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My Garden Journal 2019 – May

It is the last month of spring and the garden is alive, everything is thriving and growing apace. But the weather is still confusing our plants. Towards  the end of the month we had a few daffodils still in flower alongside normal May flowering plants. Here is my journal entries for the month.

I started by referring back to the weather in April, “April disappeared without giving us a day of ‘April showers’, the garden is still confused by the weather but we carry on enjoying being outside whatever the weather. The garden seems weeks ahead of where it should be, with trees and shrubs flowering and leafing out of season. May is a great month for flowering shrubs, using their fresh foliage as a foil.” I followed with photographs of just a few of our flowering shrubs.

Cercis siliquastrum                                             Loropetalum chinensis “Fire Dance”

Azalea luteum                                                               Pittosporum tennuifolium ‘Gold Star’

Pittosporum tennuifolium ‘Silver Queen’                   Buddleja salviflora

Blueberry

Over the page I continued by writing, “In May many of our flowering shrubs have white or off-white coloured flowers such as Viburnums in variety, Aronia and deciduous Euonymus.”

On the opposite page Euphorbias take over, a plant that fills our garden with its bright chartreuse, yellow and green. It is a very exciting plant family.

“Euphorbias -one of our favourite plant families. We grow so many! Brilliant form, texture and architectural beauty comes from foliage, bracts, stems and the tiniest of flowers. Euphorbias deserve looking at closely. Get down and enjoy the details.”

    

Turning over to the next double page we move from Euphorbias to garden jobs and the far more delicate perennial Violas.

“May is a busy month in our Avocet patch, a month when we are still deadheading spring-flowering bulbs and beginning regular mowing and edging of our grass paths and lawns.”

“Ian our garden helper, mows and trims edges while I reorganise my loppers.”

“Jude hangs out the hanging baskets and puts succulent pots outside.”

“We have planted strawberries in the strawberry pot.”

“Our tomatoes and courgette are now snug in their growbags.”

Violas feature on the opposite page where I wrote, “Recently we bought some old varieties of hardy perennial Violas, including V. Elaine Quin, V. Columbine, V. Etaine Cream and V. Belmont Blue.”

   

“We grow dozens of different ferns in the shadier parts of the garden. The star fern for May has to be ‘Matteuccia struthiopteris’ the Ostrich Fern.”

As we move on to the next double page we discover my Acer pruning  and lots of Alliums.

“I enjoy pruning many of our shrubs in a Japanese style called Niwaki, which finds the beauty in each shrub, exposes their lower limbs and lets light in. Our Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’ hasn’t been prunes in this way for a couple of years so May was the time I tackled it. The photos show before and after forms. I removed about 50% of the growth.”

  

“May is the month when our first variety of Alliums are at their best. Hundreds sweep through our borders with their beautiful, bee-attracting purple spherical flower heads.”

 

And so the final page for my garden journal in May, where we look at probably our favourite tree and the one asked about and admired most by visitors to our garden, Cercis siliquastrum.

I wrote, “Cercis siliquastrum, probably our favourite tree in the garden was in full flower in April and still looks magnificent at the end of May. I treat this to a Niwaki prune too as the first photo shows. As it begins to slowly drop its pink petals it leaves pools of bright pink on the lawn and on the seat beneath it.”

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My Garden Journal 2018 – December

Here we are with the final visit to my Garden Journal 2018, as we discover what has been going on at out Avocet patch in December. It has been a year of difficult weather for us gardeners with freezing winds, a wet spring followed by a drought in the summer. It has been a bit of a trial really encouraging things to grow and struggling to get new plants established. But of course none of this spoilt our enjoyment of our garden and gardening itself.

I began my entries for December by writing, “December arrived on the scene feeling milder but certainly not brighter than November. Thankfully the winds were gentle and had turned from the cold air carrying Easterlies to the warmer, wetter Westerlies. The winter sun sends low rays of light that capture the colours and textures of our trees especially Betulas and Prunus serrula.” I then featured photographs of our Prunus serrula and some of our Betulas.

Over the page I moved on to look at our ferns and then small shrubs with many coloured foliage.

I wrote, “Ferns are so useful in the garden mostly in places of shade or partial shade. In December they still look fresh and vibrant. A few though show browning of leaf edges and some die right down turning a rich gingery-brown.” Then I shared a selection of photos of some of our ferns.

