As the bulldozers move in to the Chelsea showground and reduce all to turf once more, I just thought I’d share a selection of the most beautiful plants which caught my eye from the Great Pavilion. Till next year!
29 Sunday May 2016
Posted shows
inAs the bulldozers move in to the Chelsea showground and reduce all to turf once more, I just thought I’d share a selection of the most beautiful plants which caught my eye from the Great Pavilion. Till next year!
23 Tuesday Jun 2015
Posted Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, my garden
inBit busy lately! So I’ve missed this month’s GBBD but the garden is looking so lovely (well, the flowers are: I’ve got to develop better blinkers as I can’t not see the galloping weeds, which is a bit annoying as with poppies and sweet peas around you don’t want to be staring crossly at the festoons of goosegrass bedecking the hedges). And I’ve taken the pictures. So I thought I’d share anyway.
Happy June!
08 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted cutting garden, herbs
inTags
cut flowers, flower arranging, flowers, herbs, history, nosegays, posies, scent, tussie-mussies
On the whole, I’m a pretty rugged sort of person. A disproportionate amount of my gardening time seems to be spent hammering scaffold boards together, or powering my way through waist high weeds at the business end of a petrol strimmer, or hauling improbably deep tree roots out of pits in the ground.
But the anti-bramble gauntlets, steel toecapped boots and safety helmet hide a more delicate soul. The soul of a person who likes tussie-mussies.
I love the word tussie-mussie. I always think of it as an Americanism: their version of our more prosaic nosegay (bit prim, that) or posy. But the Americans came to tussie-mussies late, around two centuries late in fact, when New England ladies took to carrying them on their way to church. The word was first coined in 15th century England, long before we even knew there was an America (there is an excellent rundown of its meanings, including one rather surprising one I won’t mention here as it’s a family-friendly blog, here). [read more…]
24 Monday Mar 2014
Posted cutting garden, garden design, my garden, wildlife gardening
inThis is my little meadow area at the top of the terraces. It doesn’t look very inspiring at the moment – there are some crocuses and hyacinths and a few old gold heritage daffodils on the way but I’ve only just begun to build up the bulbs quotient so a few years to go yet till it’s the sheet of spring colour I have in my head.
The sheet of summer colour it will become is very much a recent memory though: this is what it looked like last year:
And from the other direction across to the lane…
I’m sowing the same mix – Pictorial Meadows short annual mix – and have tipped in a couple of packets of Ladybird poppies I got for free in magazines, just for fun.
Second year sowing isn’t quite as straightforward as the first year, when it was a matter of broadcast-sowing across a patch of virgin ground. Now I have bulbs to avoid, and a few weeds, and some self-seeders from last year’s meadow which I don’t want to disturb.
So I started by weeding out the dandelions, cleavers and creeping buttercup seedlings by hand. Then I divided the area up into four.
I weighed my seeds and divided that in four, too: you can also mix them with silver sand which means they’re a bit easier to handle and you can see where you’ve sown. I put each batch of seed into a teacup, then went out and dealt with just one quarter at a time.
My small-headed rake was perfect for raking in between other things, so very gingerly I raked up the topsoil to loosen it, then broadcast sowed as evenly as I could. Another light raking to mix them in with the top level of soil and you’re done.
Repeat for the other three quarters: the timing is also crucial. I’ve put off sowing this for a week now, as the weather has been so dry; yesterday, though, it rained, nicely damping the soil, and it’s forecast to rain again later today and tomorrow, then we’re in for a patch of showery but not too cold weather next week. Perfect for germinating seeds. Can’t wait to take the pics this summer: I still have passers by telling me how lovely my meadow was last year, and this year’s is going to be even better.
23 Saturday Feb 2013
Posted seeds
inI got a lovely little parcel in the post the other day.
I do love a good seed swap. This is the second year I’ve been taking part in this one: it’s run by the lovely Carl Legge, who lives in an obscure bit of Wales I’d only happened to have heard of because a breed of sheep is named after it (obscure bits of Wales are always heartbreakingly beautiful so that’s a good thing).
The idea of Seedy Penpals is pretty straightforward: you put your name down, you’re paired with another equally seed-obsessed gardener, and then given a (different) swapee – someone to send your own spare seeds to.
And this is the result. I don’t know what it is with beautiful packaging this year but everyone’s into it. I got the most beautiful packet of sweetpea seeds earlier this year from the wonderful Ursula over at Easton Walled Gardens. Well, I say packet: it was actually a very stylish flat tin, of the matt silver cigar sort, and inside the packets of sweetpeas were laid lovingly in a beautifully-folded piece of brown paper. It all looked so perfect I could hardly bear to break the seal and sow the seeds (though I got over that and they’re now in the altogether more prosaic surroundings of a load of old loo rolls full of compost in the greenhouse, soon, I hope, to germinate).
