Wednesday 1 May 2013

End of the month view -( a bit late) ...

Not entirely on time with this post and in fact a day late, but the spirit of the thing remains the same ! You will find similar posts  on several other blogs (including 'The Patient Gardener') as it can be interesting to see a snapshot of different gardens with different plants in flower, micro climates, styles of planting etc.

I started at the bottom of the garden and walked up, taking photos as I went, of anything which I thought may be vaguely interesting. Please note artfully arranged hosepipe, watering can and wheelbarrow !


This is the wildlife pond, now fizzing with tadpoles and newts ! Marsh Marigold is out, as are primroses and Cowslips. You can see the house in the distance (the garden is long and thin!).


There is something very satisfying about newly planted spuds - until the weeds begin to grow again ! We are just growing 'Maris Bard' this year, so here's hoping the blight stays away this year.



Soft fruit - black currants and red currants, with the beech hedge in the background, still clothed with last year's leaves.



This is part of the sub-tropical garden, which is just beginning to wake up. The more tender members of this garden are still snuggly warm in the greenhouse for a little while yet.






This is the 'Bus Shelter Garden' (come on, you can see why ...) and I lovingly grew 400 grasses from seed 2 years ago, tore out all the planting and planted it up completely with grasses. It lasted a season before I tore about 350 of them out and restored my mixed planting! The grasses looked absolutely fantastic for about a month, and a bit rubbish for the remaining eleven. The Festuca edging to the island bed did get a reprieve, as it stays looking good for much longer !


The ornamental pond, with emerging ferns and Marsh Marigold in flower.



Island bed containing all sorts ! You can see an Angelica growing in front of your very eyes, next to a newly re-planted Eucalyptus Gunii. In the foreground is Viburnum Davidii, with an unclothed Buddleia directly behind it. It also containg English roses, delphiniums, lupins, ferns and hostas ... and possibly lots more which are yet to surprise me when they pop up !


This was taken in 'Helen's Garden', a new garden which is semi- formed.  We still have lots to do with both hard landscaping and planting. It is in memory of a very dear friend. It is one of this season's projects. Prominent plants are the red primrose and the young tree Magnolia Stellata, which is at its peak.


This is one of the mixed planting beds, which are heavy on the cottage garden perennials and roses. Aconitum, one of my favourite plants, is pushing through strongly to the left of the photo, and there are Lychnis, Lupins, Delphiniums, English roses and Euphorbia in there somewhere. The bright yellow shrub is Euonymus. Daffodila and Hellebores are fading, whilst the Pulmonaria still burns bright.


The pots of pansies provide a splash of rich colour and I wish I could say I grew them ! I did grow some, but my doves got peckish and demolished them about a month ago, so these are replacements bought from a local nursery.


Same excuse for these I'm afraid - 'the doves ate my pansies" sounds nearly as implausible as "the dog ate my homework"!

So that is a brief over view of how the garden looks at the moment. I took loads of photos and tried to be selective, so there are still lots left in the 'album' ! Funnily enough, they are the ones which happen to feature a large dandelion, or some naughty nettles !












18 comments:

  1. I really enjoyed seeing this overview of your garden. It is quite large. You have two ponds - how fabulous! And I love the beech hedge. Your magnolia is beautiful, and I love all the yellows (foliage and flowers) in the garden. But what really got my attention was the talk about the grasses. I am planning a new area with grasses as the main feature - now I worry I may be unhappy with it!

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  2. Thanks for your comments HolleyGarden. The garden is about half an acre in all. The grasses were an interesting experiment! I could see them in my mind's eye rippling in the breeze but in reality they 'went over' very quickly and flopped over and lost definition. I love Prairie planting and the work of Piet Oudolf, and I wanted a tiny piece of that, but it just didn't work for me . Maybe I just picked the wrong grasses.