On the opposite page it was our small shrubs that sport interesting foliage that featured. We have only recently started using low growing shrubs for their foliage as we are discovering how much interest they can add to a border when flowers are lacking. I wrote, “Winter is the season when evergreen broadleaved shrubs come to the fore, leaf surfaces get glossier, colours darken and extra colour appears especially pinks, creams and rubies. Here is a selection of shrubs we have just bought especially for their foliage, although some will also flower and fruit.”

 

Turning over the page we can see glaucous foliage being featured. I wrote, “As the last leaves fall from our deciduous trees and shrubs, we can appreciate their skeletal shapes. At the same time evergreens come to the centre stage. But I am going to show our evergreys in my December journal entries.”

Here is a selection of photos of some of our many glaucous foliaged plants, a climber, some shrubs and some herbaceous perennials.

One of our recent plant discoveries that we have been absolutely deilghted with is Coronilla glauca Citrina, a wonderful shrub that we grow as a climber on the trellis around our oil tank. In my journal I wrote, “Coronilla glauca Citrina is an underated winter flowering shrub with glaucous foliage and citrous coloured pea-like scented flowers. Grey and lemon together is a beautiful partnership. Equally underated are all the members of the Cotoneaster family.”

 

And here are a few of our many Cotoneasters, a family of shrubs we have grown in every garden we have ever had.

    

Turning over once more we discover two pages concerning our ongoing garden projects whch we started in the autumn.

We were forced by circumstances to rebuild our Seaside Garden when gale force winter winds broke the fence behind it. With our next door neighbours we soon got new ones back up. Seeing every negative happening as an opportunity we saw this new longer fence as a great place for interesting climbers and we decided to start the Seaside Border all over again. So at the end of the month we got started, but there is lots more to keep us occupied through part of January. I wrote, “Strong December winds destroyed a section of fence, the one backing the Seaside Garden. To repair it we had to strip out the area, plants and artefacts, but this did afford us the opportunity of refurbishing it.”

 

Here are some of the new plants waiting to go into the “new” Seaside Garden to join those we saved.

On the opposite page I talk about carrying on with our other editing jobs that we started in the autumn. I wrote, “As December draws to a close and the holiday times approach we take advantage of any dry days to catch up with our projects, new steps for the Chicken Garden, planting hundreds of bulbs and replanting the Hot Garden in its new position.”

      

And so to the last page of my 2018 Garden Journal, when I wrote, “December ended frost free. Sunshine caught special features of plants while raindrops hung on leaves, twigs and sculptures.”

Here is the final selection of photos for 2018, showing winter sunshine working its magic on foliage and droplets of rain caught after a shower.

  

“The end of my 2018 Garden Journal.”

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The Dingle Garden in July

Moving into the second half of the year, we wandered around the gravel paths of the Dingle Garden in late July. The day was dry with mixed clear skies with occasional cloud, but no rain came from them.

We immediately discovered the severe effects of this summer’s dry and hot temperatures. A mature conifer was turning shades of purple and brown as it was suffering from lack of water. Although colourful this was devastating for the tree. Elsewhere on the sloping parts of the garden the shrubs looked perfectly healthy and we enjoyed some great foliage contrasts and combinations.

  

Orange is a wonderfully effective colour for woodland planting, as flowers in this colour glow in the deepest shade and are caught by the sun. Yellow comes a close second!

  

Flowering shrubs are now coming into their own in the Dingle Garden, with Hydrangeas taking centre stage.

  

This is just a selection of the Hydrangeas putting on their show of blues, whites and pinks beneath the trees. We loved the variations in colour on individual flower heads.

    

Ferns look good almost the year through, but in the damp woodland atmosphere here at the Dingle they shone with health.

   

Herbaceous perennials appear in a few places beneath the trees and shrubs with Geraniums, Hemerocallis, Persicarias and Lysimachias showing well in the July garden.

     

Sometimes it is the little details that catch the eye when we explore gardens. On this visit to the Dingle Garden Jude was attracted to the moss hitching a lift in the fork of a Prunus. The purple spires of the Acanthus looked just right next to the sculpture of the Red Kite.

 

The real star of the July show was Cotinus coggygria with its deep red foliage with hints of glaucous blue and the smokey flower clouds.

So we will return next in August and see what late summer brings to the Dingle.

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Anglesey Woodland in mid-May

During our family holiday on Anglesey in the middle of May we spent a few days discovering ancient pre-historic sites on the island. The walk to a fortified hut group took us through this beautiful patch of woodland growing happily on a gentle slope. I hope you enjoy the photos I took.

