greenbenchramblings

Winter’s First Deep Frost

Mid-January and the first true frost of the winter. This must be the latest it has ever happened. Last year we had frosts from October right through till spring. I look forward to this coating of white, look forward to a wander around the garden with my camera in hand, look forward to seeing the low morning sun rim the frost on the remaining leaves and seed heads and even a few out of season blooms. Beyond the garden the countryside rested white and still, silent and crisp.

Entering the garden was like entering a different place than we were in yesterday. This world brought to my nose a mixture of comforting scent of wood smoke and tingling cold. It was so quiet and motionless, not even a murmur from moving grasses or bamboos today. Soon though the watery wintery song of the robin arrived and then other robins joined in, each one singing to announce ownership of a patch of garden or countryside. Pleasure to us, a threat to other robins, the true audience.

DSC_0039-2 — The Secret Garden with a gentle sprinling of frost.

Deeper into the garden the sweet scent of the Sarcococca joined the wood smoke, a rich aroma from an insignificant tiny white flower on a dull evergreen shrub. I planted it near the greenhouse door and its perfume scents the air whenever I work in there in the winter. It is a scent that stays in your nostrils for a time after you have left the garden and returned indoors. Today it has filled the garden completely.

The icing sugar frost has settled on berries and buds, foliage and flowers, seed heads and stems.

DSC_0014-3 — Holly leaves rimmed with frost.

An out of season rose frozen in its bud.

DSC_0003-1 — The sun creeps up to melt the frost from the euphorbia.

DSC_0020-1 — Euphorbia flowers hanging on through the winter with the grey frozen pool behind.

Winter sun lights up the leaves of the thornless blackberry which has been evergreen this year.

DSC_0018-2 — Frosted ginger-bread headed sedum.

Frost takes the pearlescence out of the Viburnum davidii berries.

The frost even coats terra-cotta and metal.

Tags foliage, frost, garden photography, gardening, winter, winter gardens

garden photography gardening

More Green on Green

Back in December I posted a blog entitled “Green on Green” featuring photos that were based simply on shades of green all taken in the garden. Here are more to shots to help you through the winter months. Soon the new shoots of herbaceous plants and signs of budburst on trees and shrubs will come along to give a clue of good growth times ahead.

Tags foliage, garden photography

gardening grow your own outdoor sculpture

Meet The Chickens

I often mention feeding the chucks in my blogs, so I think it is about time they were introduced. I decided to take a portrait of each one but they just do not stay still long enough to take a photo. So I gave them a new bale of straw to play with and took shots of them distributing it all over their run.They are a right mixed bunch, my two remaining bantams from my original bantam flock and all sorts of hybrids. the banties lay just an occasional egg in the summer months now as they are old age pensioner hens, but the hybrids keep us, and friends, family and neighbours, in eggs all year.

We had better begin with the leader of the flock, the hen at the top of the pecking order, who is aptly called “Jude” named after my wife, usually referred to as “The Undergardener” in my blogs. Jude the hen is a New Hampshire Red bantam.

The next shot shows “Swampy” in the foreground with “Royella” behind. Swampy is one of our two hybrids called Fenton Blues, so called because they lay blue-shelled eggs. She is called Swampy as she spends a lot of time up in the trees – you might have to think about that for a moment! The Fentons have small crests of feathers which stick out all over the place on windy days making them look like they are experiencing a “bad hair day”.

The next photo is of “Royella” our remaining Silver Laced Wyandotte Bantam from our original pair, who were named Val and Royella after our next door neighbours, Roy and Valerie because their foliage was the same colour as our neighbours hair!

Next we have a group with two more hybrids in the foreground, “Em” the black chuck on the right and “V”, the Sussex Hybrid on the left. The two Fenton blues are behind them with Swampy on the left and “Jo” on the right. Jo is named after our daughter as she has the same coloured hair as the hen’s feathers.

This scraggy bird is “Bluebell”, a Bluebelle Hybrid, who has rather unwisely decided that January is the right time to moult! She is usually a stunning looking hen with lots of shades of bluish grey feathers with a contrasting ginger-bronze breast.

In the foreground of this pic is our original brown hybrid, the friendliest of the bunch, insisting on being picked up every time anyone enters their run.

These next two photos prove that taking portraits of chickens is not an easy task, certainly much harder than I imagined it would be. Firstly here is Swampy with her head a high-speed blur as she attacks the straw,

…. and here is the one that got away!

The easiest hens to photograph are the ornaments in the garden, such as this very round terra-cotta version sat on an old hazel stump on the poolside with a backdrop of grasses and dogwoods ………

…… and this cockerel weather forecaster.

