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What our visitors saw but ……………………….

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date May 18, 2016
6 Comments on What our visitors saw but ……………………….

We opened our gardens three times last week (Monday 9th, Thursday 12th and Saturday 14th May and in between managed to give a talk to a garden society on the Tuesday, so by Saturday night we were exhausted and our knees and backs ached. But as it was all for the National Garden Scheme charities however much we ached it was worth it.

I thought I would share with you a series of photographs showing our garden during that week to show you what our visitors saw, but this post is specially for my sister Alison who planned to come and help out but illness prevented this happening. So at least she can share this virtual journey around our patch.

We made sure our entrance gave our visitors a warm welcome.

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As visitors walk up our drive towards the house they get good views of the patch in front of the house.

Most people who visit us start their tour in the front garden and this is what it looked like last week.

Our white birches are often commented upon!

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Our large collection of tulips were really playing a starring role!!

So after this taster of what our garden presented our visitors with please now come for a wander around our Avocet Garden in the following gallery. As usual simply click on the first photo then navigate using the arrows. We hope you enjoy your wander.

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2015 in review

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 30, 2015

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Christmas Greetings from the Green Bench

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 25, 2015
3 Comments on Christmas Greetings from the Green Bench

Christmas Greetings to everyone who reads my musings from my Green Bench.

Three pictures of our December garden for you to enjoy.

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Celebrating in the garden – 60th

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 19, 2015
4 Comments on Celebrating in the garden – 60th

On a fine day in late August we traveled down to Farnham, a beautiful Surrey market town, to share in celebrating my brother Graham’s 60th birthday. It was a sunny garden party and the garden was suitably dressed in its party decorations. The guests arrived throughout the afternoon and into the evening.

The garden was in full party gear which created a great celebratory atmosphere.

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The art studio at the end of the garden was transformed into an ice cream parlour for the day and proved a popular attraction as the day got warmer. Children and adults alike indulged in the home made delights.

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The party ended as night took over and guests left exhausted and full of contentment. In the morning the garden looked to be suffering from the “night after” feeling, but soon returned to its beautiful self. It seemed totally unaware that its owner and gardener was one year older than yesterday.

Tags birthdays, celebrations, garden parties

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Croft Castle month by month – August

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 6, 2015

We are back with the 8th monthly post about Croft Castle. It was a dull, overcast day when we made our August visit to Croft Castle, one of the National trust’s properties in the beautiful county of Herefordshire, where we looked at the gardens surrounding the castle.

On each visit we look for changes and the first thing we noticed this time was how busy the garden was simply because we had visited on a Bank Holiday so we should have expected it really.

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The long mixed border was as colourful as always and the stars of August were the Japanese Anemones. They were ably assisted by a pink flowered Rubus, Asters, Rudbeckias and a groundcovering of autumn Cyclamen.

When we entered the walled garden we noticed that there was less colour then in July so we knew we would be looking for individual plants rather than the big effect.

The grapes in the little vineyard were beginning to swell but they are late to develop so the gardeners need a long Indian Summer if they are to get a good crop.

One border which was good, 50 yards long and about 10 feet deep, had been planted out with plants raised entirely from seeds or cutting to illustrate how little such a colourful border can cost the gardener.

Throughout the rest of the walled garden’s borders we found plenty of interesting plants to stop and enjoy.

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The Rose Garden which in the earlier summer months was a mass of colour was just getting a second flush of blooms and hips were forming on many bushes.

In the Secret Garden blues dominated

On the way back to the car after another enjoyable day at Croft we noticed this lovely russet patch of fungi. A good way to end our day! Or next visit will be into the Autumn months so we should see some big changes throughout the gardens.

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Succulents in Pots

It is always good to have little projects to get on with in the garden. My latest little project was to create a pair of succulent pots. We already have pots of succulents dotted or hopefully arranged around our Rill Garden. Here we feature several different Aeoniums, Echeverias and Sempervivum. They grow happily here because it is south facing and gets extra light reflected off the glass of our garden room.

We thought it about time we introduced some more succulents for added interest for our garden visitors on our open days, so bought a pair of beautifully shaped terracotta bowl-shaped pots and went off to our local nursery, Love Plants, to get an interesting selection of different succulents. We looked for different leaf colours, textures and shapes. A few had the bonus of brightly coloured flowers too. They have such wonderful names too – much too difficult to remember, Oscularia deltoides, Sempervivum jovibarba alionii, Echeveria elegans, Pachyphytum “Dark Red”, Pachyphytum bracteosum and Sedum x rubrotinctum.