       

The beautiful light worked as a spotlight to help intensify the colour of the flowers and the bright greens of the many ferns.

 

What a spectacular little patch of woodland, a real treat to walk through and enjoy the trees and the flowers growing beneath them.

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The Dingle Garden in May

We planned our fifth visit to the Dingle Gardens near Welshpool for the 23rd May and intended to go whatever the weather. Our April visit was on a day more typical of November than April so the photos I took were rather unusual for a garden in spring.

However for our May visit the sun shone, the sky was clear blue and the warmth allowed us to have a very leisurely stroll around the garden. We had so far this year seen little change from month to month as spring was on hold but this May visit was a strong contrast. We found the garden rich in flowering shrubs and strong fresh growth everywhere.

My first set of pics show paths we followed and the views from them.

  

A real surprise was the explosion of colour provided by the Rhododendrons whose buds we have featured over the first few months of the year. The brightest of reds, oranges, pinks plus cerise hues and shades of white sat together sometimes in harmony but often clashing!

Contrasting and strong coloured foliage provides as much interest as flowers at this time of year as all deciduous foliage is fresh and lively.

        

Ferns are an exciting element in the woodland or shade garden in May as fresh fronds unfurl and open to reveal strongly textured and patterned foliage.

    

I shall finish this visit report for our May wanderings around the Dingle Garden with a few general shots taken near the lake at the bottom of the sloping garden, showing the variation in foliage apparent in the trees and shrubs. We can now look forward to what June at the Dingle will have to offer.

 

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My Garden Journal 2018 – March

Into the third month of the year and we should now be seeing the cheerful signs of early spring. Spring should start the birds singing afresh. We should expect to see green returning to the garden as freshly-burst buds bring life to our patch. Let us see what my Garden Journal for March actually shows.

I began by recording, “March begins as February leaves off, freezing temperatures day and night often dipping into minus figures. The soil is solid, frozen and unworkable. Snow, sleet and frozen rain showers are frequent visitors. The Met Office count March as the first month of Spring but us gardeners know that it is the last of Winter. Dan Pearson in “Natural Selection” writes, “A cold start t the month always feels more appropriate to me, because it is better to go slow when there is so much to do and so much to take in. I prefer the feeling of caution that is generated when there is a beast waiting in the wings – it takes away the assumption that this might be the start of Spring.”

Nevertheless we carry on doing garden wildlife jobs, repairing and repainting nest boxes.”

 

Opposite I looked at one of my favourite spring bulbs, Iris reticulata and shared my Japanese brush paintings I enjoyed doing so much. I noted, “Iris reticulata bulbs are one of our first to come into flower following on from Snowdrops and Winter Aconites. Their rich blues and purples look good with Carex.

These Irises are native to Russia, the Caucasus and Northern Iran, but we grow them in our temperate gardens where they thrive if planted deeply. Our favourites are Iris r. George and “Harmony” but neither of us are keen on the “washed out” look of “Katherine Hodgkin”.

 

After looking at my Iris paintings we can turn over to a double page spread concerning firstly snow and then the wildlife in our Avocet garden.

“As we pass the mid-point of March we awake to the third appreciable snow fall of the winter. Luckily this fall has not been sculpted into drifts so we hope that when it melts we are left unscathed. It will however prevent us from getting out there and enjoying our early year jobs.”

  

“Wildlife is busy in March with frogs cavorting in our wildlife pond and leaving large clumps of spawn among the plants that sit in the water close to the edge. Birds are pairing up, displaying, singing and carrying nesting materials to their nests under construction. We have a pair of  Robins nesting in our woodstore and House Sparrows have taken up residence in the nest boxes we recently re-furbished for them. We watched them pulling grass stems out of the snow and taking them into the boxes. We have created lots more bee homes and repaired any damaged older ones.”

We discovered our brightest coloured frog we have ever seen – a lime green bellied frog.”

Over the next page we look at some of the important jobs we have been busy carrying out during the month of March.

 

“March is a busy month for us gardeners and because of this it is a month we really look forward to. Each week we create a “to do” job list and get busy preparing for the year to come and of course ensuring our patch is up to scratch for our visitors this year.”

“We cut comfrey leaves for liquid feed, pruned leaves off the Epimedium to help us see their fresh flowers and topped up the log edging around our wildlife pond.”

  

“We fed our trees with wood ash from our woodburner and checked tree stakes and tree ties.”

