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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Isn’t it lovely – a creature scratched into the surface. An ancient hedgehog perhaps? A leaping over-weight lion?

As part of the community gardens at our allotments, Bowbrook Allotment Community, we have been developing several meadows trying different methods and different styles of planting. Some we have just left to grow to see what wild flowers appear, in some we have stripped the soil bare and seeded wildflower mixes and others we have left to develop and then added further plug plants. In different parts of the site we have found completely different varieties of grasses dominating. A few meadows have a noticeable percentage of strong growing grasses which tend to dominate meaning that wild flowers struggle to flourish.

This is where the wonderful plant called Yellow Rattle comes in. We scarified areas of meadow and sowed the seeds of Yellow Rattle, Rhinanthus minor. It has a lot of common or local names such as Hay Rattle, Cockscomb and Rattle Basket. The “rattle” in its names refers to the noise the seeds make in their pods when ripe. They really do sound like a baby’s rattle.

The reason we grow it is because it is “hemi-parasitic”, meaning that it survives by stealing its nutrients from the roots of the tougher grass species, but it can also feed in the more normal way getting nutrients through the soil, rain and air. We can take advantage of this by sowing it where tough grass species dominate. It took a few attempts before we managed successful germination. After researching germination details we found that it need a period of cool winter weather. Once we got it right the germination rate was most impressive.

By stealing the nutrients of the tough grasses they lose vigour and the reduction in competition lets the less dominant wild flowers thrive. We are already seeing this happening. When we visited a “Yellow Book” garden recently we saw how effective it had been in acres of meadow.

This little flower doesn’t just do its job quietly beavering away unnoticed, it is actually a very beautiful plant so deserves being grown just for that. It also attracts bees and beneficial insects with its main pollinator being the Bumblebee. This clever little plant though will pollinate itself if there are not enough bees around to get the job done.

Now we have it established it should spread well working away lessening the power of the strong grasses and letting the desirable wildflowers get established.