Tags bantams, chickens, garden fowl

garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials ornamental grasses

Some of the gardens of Tom Stuart-Smith

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 9, 2012
1 Comment on Some of the gardens of Tom Stuart-Smith

Tom Stuart-Smith is one of the best of the current crop of garden designers working in the UK at this time. We have had the privilege of visiting two very different gardens designed by him, one a private garden in Herefordshire and the Italian Garden at Trentham, a Staffordshire garden open to the public.

In his own words “Making a garden for yourself is very different from doing it for someone else. So much of the pleasure is to do with the coaxing and tending, the daily observance of small details and the accumulation of change over the years.”

We visited this wonderful garden in Herefordshire after spotting it in the Yellow Book of the National Garden Scheme. We were firstly tempted to visit as this county has some excellent, interesting gardens and many well-known gardener writers and garden designers have made gardens within its boundaries. But seeing the name Tom Stuart-Smith in the “blurb” made it a must.

It is a garden that is so well designed and planted. It makes you want to wander along its paths, to look around each corner and to study individual plants grown in blocks or plant combinations.

The following photos show the subtle planting combinations and the inviting paths through the garden.

An amusing diversion on our wanderings was this family of shining metal birds striding alongside a border.

What a place to sit, swing and rest while anticipating the pathway into the sea of grasses.

Later in the year we visited Trentham Gardens where Tom Stuart-Smith has redesigned the Italian Gardens, sensitively placing his modern perennial plantings amongst the old structure. So this is the other side of the coin, designing for a large public space.

These borders look equally good in the middle of the winter. But the water is then a bit cold for dabbling ones feet in, even for “The Undergardener” seen in the photo above appreciating the pool and fountain, with the author in the dapper hat and Vicky our Sister-in-Law on the right.

Tags gardening, grasses, NGS, Tom Stuart-Smith, Trentham Gardens

garden photography gardening half-hardy perennials hardy perennials

Fantastic Foliage – Leaf Patterns

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 7, 2012
1 Comment on Fantastic Foliage – Leaf Patterns

On bright days I am always drawn in for a close up look at leaves. The sun displays their underlying structure, their network of veins, the things that give them shape, texture and strength. Zoom in for a closer look or move in close for a wide angled view and the results can be so pleasing. Isn’t Mother Nature wonderful!!! And aren’t plants simply amazing!!!

Tags foliage, gardening, leaves

garden photography gardening hardy perennials

Phlomis – a winter highlight.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 4, 2012
1 Comment on Phlomis – a winter highlight.

I love all Phlomis. I love the way the stem soar up from the big hairy, bluish-green heart-shaped foliage and I love the way the flowers arrange themselves so neatly on the stems. The dark yellow flowers of the Phlomis russeliana add so much to a hot border and each bloom looks like the hooked beak of a parrot. They arrange themselves in regular clumps up the stem encircling it so neatly. The Phlomis is in the Lamiacea family – the mints – and hails from the Mediterranean, china and central Asia.

But best of all I love the dried stems with their dried seed heads still neatly arranged and standing strongly through the wild winds of autumn and into the deep cold of winter. They are the epitome of architectural plants. I am limited to how many Phlomis plants I can have though as the “Under Gardener” doesn’t like them at all.

In the autumn we planted two different varieties, tuberosa and cashmireana, so we look forward to them to see if they perform as well as russeliana. Their flowers although similarly structured to russeliana differ in colour as they are both pale mauve.

At Trentham the groups of Phlomis planted in the borders of Tom Stuart-Smith’s Italian Garden, give vertical accents in the mixed seedheads still standing in the winter.

All of the following photos have been taken in our own Shropshire garden in Plealey.

Tags phlomis

birds climbing plants garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening hardy perennials ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture shrubs trees

A Wander around the Garden in January

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 2, 2012
3 Comments on A Wander around the Garden in January

This is the first in a series of blogs which I will write at the beginning of each month through 2012, and will show what is going on in our garden at that time – a sort of record of garden highlights.

So the new year has arrived. January 1st was a dull overcast day, with unbroken deep grey cloud and regular periods of drizzle. But at least it was warm with temperature holding up in low double figures all day. But not a day to perform a photographic wander.

So here I am on the 2nd January with camera in hand to record what’s going on appreciating a blue sky, but well wrapped against a freezing wind. Buzzards are sharing my joy of seeing a big blue sky as they are soaring silently above the garden with none of their usual sad cries. The garden is noticeably quiet, the bird feeders far less busy than they usually are in January. There is just the constant quiet, barely perceptible winter song of the Robin who follows me around and the equally gentle twittering of Goldfinches, Blue Tits and their long-tailed cousins.

