! Part 1

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date July 4, 2020
3 Comments on First walk for months! Part 1

After not being allowed out of our own property because of the coronavirus once we heard I was allowed a little freedom we immediately went out for a walk around the village. We set off down our lane which goes through the village and soon turned left into Well Lane where we soon found the footpath we were after.

We were delighted to see a puddle, the first we had seen for weeks.

It was good to see that Mother Nature has continued her good work during lock down and we enjoyed seeing wildflowers, grasses and seeds on trees. This earl stretch of our walk took us along an ancient drovers’ road with hedges both sides. Occasional glimpses though gaps show crops growing sadly regularly covered in chemical sprays. We were to discover the bad effects of this later on our walk.

Sadly there were signs that plants were suffering from the long spell of hot dry weather.

After walking for half an hour or so we reached an old beautiful manor house where our path turned at right angles skirting the lake. Alongside the lake was a beautiful extremely wildlife friendly wide verge of wild flowers with annuals added for extra insect food. Below is a short gallery of photos taken of this feature. As usual click on the first photo then navigate using the arrows. Enjoy.

After enjoying the wildlife border and its wildlife we walked on a little way to a place where three fields met and stopped for a break. (See part 2)

Tags country walks, countryside, hedgerows, Shropshire, South Shropshire, wildflower meadows, wildflowers, wildlife

garden design garden wildlife gardening log piles meadows Shropshire wildlife

Gardening in lockdown – new wildlife strip

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date June 7, 2020
2 Comments on Gardening in lockdown – new wildlife strip

At the bottom of our back garden we had a stock fence for which we were responsible under the details of our house deeds. Recently the farmer who owns the land behind us created a new enlarged paddock in which to keep their ancient pony and some ewes with lambs, which left us with an awkward strip of land just 45 cm or so wide but the length of our garden. This became home to tough weeds like nettles, brambles and comfrey which we found hard to keep tidy as they were jammed between the two stock fences.

So when I was chatting to the farmer’s wife I asked if we could move our fence back to theirs and use the strip as part of our garden. She was delighted to agree as she loves our garden and comes past when on dog walking duty and has a look at our patch.

We took our old fence and gate down and after quite a struggle managed to get up the old oak fence posts which had been there for over 30 years. Our fence panels needed stripping of algae before we set about putting in new posts alongside the field boundary and refitting out fence panels. The new strip of land was cleared of weeds, dug over deeply but not improved as we wanted to make a wildlife border with some natives.

The strip was sown with wildlife flower seed mixes and we planted lots of small plants we had grown from seeds which would also attract wildlife. Now we must wait for it to grow and for the wildlife to appear.

Three weeks later and the seeds have germinated and our little plug plants grown on nicely. Several plants are in bud and a few are already flowering. You will spot our insect attracting features, a couple of bee steaks, a stone pile and a couple of log piles.

We have no problem with weeds comng in from the field as the sheep and their lambs nibble right up to the fence and even tear off any leaf of our border they can reach with their tongue. Sheep pruning!

Tags gardening for wildlife, meadows, the wildlife garden, wildflower meadows

flowering bulbs garden design garden photography gardening gardens hardy perennials irises Shropshire

My Garden Journal 2020 – May

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date June 1, 2020

My May pages for my garden journal are full of summery gardening. I opened with a page featuring two of my paintings of blue irises, one Iris germanica and the other Iris sibirica. I used Japanese brush pens.

I wrote, “May is the month when spring morphs into summer, a time when we can get warm sunny days and blue skies occasionally interrupted by days with biting cold winds and frosty nights. The garden fills rapidly with boisterous growth with flowers on trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants.

The iris family have the most unusually structured flowers in our garden, with their flags, falls and landing strips for bees.”

In contrast to the bright blues of our iris I looked at euphorbias on the opposite page where I created a montage of photos of closeups of the heads of euphorbias, with their bright greens and yellows of their bracts and flowers. I wrote, “Bracts and flowers work in harmony on our large collection of Euphorbias. The flowers are very much less significant than the bracts that surround them.”

Turn over onto the next double page spread and we consider azaleas and succulents. I wrote on the first page, “We grow very few Azaleas in our gardens apart from a couple of deciduous varieties, ‘Luteum’ and ‘Golden Eagle’. My painting is of ‘Golden Eagle’.

