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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: geraniums

February flowers

15 Tuesday Feb 2011

Posted by sallynex in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

geraniums, pelargoniums, scented leaved pelargoniums, snowdrops

It’s a bit chilly and rather damp, but the garden is slowly, imperceptibly, filling up with flowers again.

The bulbs are getting my gardening fingers itching: clump after clump of snowdrops has appeared in the long grass and I didn’t even realise they were there. They’ve hung on in the face of decades of neglect (I’m told by my neighbours it’s over 20 years since a gardener lived here): and though I’m also told they aren’t nearly as plentiful as they once were, I’m planning to do something about that. I have visions of sheets of snowdrops underplanted with aconites and cyclamen dancing in my head…

But for now I’m just enjoying what I have. It’s even better in the greenhouse, where the overwintering geraniums are putting on a fabulous show and cheering me up no end (do they ever rest, do you think?) and even my little scented-leaf pretties are shyly unfurling a few petals.

So, in the wind and the rain, I’ve been out today taking a few photos for Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day, hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens. Enjoy!

The Grand Tour #3: The Shady Bit

08 Monday Nov 2010

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

astrantia, geraniums, holly, meconopsis, new gardens, pot pourri, scented plants

Turn your back to the house once again, and look to your left: this is the side of the garden that lies in the lee of a steeply-sloping bank, topped with a hedge, the lane meandering by on the other side a good ten feet or so above head height. The ‘lawn’ stretches back from here, but in front is a little seating area: no good for chilly autumn or spring, when you require the full force of the sun, but wonderful in summer, I suspect, where the shade will be a welcome respite from all those 40°-plus temperatures we’re supposed to be getting in a few years’ time.

I introduce you to….

The Pot-Pourri Garden

It’s not quite in full shade: the bit that wraps around to the garden path, to the right in this picture, actually gets sun for most of the day. It is for this reason that I’ve decided this should be the place for another long-held hankering of mine: a garden where all the plants can be used for pot-pourri. This idea may be fairly heftily modified in the coming months: it’s quite likely, for example, that apothecary’s rose (Rosa gallica var officinalis), a base ingredient for pot-pourri and one of my all-time favourite roses for its sumptuous, unforgettable scent, will not like my chalky soil here. But in the best gardening traditions I shall try, and probably err, until I get it right. At worst, I should end up with rather a nice scented garden: even nicer on those summer evenings.

For now, however, it is a sea of neglect: there has obviously at some stage in its dim and distant past been some love and attention, as there are some rather gorgeous things here such as a massive and beautiful clump of bronze rodgersia. But mostly, it’s just a sea of cranesbill: and not even interesting cranesbill but the rampant wild form, which although pretty is a little tedious in these quantities.

There are other self-seeding lovelies, though, like this Meconopsis cambrica: a slender, delicate, tissue-paper-thin poppy of just the perfect shade of yellow which I have always struggled to grow elsewhere, yet here is growing itself. Perfect.

And astrantias are clearly happy too: it’s just the common-or-garden kind rather than one of the more vividly-coloured selections, but nonetheless lovely for that.

And this rather handsome yellow-leaved shrub is glowing in the gloom: but I have no idea what it is. It’s 4-5ft tall and hasn’t done anything other than this, so far. I do like those deep purple stems, though. It is ringing a bell, I know I’ve seen it before somewhere and I probably ought to know its identity – but my poor overloaded mind is so far drawing a blank. Any ideas, anyone?

At the back is a fine variegated holly – it’s right next to the Ginkgo I mentioned in a previous rambling, and the contrast between the Ginkgo’s yellow autumn foliage and the yellow-and-green variegation of the holly is inspired. And it looks like we’ll have holly berries for Christmas for the first time ever this year.

But what of the bank? I hear you say. There must, surely, be a bank?

Ah yes, but it is a gentle one: horribly overgrown and scrubby, but very sheltered and rather nook-like. I am seeing daphnes, violets, wintersweet and other lovely things tumbling over each other on the way down.

Plant of the month – June

03 Thursday Jul 2008

Posted by sallynex in plant of the month

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Ann Folkard, geraniums, magenta, pink

Geranium ‘Ann Folkard’

Well… actually, this might be G. psilostemon, but I don’t think so. I’ve lost the label (as with so many of my plants) and my memory of writing ‘Ann Folkard’ somewhere is hazy, but extant.

Anyway, this gorgeous floozy has taken a while to get into her finery, suffering as she has from far too much competition in previous years while she was trying to establish herself. I belatedly realised this last year so she got a nice year free of anyone else trying to outdo her, and has rewarded me this summer with the most unbelievably spectacular fireworks of in-yer-face magenta pink. She’s forgiven her thuggish neighbours to such an extent, in fact, that she’s now clambering among them lovingly, brightening them up no end with her lipsticky kisses. It’s brought some eye-popping combinations – magenta and orange anyone? (this one when she wrapped herself around a neighbouring Californian poppy. It looked sensational).

Magenta pink isn’t usually my thing, but Ann does it so well, and somehow it just looks right, giving the border real pizazz week after week. Hardy geraniums are generally good do-ers, and the fact that this one has managed to survive three years of suffocation and still come through it smiling her head off is testament to just how tough she is. I haven’t watered, cut back, or in any way given her the attention she so clearly deserves – yet she rewards me with this. I think it means she’s forgiven me, so I’ll make it up to her with lots of TLC from now on.

Getting things through the winter

08 Friday Feb 2008

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

geraniums, overwintering, pelargoniums

I was checking over my geraniums this week. I’ve got a few I’m overwintering for myself, plus a few for a couple of clients, and then there’s another client who has a whole balcony full of them and needs them all lifting in autumn, overwintering and then setting back out in spring.

You’ll hear lots of different methods of overwintering geraniums (I should say, more correctly, pelargoniums), but here’s what I do. It’s pretty simple.

You take the plants out of the pots they’ve been in all summer, and pot up in a plastic pot which just fits the roots (i.e. you don’t have too much spare soil left over). General-purpose compost is fine – anything too loamy and they get too damp. Then I take the secateurs to them: any leggy stems are cut back to a bud or leaf joint about 4-5″ (10cm or so) above soil level. It seems drastic, but it keeps the plants compact as they’ll grow again from these points next year instead of starting a foot or two up in the air.

I give them one, very light watering, taking care not to wet leaves or stems, mostly just to settle them in to the pots. And then I switch on the greenhouse heater with the thermostat set to a few degrees above zero, and leave them to it.

I water them maybe twice the whole winter long. There are two secrets to overwintering pelargoniums successfully: first, they need to be very nearly bone dry, so once you’ve watered them when you transplant them, that’s pretty much it until February.

Second, you need to check them over at least once a week and remove any dead or dying leaves and stems. Botrytis, or downy mildew, or whatever that fluffy mould is that grows on dead geranium leaves is murder for overwintering plants and will spread like wildfire. You need to remove the leaves regularly to keep it in check, and take them out of the greenhouse too so the spores aren’t hanging around. If you do it regularly, you’ll find the fresh leaves will stay fresh and you’ll have greenery all winter. Harden them off carefully in early May, when you’re sure frosts are past (probably a bit later further north) and you can keep them going for years.

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