ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
We had another two NGS open days this weekend just gone. Saturday was a dismal affair, it rained all day and only two people came. Sunday was very different, with a good turnout and fair weather. It hasn't been an easy season to get a garden looking good; too dry in the lead up to…
Nowhere in our garden does more effort go into forcing a quart into a pint pot than in the one corner that is shady. If Sue is never happier than when she's furtling about in her greenhouse full of cacti, I'm at my most content surrounded by greenery in the shade. The greenhouse is her…
Ever since I took out the leylandii hedge along the edge of the garden - at least twenty years ago - we have had problems with honey fungus. So called because of its honey coloured toadstools, which we have rarely seen, it has taken a steady toll of mainly woody plants, the latest of which…
The November edition of the television programme that I mentioned two months ago has now gone up on the Cornwall Stress Free Television Vimeo channel, where I brave the weather to tell you a bit about what is happening in my garden in autumn. https://vimeo.com/770689446
Years ago a gardening friend gave me plants of both pink and white forms of Begonia grandis. It would appear that the correct names for them are Begonia grandis subsp. evansiana and Begonia grandis subsp. evansiana var. alba hort. The white form has proved the more robust but both are good performers if grown in…
They're gonna put me in the moviesThey're gonna make a big star out of meWe'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonelyAnd all I gotta do is act naturally Back in mid July I received an email from someone called Joe Driver, from Cornwall Stress Free Television. They explained that they were…
Almost at the end of another month. I received some Erythronium bulbs today and was re-acquainted with how dry the ground is below the surface when it came to planting them. It's no wonder most things look jaded. It took longer than usual to assemble six things, another sign of the turning seasons. One.Hedychium 'Tara'.…
One question I've been asked more than once by our garden visitors is whether our garden was designed to be as it is or evolved into it. People phrase such questions in a variety of ways and may be asking from a strongly approving or disapproving standpoint, it's not always easy to tell. I tend…
There's not a lot of point going to a rare plant fair and not coming away with something rare. The annual fair at Tregrehan garden is a form of torture for me, so many plants I would love to buy and so little room for them in my already overcrowded garden. Anything that grows big…
I spent a good deal of yesterday carrying on the clean up after storm Eunice a week ago, mercifully in someone else's garden, not my own. Looking carefully around the other trees in her garden I spotted signs of heave around another big tree, leaning towards and well within reach of her neighbour's house. It'll…
garden ruminations 