Enjoy a walk around with me and my camera, as we take a tour …………

The newest addition to the garden, just planted today, is the dark foliaged Euphorbia "Redwing", spotted with fresh rain drops following a shower.

This brightly flowered quince, Chaenomeles "Fire Dance", glows at the drive entrance, providing a cheerful welcome.

DSC_0006-1 — This clump of bell-shaped flowers of Arbutus unedo, the Strawberry Tree, overhangs the roadside verge. We are so grateful for its performance as it only just survived the onslaught of the last two winters. We rescued it with heavy pruning.

Orange stems of Cornus "Cardinal" with the white stems of young Betula utilis in the newly planted Shrub Garden.

Terra-cotta pots and the pink flowers of Bergenia sit at the feet of Miscanthus and driftwood.

The yellow-faced blue Violas flower in pots by the front door.

In the Rill Garden two very different Hebes with colourful foliage sit in front of an orange-stemmed dogwood.

The low light of winter turns the cut foliage of the purple-leaved vine blood-red.

The creamy-yellow berries of the Cotoneaster rothschildianus hang in clusters covering this small tree.

The flowers of this pioneering Primrose appear too delicate to survive the cold of January.

Warm brown seed heads give so much to the Chicken Garden in winter.

The grasses throughout the garden catch both the winter light and the gentlest breeze. The curly seed heads of this Miscanthus napalensis are soft to the touch.

In the Secret Garden the cream metal seats become more dominant just when they are too cold to sit on.

In the Japanese Garden the blooms of our pink version of Prunus autumnalis subhirtella are a joy to look at.

Move in close and appreciate the pink glow.

The hottest of the coloured stemmed dogwoods must be Midwinter Fire - ours grows on the bank bordering the wildlife pond.

The white-stemmed Rubus sits alongside Midwinter Fire on the pond bank.

The fruit of our apple "Pixie" remained too tiny to pick so we have left them for the birds, who so far have ignored them.

Jasminum nudiflorum has been flowering by the chicken's run now for four months and is still going strong. What a star!

The mad seed heads of the orange-peel clematis, which I grew from seed, never cease to amaze me even though I see it each morning as I collect the chucks' eggs.

We seem to have calendula flowers somewhere in the garden every day of the year.

One of five Achillea still flowering away in January, this variety "Biscuit" is in the Secret Garden.

Tags betula, clematis, cornus, dogwoods, grasses, hebe, prunus, rubus, winter gardens

bird watching birds conservation garden wildlife ornamental trees and shrubs trees Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust wildlife

Wildlife in the City – Barnes

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 31, 2011
1 Comment on Wildlife in the City – Barnes

We went down to London for the day, not to see a show or visit a museum or shop in Harrods, but to go birdwatching. Not something I could have said a few years ago, but luckily for us and the residents of the capital city the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust have created a haven for wildlife right in the heart of the city. We hate cities and definitely hate driving in them, so we hoped our visit would be worthwhile. We were accompanied by our daughter Jo and son-in-law Rob who had recommended the place to us, so the pressure was on them! They are good navigators in cities which was most useful. Last year they visited and were amazed at 5 Bittern sightings.

The day dawned cold and wet with a bitter wind so we wrapped up in thermals and layer upon layer of clothing suitable for Polar Bear spotting. First impressions were favourable – the centre was attractively built, we were “meeted and greeted” by a friendly WWT person who told us where to go starting with the cafe. it turned out to be a good cafe which served tasty lattes and even tastier bacon butties. We reluctantly left the cafe’s warmth and shelter expecting to have to tackle the weather to reach the first hide. Wrong! It was in the same building as the cafe and a most comfy place to view the large expanse of water.

Watching the numerous species of duck against an urban background seemed somewhat incongruous. And watching a Peregrine spook the ducks in a diagonal stoop over the cold grey water added to this feeling. We saw over 40 species of bird including Snipe, both Common and Jack, wildfowl such as pochard, teal and shoveller, but fewer small birds but we were treated to a close up view of a Stonechat, that dapper little alert chap dressed in russet and wearing a black cap. The Jack Snipe, Pintail and Water Rail were probably the star spots of the day. It has been 30 odd years since we last saw this diminutive Jack Snipe, the little wader with the long beak that is surprisingly shorter and less ridiculous than the one sported by its larger cousin the Common Snipe. We had a fine view allowing us to appreciate its wonderful striped head and russet wing markings.