And my wonderful Seedy Penpal, Cally of Countrygate Gardens in Wiltshire (and a lady after my own heart: she has done a lot of what I one day dream of doing) clearly has an eye for a good ribbon, too. She’s taken such trouble to bind up my seeds so beautifully: it gives a pile of seed packets the delicious anticipation of a birthday present.
I particularly loved the bee mix seedballs – you can buy them from Cally (hunt down her phone number on the above website). Full of foxgoves, viper’s bugloss, wild marjoram, red clover and birdsfoot trefoil they might have been designed for my chalky soil. And they came wrapped in an artless square of hessian tied in string: it’s the little touches that make all the difference, you see.
Inside were – quite literally – seedballs. I’m very intrigued to find out if these work: the seeds inside are apparently mixed with clay, compost and chilli powder (to deter pests) and made into a little pellet about the size of an aniseed ball. I think you’re meant to sow the whole thing. It says to scatter them on the ground, but each pellet contains thousands of seeds… well. It’s not gardening as I know it: but I’m willing to give it a try. I shall report back.
And what were the other goodies in my little bundle of fun? Well: ‘Cosmic Purple’ carrot, which I’ve wanted to grow for ages (it’s one of the original heirloom purple carrots, though I think the ‘Cosmic’ bit probably came later); white and blue love-in-a-mist; some scallop summer squash (yay!), cleome, calendula, molucella and gypsophila; orange-scented thyme to add to my collection; some melons; and – get this – mushrooms! And it says all you need is horse manure. I’ve got loads, and loads, and loads of that thanks to my two little ponies, so I’m away. It sounds like a bit of a faff to get it started, but if home-grown chestnut mushrooms are the result, I’m game.
Thank you, Cally: you’ve sown the seeds (pun intended) for a wonderful season to come. And thanks also to Carl, for putting in the considerable work involved in setting up the swap in the first place. See you next year!
16 Wednesday May 2012
Posted Uncategorized
inNo… it’s no good. I know we’re a gnat’s breath from plunging into the all-embracing tsunami of Chelsea, but I couldn’t quite leave this year’s Malvern Spring Gardening Show behind without paying homage to the beautiful, charming, extraordinary plants in the Floral Marquee.
Here, to feast your eyes on, are the true stars of the show.
Arisaema serratum var. mayebarae (Edrom Nurseries)
Primula fassettii (Kevock Garden Plants)
Geum ‘McClure’s Magic’ (Proudplants)
Lilium ‘Dimension’ (Harts Nursery)
Ornithogalum saundersiae (Warmenhoven)
Paeonia peregrina (Tale Valley Nursery)
Tritelia ixioides ‘Starlight’ (Avon Bulbs)
Rheum palmatum ‘Ace of Hearts’ (Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants)
15 Tuesday Sep 2009
Posted Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
inTags
Now how’s this for dedication? I’ve just been scuttling around my garden in the pouring rain to take these pictures since it’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day and though the garden is very weedy at the moment it is full of flowers, so I didn’t want to miss it.
As so often happens when you do things differently, it was a revelation. I’ve realised I never go out in the garden in the rain: just look what I’ve been missing.
Did everyone else know this already and wasn’t telling me? From now on I hope I shall always pop out with an umbrella to enjoy my garden with dewdrops of rain on every petal.
Thank you to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day!
15 Monday Sep 2008
Posted Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
inThings are beginning to go over a little, but the roses are making a spectacular late-summer show and as always, I’m surprised how much there is to see.
Thanks once more to May Dreams for organising Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!
15 Tuesday Jul 2008
Posted Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
inTags
I decided to join in with the Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day this month – this is the first time I’ve ever created a slide show, so be gentle with me!
You can see everyone else’s spectacularly gorgeous gardens at May Dreams – go check them out, it’s a real celebration of summer.
25 Friday Apr 2008
Posted plant of the month
inTags
Actually this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, and the blossom has finished since, but for all that its spectacular display is brief, when snowy mespilus flowers in spring it really steals the show.
These delicate, butterfly flowers are far more graceful than cherries: they’re less overblown, less in-your-face, far more comfortable in their own beautiful skin. These are not flowers that need to shout their arrival: they just appear one day, and everyone drops what they’re doing to stare.
One of the most lovely things about the snowy mespilus blossom is that it appears against the very young growth of the leaves, which at this time of year is tinged a coppery bronze. The combination will take your breath away. This is in many ways the perfect small garden tree: it will now clothe itself with vibrant pale green leaves all summer, provide striking purplish-black berries in autumn, and shed its leaves with a final flourish of vivid orangey-reds. It never gets too big, or too messy-looking, and it’s not too fussy about its soil – it even puts up with my free-draining sand. If you don’t have a mespilus in your garden, go out and buy one right away: you’re missing something very special.