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  3. I thorough enjoyed my stroll around your garden. Miles ahead of mine. I tend to agree re your comment on grasses, I found similar although I count only 10 different plants, of which, 7 are either gone or on the verge of going!! Why do they always look nice in the pictures..lol!
    I love aconitums too - I find they look great from the minute they appear until they go in winter.
    I love your wildlife pond too - it puts my wildlife 'puddle' to shame!!

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  4. Angie, thankyou for your comments. I always think Aconitum give such a lot. They are amongst the first perennials to appear and the last to flower. So many perennials grow, flower and die back in a flash, leaving bare earth, but the Aconiyum hangs around until the end of the party! How far behind are you, do you think ?

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  5. This is my favorite of your posts to date and I love your posts! You have a fabulous garden! Did you create your ponds? If so, are they lined? Thank you for the lovely views! I hope you will share a stroll again when everything is in full bloom!

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  6. Anastasia you are very kind ! Thankyou ! Yes we did make both ponds and they are both lined. They have a very strong underlay , classed as 'reservoir quality' to stop roots breaking through and puncturing them. One was punctured, years ago, by my lovely nephew 'pole vaulting' across, using a garden cane ! :-)

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  7. You have lovely gardens. Your region is so much greener than in southern Connecticut in the U.S.

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  8. Thankyou Joene. I enjoyed your post on daffodils which I read earlier today. I suppose we take the 'green-ness' for granted here in the uk, I think we view it as a sort of payback for all the rain we have !

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  9. I really enjoyed the walk through your garden. It gives me that same warm and comfortable feeling you get like you do when you hug a friend you have not been able to see for some time. Thank you for sharing.

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    1. Thankyou for your comments Charlie, the virtual world really extends our horizons, doesn't it ?

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  10. LOVE your garden, Jane! I have a very bad case of pond envy!

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  11. Thankyou Juliet. I think any pond envy would quickly disappear if you had a closer look ! The dreaded Blanketweed is beginning to gather now that we at last have a sun in the sky. This means many hours with a 'twirly stick' getting it out !

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  12. Hello Jane! I was going back and forth to find the hosepipe, watering can and wheelbarrow. Couldn't see them. Anyway, what I notice is that the shrubs that thrives in your climate have similar appearance to some of the tropical plants here. And I love those pretty pansies. You know what, sometimes I do what you do also. If my seeds did not sprout well or eaten by pest or birds (I think), I will just buy replacements from nursery :-) Cheers, Stephanie

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    1. Hi Stephanie. Thanks for your comments. Hosepipe, barrow and can are all there, but are not prominent ! You have to look hard - which is a good thing ...

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  13. How lovely - a garden visit from the comfort of my own home! It was interesting what you said about grasses - I use them here, but in a mixed scheme, because they look so dull at this time of year. On the upside, I get ridiculously excited when I see a fresh green blade of grass emerging. You're right about newly-planted spuds being so satisfying. I planted mine in an arc this year so that I could enjoy a curved ridge where the spuds will emerge (clearly the weeds will ruin everything by not adhering to the scheme). The garden for your friend is a lovely idea. It must be a very special place to work or sit in and to reflect on your time together and to remember her.

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  14. Thankyou for all your comments. I popped over to visit you and really enjoyed your posts. Grasses are so late to get cracking, aren't they ? They were a bit of a disappointment to me I must admit, when growing them en masse so I am glad to return to mixed planting in that part of the garden. In my mind's eye , they looked fantastic, a sea of rippling movement, with variety of textures and seedheads ... in reality, a bit rubbish and floppy !

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  15. Your garden looks so fantastic with so many features. I especially love the wild pond. How did you make it?

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  16. Thanks KL. I would like to say that I dug the pond but that would be untrue ... I dug for about ten minutes before handing over to my son. The full story is in an older post, 'It won't take much digging' if you are interested.It has a liner which we covered with subsoil and then planted direct with native plants. It is very shallow around the edges with sloping 'beaches' to allow wildlife access. There are sticklebacks, newts, frogs, tadpoles, leeches etc in it and it has naturalised very quickly.



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