On the page opposite ‘Golden Eagle’ I discussed some work I was doing with succulents and I wrote, “For a few days in May I busied myself sorting out our succulent container gardens, using cuttings from last year plus some new selections. By the end of summer all these containers will be full and each plant will give me new cuttings.”

Onto the next double page we look at more azaleas and thalictrums, with azaleas on the left hand page. I wrote, “I have selected miniature azaleas as the flowering plant of the month for May. A few pages back I shared my watercolour painting of the orange flowered Azalea ‘Golden Eagle’, which is deciduous and scented. In the Japanese Garden we grow a few evergreens as used by Japanese garden designers.”

Pair of A. japonica ‘Ageeth’ A. japonica ‘Spek’s Orange

A. japonica George Hyde

A. japonica ‘Spek’s Orange’

This next page looks at thalictrums, my foliage plant for May. My foliage plant of the month is Thalictrum of which we grow a wide selection. These are herbaceous perennials grown for both their flowers and foliage , but for now the foliage has the largest presence.”

For the final page of May I feature one of my favourite trees, a betula (birch). “Plant of the month for bark and stems is the most beautiful of birches, Betula albosinensis ‘Septentronalis”. It boasts white bark peeling to orange and salmon pink. The sun catches the peeling bark and it becomes fine brittle toffee.”

So when we next visit my garden journal we will be half way through the year – it is going far too quickly!

Tags bearded iris, betula, Betula albosinensis, Betula albosinensis "Septentronalis", euphorbias, iris reticulata, irises, thalictrum

garden design garden furniture garden photography garden seat garden seating gardening gardens gardens open to the public National Garden Scheme National Trust NGS nurseries Shropshire South Shropshire The National Trust village gardens Wales walled gardens Yellow Book Gardens

Are you sitting comfortably – no 21 in an occasional series

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date May 5, 2020
1 Comment on Are you sitting comfortably – no 21 in an occasional series

First set of seats in this installment about garden seating features those we found while on holiday near Pembroke followed by more we discovered at Bodnant Garden in north Wales. Then a set we found at Wildegoose Nursery and Garden and finally some we found at our friends, Nathalie and Tony’s Oswestry garden and Ruth and Mike’s village garden in North Shropshire.

Tags garden seating, garden seats, gardens of the National Trust, National Garden Scheme, village gardens

allotments garden photography gardening hardy perennials ornamental trees and shrubs Shropshire village gardens Winter Gardening

My Garden Journal 2020 – March

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 2, 2020
2 Comments on My Garden Journal 2020 – March

This is already the third visit to my Garden Journal 2020 and this month is officially the start of spring. On the first day for March I wrote, “March, the month when we are informed by the Met Office, marks the start of spring, from the first day in fact. This seems so inappropriate as the only true signs of new seasons are the changes in the weather and in plants. We are having a few bright days early in March but we still wake to hard frosts sometimes. In the garden we are beginning to see signs of spring, opening leaf buds that give brightest greens or deep reds and purples.”

On the next page I wrote, “They say of March, ‘In like a lion, out like a lamb’, an old-wives’ tale. The end of February was all ‘lion-like’ and so we spent the first week of March helping our house and garden recover from the damage wreaked by three violent storms.”

“Two specimen trees were flattened as were climber-covered trellises. Fence panels were destroyed and our back gate escaped from its hinges”

“Hard work every day for a week soon had us looking reasonably ‘ship-shape’. The fences and trellis were replaced with stronger versions and some trees were upright once again.”

Over the page we get colourful as we feature spring bedding primulas. “March gives us plenty of colour from short-growing flowering primulas and shrubs. Our native Primroses are our true favourite but this year we have added a few bedding primulas for extra colour. The other single flowers are self-seeded crosses relating to our original primroses plus other herbaceous hardy primulas.”

Next I looked at garden tasks we had to get done in March. “Tasks in the garden in March included planting a new long thin border at the bottom of our drive. The border is part in our garden and part in our neighbours. We planted a variety of thymes, low-growing sedum, plus small carex grasses and other succulents.

“Our Cercis siliquastrum is back upright once again! Ian our garden helper giave the lawn its first cut, while Jude treated our trellises with organic algae remover.”

“A new pot of foliage plants is planted up with small foliage shrubs with a carex for added texture.”