  

“A big project is developing our new fern garden, a raised bed to fill the gap left by the removal of our oil tank. We came up with this crazy idea and hope it works! Planks of wood became a raised fern garden.”

     

Turning over to the next double page spread I wrote about buying new plants and I shared my paintings of a surprise find below the snow. I wrote, “We have been in plant buying mode often this March, some Hebes to replace some that have gone too woody and untidy, Ferns to add to our collection and stock our new “raised fernery” and more Ivies to cover concrete fence posts.”

“Hebes “Purple Shamrock”, Bronze Glow” and “Mrs Winder” and Ferns, “Polystichum setiferum “Plumosum Densum”, Dryopteris affinis “Polydactyla Dadds”, “Dryopteris austriaca “Crispa Whiteside” and Cyrtomium falcatum.”

“We have also been busy dividing perennials such as Sedums.”

“Secret beneath the snow! When the snow drifts melted and once again our golden flint gravel could shine in our Beth Chatto Garden, we found a sad looking perennial stem and its seedheads. It usually stands firmly upright as a statuesque reminder of its summer and autumn beauty. Eryngium pandanifolium can grow to 7ft tall, its spiny flower stem rising from a grass-like batch of equally spiky foliage. The flowers are coloured a strange dusky maroon colour.”

I painted this secret with water-colour pencils and artist pens in greys and blacks.

My final page in my entries for March features a quotation from a nature writer, John Lewis-Stempel and considered how it relates to our own patch.

“The nature writer, John Lewis-Sempel, in his new book titled “The Wood” wrote of March, “Robin sings with gusto, trying different refrains, experimenting. He is the philosophical songbird. 

Hedgehogs now out of hibernation from their watertight nests of grass and moss. As I’m sitting in my chair one shuffles absentmindedly over my wellingtoned feet.

The wood is “filling out”. There are no longer clear views through the trees. Gone is the sense of space, and light. The trees are crowding in.

The blackbird has finished her nest in the Elm. The nest is a perfect bowl, of grass, straw and twigs and plastered inside with mud. Years will pass, but the mud cup will last.”

                                                                                                                                   (March 2017)

Here at our Avocet garden we have virtually no fresh leaves open yet just bursting buds on just a few shrubs and trees. House Sparrows are nesting vigorously now collecting nest materials and at the end of the month we observed a Robin busy building a nest in a Robin nesting box we had made and put up in the Shade Garden.

In every other way Spring is slow to show any enthusiasm.

Our next visit to my garden journal will be in April when we hope Spring may have made some effort to get underway.

 

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A Favourite Winter Garden – Dunham Massey

This will be our third visit to the relatively new winter garden at Dunham Massey, a National Trust property in Cheshire, our neighbouring county to the north of our home county, Shropshire. The leaflets concerning the garden refer to it as a “Curiosity Garden”, while inside is written, “Forget hibernating until spring, Dunham Massey’s Winter Garden is wide awake with colour.”

 

The leaflet then invites us to “Take a refreshing walk in the Winter Garden along meandering paths with shocking red cornus and brilliant white birch trees trees glittering in the winter sun. Discover bright winter berries, late flowering scented shrubs and thousands of snowdrops and iris in the new year.”

We approached the winter garden by meandering along gravel paths across a shallow valley, when upon passing through the first red-bricked outbuildings we discovered some of the best pleaching we had ever seen. It stops us in our tracks on every visit.

The pleached limes look a few decades old and possess the ubiquitous knobbles from where the new wands of growth spurt in the spring after their annual pollarding.

Shrubs come into their own in the winter season with their coloured stems, their scent and beautiful hanging flower clusters.

     

Early flowering bulbs add much of the colour in the garden in February. Sunlight catches them and highlights their bright colours.

 

All winter gardens open to the public make strong features of trees with coloured, textured bark, Betulas, Acers and Prunus.

 

Shrubs with coloured stems provide effective partner planting for these trees, especially Cornus and Salix varieties. The gardeners at Dunham Massey are adept at transparency pruning, effectively lifting the akirts of shrubs and small trees to expose their trunks and lower branches.

  

The one plantingcategory that sorts out the best winter gardens from the average is the good creative use of ground cover. It is all too easy to use bark mulch but there are good interesting plants that can cover the ground and add new dimensions to planting schemes. Dunham Massey is on the way to sorting this well, using Carex, Bergenia, Ophiopogon, ferns and Pachysandra.