Walking between the hides we were impressed by the wildlife gardens planted along the walkways. The dried stems of perennials and the stark outlines of dogwoods, willows and birches gave a taster of how attractive they must be in warmer months. There were examples of methods of attracting wildlife such as this magnificent “insect tower block”.

Coloured stemmed willows feature strongly as pollarded trees, hedges, structures such as arches and living fences. These yellow stemmed pollarded and coppiced specimens lit up the dull grey day.

Barnes certainly lived up to expectation even though the visitors’ favourite failed to put in an appearance, the weather being too inclement for the Bitterns, a bird that dislikes the wind. But it gives a reason to return. We plan to visit next in the summer when it will be interesting to see what summer migrants are in evidence in this wildlife oasis in the city. I know how corny the phrase “wildlife oasis” is, but how else can you describe this little gem.

Tags Barnes, snipe, stonechat, wildfowl, Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, WWT

birds garden wildlife gardening hardy perennials trees wildlife

Agapanthus – a plant for winter?

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 27, 2011

On my early morning wander down to feed the chucks today I was accompanied by the usual Robin who followed me, flying from post to post down the fence line stopping off to treat me to a burst of his gentle transparent winter song. He does this every day except when the rain is torrential when he never shows. If I take the grass path past the slate bed, the Secret Garden and the Chicken bed he takes the fence route, but if I take the concrete central path he flies along the cordon pears and plums stopping to sing on each tree. Today was different for I had the added benefit of the first song this winter from the Song Thrush. The first signs of true territorial song mapping out his patch and letting others know. Sadly recently he just sings for us for there seem few rival males to want his territory. Here in Plealey we seem to have far more Mistle Thrushes than Song Thrushes.

As usual I wandered around the garden to see what was happening and today felt warmer so a slow aimless wander was on the cards. I was impressed by the Prunus subhirtella autumnalis, the centre piece of our little Japanese Garden, which is littered with its delicate white blooms. And at last new spears of bulb leaves have made their way to the surface to show us their intent. But a plant that struck me as an unusual “winter interest” plant was the Agapanthus.

Agapanthus, a striking summer flowering plant, is growing in our “Chatto Garden”, a gravel bed we made after visiting Beth Chatto’s wonderful garden and being struck by her gravel garden created on her old car park. When there we bought a few agapanthus and on our gravel bed we grew a deep dark blue flowering variety. I wrote two earlier blogs about the amazing buds and how they open. ( see “Bud Burst” published in July 2011 and “Bud Burst Part 2” published in August 2011.)

Now in December it is still giving interest on our “Chatto Garden”, but not blue this time but the absolute opposite – a rich yellow. The foliage and stems are yellow and the seed heads are like delicate sculptures.

Until now I had not considered the Agapanthus to be a plant for winter interest. They always say that a good gardener is one who never stops learning!

Tags agapanthus, autumn cherry, robin, thrushes, winter gardens

climbing plants garden photography gardening hardy perennials ornamental trees and shrubs roses

Christmas Rose

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 25, 2011

No, this is not going to be primarily about hellebore, sometimes known as Christmas Roses. They do not always flower at Christmas time, although in recent years the tendency to flower in December has increased here in our Shropshire garden.

I am talking here about the climbing version of Rosa Graham Thomas, a David Austin rose which we grow clambering over one of our garden sheds. We try to train some branches along the nearby fence but it likes to be on the shed roof best of all. It has been voted “The World’s Favourite Rose”. This seems particularly apt as Graham Thomas himself was one of the world’s favourite garden writers, having written 17 books in all. He was also an excellent artist working in both water colours and pencil, though he was best known perhaps for his role as the National Trust’s “head gardener”.

A second slow cold walk around the garden revealed that this year the hellebore are in fact performing in tune with their nick name, so perhaps I had better feature them too!

Here in winter its deep yellow blooms help to emphasise the depth of clear December skies. This rose manages to flourish all year, flowering almost every month of the year except straight after its annual pruning in spring. In winter it also displays large hips of orange and later red. Sadly it lacks the scent which pervades the garden in the humid warmer months. The David Austin catalogue describes this scent as typical “fresh tea rose fragrance” although “The under gardener”, otherwise known as my wife Jude, thinks it reminiscent of school dinners!

Several other roses have odd flowers on at the moment as a quick wander around with camera in hand illustrated. This sad rose bud didn’t quite make it to full bloom before being cut by the wind. The orange is the flower of a Calendula. They landed side by side on the bark surface of the new “Secret Garden”