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So we gathered together everything we needed on the table in the Rill Garden and got to work.

We mixed up a suitable growing medium by combining equal quantities of a soil based compost and horticultural grit. We hoped this would be free draining while just holding enough moisture to keep the plants happy.

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We then covered the drainage hole with crocks and added a shallow layer of my compost mix, ready to arrange the plants to their best advantage.

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Some of the plants we put in the pots were our own cuttings. The picture on the left shows how new plants have grown from leaf cuttings. The plant on the right was grown from an offset.

Once satisfied with the arrangement we filled in between the plants with the compost mixture and topped it off with a mulch of horticultural grit.

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Whenever you deal with succulents bits fall off and each bit can become a cutting. Other pieces we deliberately took as cutting material.

The photo below shows a leaf cutting taken from an Echeveria which is now forming tiny plants at its base. This is an easy way to make new plants albeit rather slow. It is a process requiring a lot of patience but not much skill.

And here they are in situ, alongside our rill, our new succulent planters.

Tags Echeveria, garden containers, gardening, gardening in pots, Sedum, succulents

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Afternoon Tea for Two – how English we are!

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 18, 2015
4 Comments on Afternoon Tea for Two – how English we are!

Afternoon tea is such a quintessentially English thing to do isn’t it? We recently used our voucher for tea for two which was a present from our son Jamie and his wife Sam. We chose a sunny but chilly day so we took advantage of being indoors enjoying our treat and looking at the bright weather outside.

We drove through the ancient town of Ludlow and a little way into the countryside to find our destination, Fishmore Hall. We knew we were looking for a grand white manor house surrounded by countryside and it was easy to find and it was everything we expected it to be. It certainly lived up to our expectations. Doesn’t that blue sky look great against the white stucco.

We were shown the way to our table by a window so we had great views out into the garden.

And we even had an typical English flower on our table, a red rose.

After a pot of tea and a pot of coffee were delivered to our table, the food began to arrive. A plate of neatly cut sandwiches with a variety of fillings was delivered first closely followed by a cake stand loaded with a rich assortment of little cakes. We had been set a challenge! We had to get through them all but we had the luxury of 2 hours to do so and plenty of tea and coffee.

Jude was tempted first by a freshly baked scone with home made jam and clotted cream.

And of course once the aroma escaped from her freshly cut scone I had to follow suit.

Well after two hours and plenty of tea and coffee we were proud to have risen to the challenge. The plate of little sandwiches was empty and the cake stand similarly empty. Jude’s expressions shows how we felt.

Many thanks to Jamie and Sam for a great gift. So good in fact that we wondered if we should do this on one afternoon each month. Nice idea!

Tags afternoon tea, English

autumn colours colours garden photography gardening ornamental trees and shrubs trees Uncategorized

The Leaf

A few days ago as I was on my way down the ramp into the back garden I was met by a leaf on its way in.

I knew immediately from which tree it had come – a Cotoneaster in the side garden in the Freda Border. It had traveled a fair distance for such a little fella! It shows how well you get to know the plants in your garden when you can recognise exactly which tree a single leaf comes from. We have a dozen or so different Cotoneasters gracing our patch but this little leaf told me exactly which one it came from. Its shape, its colours, its textures all provide clues.

The leaf was still showing off its autumn colours, proud in shades of yellow and orange with a touch of green as a reminder of the summer long gone. Some trees keep hold of their old leaves until a new one pops along to push it off its branch. Our Cotoneaster had done just that to our leaf.

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When turned over the leaf took on a new look, slightly greyed with the look of being seen through tissue paper. Each colour subdued and more subtle! It curled upwards which made it create shadows shaped like a new moon.

But we can’t leave this post without having a look at its mother tree. Its leaves a mixture of fresh green and faded colours of autumn. It looks especially colouful against a blue wintery sky.

Tags autumn, autumn colours, autumn leaves, changing colours, colour, colours, cotoneasters, leaves

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2014 in review

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 10, 2015

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for my blog. I thought you might like to see it. My blog was read by people from 96 countries in 2014. I hope I can reach 100 countries in 2015!

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Accidental scraffito on a pavement

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 14, 2014
1 Comment on Accidental scraffito on a pavement

I often look down when I walk as having no feeling in my right leg I need to know where my foot is going next. This presents risks in itself such as walking into trees or lamp posts and can make me seem anti-social as I walk straight past people I know. But on a wet day in November when looking down at the pavement I stopped as I spied a creature drawn into the stone, like an ancient cave painting.