So there we have it, a thoroughly inspiring visit to one of our favourite winter gardens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Westgate Villa, a Japanese garden in Shropshire

Jude and I have a soft spot for gardens with a Japanese feel to them, and we are lucky to have an excellent example in our home county of Shropshire and just a short drive away. We had heard of the garden at Westgate in Bridgnorth and always intended to pay a visit but circumstances had not allowed us to. But eventually we managed to make their National Garden Scheme open day in April.

It was well worth the wait! We loved it, the planting, the structure and its special atmosphere. The front garden however was of a very different feel altogether being a formal garden designed to match the age and style of the house. Foliage was the star there!

On the flight of steps nearby foliage again featured but this time succulents were the stars.

   

Moving around the house looking in small borders and corners we found interesting plants and objects that gave clues to the beauty of the Japanese section we were making our way towards. This area prepared us so well for the treat that lay ahead of us.

      

We stepped through an archway into a different world with an atmosphere of such peace that it made us feel so calm. The Japanese garden at Westgate was one of the best examples we have ever seen in an English garden. Come with us on a journey through such a special place. To view the gallery click on the first photo and navigate using the arrows.

 

 

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A Week in the Lake District – Part One – Sizergh

We decided that it was about time we re-visited one of our favourite family holiday destinations from when our children were youngsters, the Lake District. So a week in early June saw us journeying northwards to re-find some old haunts.

The first place we visited was the National Trust property, Sizergh Castle, right at the southern end of the lakes, in an area described as the “gateway to the Lakes”. The National Trust is very much in evidence in this area owning many properties as well as lakes, hillsides, fells and farms. The Lake district was central to the Trust’s early development.

Sizergh Castle is a Medieval house with gardens, orchards, limestone pasture and semi-natural woodland. The garden features fern collections, a kitchen garden, a pond, lake and its main feature a massive rock garden.

We soon realised that this was going to be a place full of interesting plants which also looked after its wildlife.

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The little wooden sign clearly showed us the way!

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We followed the little wooden sign on a stone wall directing us to the garden and made our way towards the kitchen garden. On the way we stumbled across the “stumpery” where the garden’s fern collections are being re-homed. The variety of ferns was vast and we spotted many we had never seen before.

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The walls in the fernery and walled garden were home to so many different tiny plants as well as just ferns. We were soon to discover that this was a feature of the walls throughout the gardens.

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The kitchen garden was on a gentle slope and based on a strange shape somewhat like a long bent rectangle! The old wooden cold frames were still fully in use. We were fascinated by the raised hot beds where plants grew in soil covering heaped manure. This gave heat and later as it broke down fertility and structure to the soil.

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Within the kitchen garden we found a small patch of multi-coloured Forget-me-Nots. We found lots more throughout the gardens.

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From the kitchen garden we wandered into the orchard with its bee hives, buzzing with activity. Beyond the orchard we came across a small lake. In the borders on the lake side were beautifully sculptural pollarded willows. They looked like a group of people meeting up for a chat.

 

 

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Wide open expanses of lawn opened up in front of us as we walked away from the lake. These afforded us views of the castle buildings themselves.

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Where there was a change of level the grass banks were sown as narrow wild flower meadows. They were full of life.

 

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Behind the main buildings we found the “Great Barn”, an agricultural building of a type we had never seen before. The barn was raised up on a bank to create two levels. In the lower level the animals were housed while carts loaded with cereals drove up the grass covered gradients to the upper level.

 

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One of the most famous sections of the gardens was the vast rock garden.  Acers gave this area colour and texture and provided great views back to the castle itself. Tiny streams wound their way through the rocky outcrops ans areas of planting.

 

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We found these appealing little carvings while we wandered around. The first was a yard high snail carved in wood while the second was a sculpture created by Mother Nature and again we thought it resembled a snail. The final piece was a wise old owl carved from wood.

Our first day in the Lake District was most enjoyable and we hoped our other days would be equally as inspiring.

 

 

 

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Ferns – right plant right place

When plants self-seed they often find perfect niches in which to set up home. In a garden recently we found young ferns which had found just such places, but I suppose they self-spore rather than self-seed. All around the edge of a curling path edged with silver birch trunks little ferns were establishing themselves.

After putting these photos into the blog I had to go out with the camera  into our own garden to see what our ferns were getting up to.

Having started this post and saved it to finish later we went for a woodland walk and discovered two of our native ferns growing happily in the dappled shade.