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Gardening in lockdown – Solestemon

Coleus were so popular as house plants for years, grown for their amazingly, coloured, patterned and shaped leaves. They used to flower but the blooms were a waste of time and often weakened the plants enough to finish them off.

We are now growing a collection of named varieties in the greenhouse for summer interest. We grew them all from plug plants. The botanists have now changed their name from coleus to solestemon, a much uglier name!

Here is a gallery of our collection for you to enjoy. As usual just click on the first photo and navigate using the arrows.

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climbing plants country walks countryside hedgerows Shropshire South Shropshire wildlife

First walk for months! Part 2

Continuing our countryside walk from our home village in south Shropshire, we packed up our fruit and coffee and followed the footpath between a hedgerow and arable fields. We were amazed how the fauna was affected by crop ‘overspray’ combined with a spell of dry weather. Right where we had enjoyed our snack ‘overspray’ of weedkiller was destroying the plantlife in the trackway and along the beginning of the headgerow. In places the hedge shrubs were also burnt and yellowed.

We had plenty to enjoy though to take our thoughts away from the effects of modern agriculture. In the hedgerows were heavily scented honeysuckles and wild roses

We rejoined the lane back to Plealey ,after we had traveled the length of the arable field,and on the gateway we found this sign, “Shropshire – love where you live”, which after some of the sad sights we had seen seemed a little ironic. As we neared Plealey we saw this field corner near the lane, an eyesore indeed!

But there was lots to see, heartening views of wildflowers along the roadside.

       

The strange brown ping pong ball sized features on an oak tree were some of many galls created to feed and protect wasps as they develop from eggs to juvenile wasps ready to bore their way out and take to the air.

Wild rose flowers are always great to admire and there were lots of varied shades from white to a deep pink colour.

 

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climbing plants colours garden design garden photography gardening gardens roses Shrewsbury Shropshire South Shropshire

My Garden Journal 2020 – June

Back to my garden journal for 2020 again and we are into the last month of the first half of the year, June, the month that sees the longest day and shortest night.

I began by sharing some of our rose bushes and climbing varieties that we grow throughout our garden in mixed borders and up obelisks and arches. I wrote, “June, the month for roses …………..”

I then featured photos of some of our red roses, writing, “Roses are red!”

Here are the photos of some of our red roses that grace our garden in June.

 

On the following page I continued with roses but those that were not red! “My flowering plant of the month!

Roses are red? Or white, cream peach, yellow ……..”

 

After looking at our flowering rose bushes and climbers, I did something completely different. I collect bark that had been detached from one of our birches by recent strong winds and created a collage, which lets us see the variety in colours and textures.

“In June windy days blow detached bark peelings from our birch, Betula albosinensis ‘Septentronalis’. We find what looks and feels like paper all around the garden. Each piece of peeled bark has its own character.”

We can look over the page now for a complete change as I looked at some wildlife found in our garden, a damselfly and a wasp. “Being a wildlife garden, our patch brings us some beautiful visitors for us to enjoy, to listen to and to watch. They help balance the natural world of our garden.”

“Damsel Flies hatch from our wildlife pond by the dozens, beginning with various ‘Azures’ and later the ‘Reds’.”

This beautiful yellow and black Ichneumon Wasp has appeared in our garden in good numbers for the first time ever this month.”

From wildlife we turn to succulents on the opposite page, where I wrote “Our foliage plants of the month of June are Aeoniums, a very special group of succulents. I have built up a good collection now.”

I then shared photos of a selection of some of our aeoniums……..

Next comes clematis, with two pages of pics. I wrote, “Clematis, herbaceous and climbers are flowering throughout the garden. Some are already on their second flush having flowered in the spring.”

The first of the two pages feature flowers from “Pale blue to deep purple.”

 

The second page showed “Every shade of red.”

The final page for June is all about the bark of Acer rufinerve. I wrote, Plant of the month for bark and stem this month is one of our snake-bark acers, Acer rufinerve also known as the ‘Melon-skin Maple’. These six photos start at the base of the trunk and move upwards.”

So that is my journal entries for June. Next report will be July.

 

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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

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.

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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!

 

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

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.

 

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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

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.

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

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.

Sedum varieties have the same powerful coloured stems as their seed heads turn black and purple.

I shall share the rest of my photos below – I hope you enjoy looking at all the pics as much as we enjoyed our misty winter garden wander.

It will be a few months now before we next get the chance to explore Wildegooose Gardens and Nursery, as it stays closed now until April.

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autumn autumn colours colours garden design garden furniture garden paths garden photography gardening gardens gardens open to the public grasses hardy perennials light light quality National Garden Scheme NGS nurseries ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs pathways shrubs South Shropshire walled gardens Yellow Book Gardens

Seasonal visits to two very different gardens – Autumn at Wildegoose

This is the last visit to the smaller of our two gardens that we have been visiting throughout 2019, so please enjoy my report on Wildegoose Nursery and Garden which we visited on its last open day of the year. We spoke to Jack one of the owners who looked very glad that the season was ending and the nursery closing for another year. He and Laura and the twins were off on holiday the day after our visit.

The colours of the autumn flowers was so intensely beautiful and the light on the day of our visit enriched them further. The bright pink Persicaria amplexicaulis in a new cultivar to me, ‘Amethyst’.

 

There were signs of autumn to remind us of the season! Pumpkins and gourds, trees and shrubs showing unusual shades of pink-red.

  

In places the dying seedheads of perennials contrast beautifully with the autumn leaves on the shrubs.

 

I shall finish off this report of our visit with a gallery of my photos. As usual just click on the first photo and then navigate using the arrows.

For my next post in this series we will return to Bodnant, the bigger of our two gardens this year.

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climbing plants garden arches garden design garden furniture garden photography garden seat garden seating garden wildlife gardening gardens hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture sculpture Shropshire shrubs South Shropshire water in the garden wildlife

My Garden Journal 2019 – August

Here we are with my journal entries looking at the last month of summer according to the the MetOffice. August has been a bright month with confused weather as has been this year’s norm. plants have continued to grow oversized and then flopped.

I began by writing, “August saw the arrival of some unusual pieces of garden sculpture to our garden, 3 corten steel panels and a bespoke bench made for us by sculptor Nik Burns.”

On the opposite page I continued, We both love Achilleas but sadly they are short-lived here, lasting 3 or 4 years only except for the tallest yellow cultivars ‘Goldplate’ and ‘Cloth of Gold’. All Achilleas partner beautifully with grasses and we love planting them together.”

 

I continued then by presenting a gallery of photos, where I wrote “An August Gallery”.

Garden wildlife features next, “August has been a great time for insects of all sorts. Butterflies are having their best time for years, seeing prolific numbers of all our garden favourites. Now we don’t grow veg we love the ‘Whites’ “

Over the page from my wildlife paintings, I continued “As usual during August we have plenty to do in the garden. I have now finished cutting the Buxus features. We spent hours tidying up in and around the pond and Jude weeded the two green roofs. We also added trellis to the Blackberry archway.”

Collecting seeds.                                                Taking cuttings.

Weeding the woodstore green roof and thinning the pond reeds.

Freshly trimmed cloud pruned box edging.

So that is my garden journal for August and now I am enjoying our patch in September and we will share that month in our garden in my next post in this series.

 

Over to the next double page spread and I