Over onto the next double page spread I looked at coloured stems and bark. I wrote, “Probably the star of our garden in winter and early spring is Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire” which we grow as pollards. So we get the brightest of stems possible in shades of yellow, coral, oranges and reds. At the end of the month we will cut it back to its knobbly heads.”

I included a print of an i-Pad sketch of Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’ and a photo taken last April showing the same shrub after pollarding.

On the opposite page I continued, “Stem and bark plants of the month for March are acers. We grow a few dozen different acers in our garden, both shrubs and trees. When we buy a new one we look jointly at leaf colour and shape as well as bark interest be it colour pattern or texture.”

The four photos of the acers are from left to right in top row, we have

Acer ‘George Forrest’, Acer palmatum.

The bottom row from left to right shows another Acer palmatum and Acer pectinatum.

The page included my set of 3 crayon sketches of Acer sango kaku.

The final double page spread for March looks at our “Foliage plant of the month” and the “Flowering plant of the month”.

The final page for March features my ‘flowering plant of the month, which is pulmonaria. I wrote, “These little gems of late winter into early spring give us flowers of pink, white and blue, with some flowers showing off by displaying pinks and blues on the same flower heads. There are many more still to flower and develop their distinctive foliage too.”

I then shared nine photos illustrating just a few of our pulmonarias.

The final page for this month features a few more garden tasks we have completed, “The last week or so of March gave us a real treat, bright blue skies and warmth, so we took the opportunity to get a few more tasks completed.”

“We planted up our water garden in a bowl, which Ian our helper, prepared back in February. We had to get it level first though – quite a challenge! We planted it up with 5 plants – Iris ‘Black Gamecock’, Isolepsis cernua, Nymphaea ‘Snow Princess’, the oxygenator Ceratophyllum demersum and a tiny bullrush Typha minima.”

“We cleared areas of grass so that we could sow a wildflower seed mix to create little areas of meadow and we potted on the perennials on our nursery shelves.”

So that is my garden journal entries for March – we shall open its pages again for April.

Tags coloured foliage, foliage, foliage plants, garden journal, March, March garden, pittosporum, primulas, pulmonarias

flowering bulbs garden photography Shropshire South Shropshire spring spring bulbs spring gardening

Spring bulbs at Avocet

This time of year is made extra special as the bulbs we planted in the autumn start to burst into flower. Daffodils give splashes of every shade of yellow often with orange trumpets. We have a few whites left from the hundreds we inherited. We are not keen on white daffs as they seem so wishy-washy so we dug out hundreds leaving just odd clumps. Crocus are far more delicate and come in a wider range of colours from white to yellow, orange and purple. Anemone blandas are joining these now and appear as delicate blue daisies among the fresh growth of perennial plants. We don’t have many hyacinths but the few we have are most welcome and remind us to order more next autumn. You may spot the interloper – the flowers of a bergenia – walking past I could not resist taking its picture!

The best way to savour the effects that our bulbs have on our March garden is to come with me with my camera and see what we spot. So follow the gallery by clicking on the first photo and then use the arrows to navigate. Enjoy!

Tags bulbs, crocus, daffodils, flowering bulbs, gardening in spring, iphaeon, March, March garden, Muscari, spring bulbs

garden design garden photography gardening gardens ornamental trees and shrubs Shrewsbury Shropshire shrubs South Shropshire Winter Gardening winter gardens

My Garden Journal 2020 – January

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 6, 2020
2 Comments on My Garden Journal 2020 – January

A new year starts here and along with it a new garden journal in a new book. This year I will restructure the format of my journal so that it includes fewer photos and written reports but more paintings. For my title page I wrote, “A year in the life of our garden in drawings, paintings, photos and maybe a few words.”

Each month I will include paintings and sketches, a flowering plant of the month, a foliage plant of the month and a ‘bark and stem’ plant of the month. So enjoy the January pages of my 2020 garden journal.

The first page of my January entries featured two watercolour paintings of our Witch Hazels, Hamamelis ‘Jelena’ and H ‘Diane’.

Page two sees me looking at the amazing winter flowering shrub, Cornus mas. Each month I will feature a “Flowering plant of the month” and this Cornus is my January choice.

“Scented flowers. Deep red berries. Deeply textured bark.”

