ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
By mid October most people’s gardens are at best winding down. Such colour as is left is from late and weather battered Dahlias, Fuchsias, Salvias, the odd rose and the like. Very few plants chose late autumn for their main flower display and many gardeners have also given up and hunkered down to wait for…
Wednesday was a lovely day and seems such a long time ago. I looked at the forecast and got some pictures taken then and on Thursday. I did a quick loop of the garden this morning and it's looking battered and soggy with most of the pot stuff lying down. One. Camellia sasanqua 'Navajo'. This is…
I have a garden of my own, I volunteer one day a week in a local park and I have one gardening “job” where I help out with a garden the owners of which are finding it hard to cope with. Occasionally in my own garden I get annoyed that I can’t remember the name of something.…
There's a magic in the way that great big plants grow from tiny little seemingly dead seeds. It fascinates small children and for many of us is no less fascinating when we are past retirement age. I have been collecting seeds from camellia bushes at the National Collection in Mount Edgcumbe Country Park, with their…
Dahlias and Japanese anemones are definitely flowers of the second half of summer. I'm impatient for them to start flowering, then depressed when they do. One. Dahlia 'Orange Cushion'. There is not the remotest possibility of this dahlia ever being mistaken for nearly red or nearly yellow. It's a bang down the middle orange. I've…
There's quite a bit flowering now, bulbs and bushes. I'm not sure how but we still have three magnolias, used to have five. The one behind the polytunnel is Vulcan and it's slowly falling over. It might be possible to push it back up and prop it, I hope so. The plum tree on its…
At this time of year a bit of sunshine makes a huge difference both to photos of the garden and to the pleasure of being out in it. Today is desperately dull. My various Hakonechloas are providing some colour, as are the evergreens but there isn't a great deal flowering. Just outside the front window…
I was asked a question the other day about Camellia ‘Satan’s Robe’. The flowers had white stamens instead of the yellow ones they should have had. On closer inspection it turned out that the anthers had not developed and each stamen ended in a small white club. Looking at photographs I have taken of the…
I paid a visit yesterday to the Camellia National Collection at Mount Edgcumbe in the hope that their autumn flowering camellias would be putting on a show. I was not disappointed. The autumn flowering camellias are often referred to as "the sasanquas" though some are forms of the species C. hiemalis, others hybrids. Many originate from…
garden ruminations 