I then created two more watercolours of flowering winter plants, one shrub and one climber, Daphne bhuloa ‘Jacqueline Postill’ and Jasminum nudiflorum.

I moved onto look at my ‘Foliage plant of the month” and my choice for January is our little collection of Arum italicum.

My final plant of the month is Cornus ‘Midwinter Fire’, January’s plant of the month for stems and bark, with its “Orange stems, orange ‘snake-bark’ trunks, small white flowers and primrose-yellow autumn colour.”

My January entries in my garden journal end with our “Garden tasks for the month”, so it was “Heads down to lay seep hose through borders, prune large branches of Mahonia and pruning Hypericums.”

So that is our January in our garden. We will visit my garden journal in February to see what went on in that month.

Tags arum, cornus mas, Cornus Midwinter Fire, hamamelis, shrubs in winter, the garden in winter, winter, winter garden, winter gardening, winter shrubs, witch hazels

colours garden photography gardening gardens grasses hardy perennials light light quality ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs Shrewsbury Shropshire shrubs trees village gardens Winter Gardening winter gardens

My Garden Journal 2019 – December

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 20, 2020
3 Comments on My Garden Journal 2019 – December

My Garden Journal 2019 comes to an end this month, so here are the entries for December.

On the first page I wrote, “December sees most of the berries stripped from our shrubs and trees by dozens of thrushes including migrants who like our winter weather. A few berries remain to enhance he odd flowers, the grasses, seed-heads and evergreen shrubs.”

Over onto the next page I feature some of the more unusual and very subtle coloured foliage in our December patch.

I wrote, “Unusual coloured foliage of our evergreen shrubs come to the fore even on the dullest of days. Bronzes, browns, blushes, purples, blues, greys and greens with flecks of yellow.”

Over onto the third page for December and I talk of how much there is to see in our garden if you look down at your feet! “In our garden in winter it pays to look down. Silver glows and glistens at our feet. Silver leaf markings take on so many shapes and patterns.”

So just one final page for my December entries for 2019! Maybe my next year’s garden journal will be completely different?

For the last page of my 2019 Garden Journal I wrote, “I love sunny winter days when the low sun catches the colour and texture of twig and bark.” Then I featured a collection of ten photos of the light doing just that to a few of our trees and shrubs.

Tags bark colour, berried shrubs, coloured bark, coloured foliage, coloured stems, December, deciduous trees, foliage, foliage combinations, grasses, herbaceous plants, ornamental grasses, seed heads, shrubs in winter, silver foliage, the garden in winter, variegated foliage, winter berries

fruit and veg garden design garden photography gardening gardens hardy perennials kitchen gardens Land Art ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture sculpture Shropshire South Shropshire village gardens Yellow Book Gardens

Oakley Mynd – a wildlife garden with views

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 6, 2020

Here is a post I wrote back in the summer which I thought would be good to post now to bring back memories of warmer days.

We always like finding new gardens opening for the NGS, and Oakley Mynd was a real find. As there was no parking we had to park in Bishops Castle where we took the mini-bus provided by the NGS up the narrow steep lanes.

Tags gardens of Shropshire, kitchen gardens, ornamental grasses, ornamental shrubs, ornamental trees, productive gardening, South Shropshire, South Shropshire Hills, Yellow Book, Yellow Book Gardens

autumn autumn colours colours garden design ornamental grasses Shropshire South Shropshire Uncategorized walled gardens

Seasonal Visits – Wildegoose – Winter Weekends

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 2, 2019
1 Comment on Seasonal Visits – Wildegoose – Winter Weekends

We were so pleased to get the opportunity to visit Wildegoose Nursery Garden this weekend a time when it is usually closed but two special “Winter Weekends” have been arranged. We arrive in fog which added so much to the atmosphere of the walled garden borders. We felt calmed by the muted sound that fog and mist gives us.

The borders were full of seed-heads of perennials and grasses and even a few rogue flowers. Tiny raindrops hung from every seed and stem, giving plants extra life.

Sometimes in gardens especially in winter it is the tiniest details that are the most beautiful, spidery stems, individual seed-heads and even out of season blooms.

Euphorbias are loved for their chartreuse, lime and lemon coloured bracts and tiny flowers but when these fall in the autumn they reveal the brightly coloured stems which brighten winter borders.