I came across a picture of the garden from June 2005 and, struck by the number of plants that we no longer have, tried to take exactly the same picture as it looks now. I worry sometimes that the garden has become too static, that I am too slow to make alterations. Not so,…
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Six on Saturday – 7/10/2017
I worked out that after this week I only need to find another 72 things to get me to the end of the year. Creativity will be needed. Perhaps the cat will have to count in a future post. One. Malus domestica 'Holstein'. I nearly included this last week, chose not to. Decided to…
Familiarity breeds contempt.
Blechnum chilensis is a large and handsome fern. For all the many years that I didn't possess it, I wanted it very much. Eventually a friend dug a piece from her garden and gave it to me. It took a year or two to settle down and start producing its large, handsome leaves, then it…
Gardening and getting older.
As gardeners we are very conscious of the life span allotted to the various plants we grow in our gardens. Some may be annuals, some perennials, some biennials. All of us will have had things die prematurely, sometimes for no apparent reason. Equally, most of us will have had the odd annual that manages two…
Heaven Scent sent to heaven.
White and pale pink Magnolias need a dark background to be seen at their best. On flat ground those of tree habit need a backdrop of other trees or else you are looking at their flowers against the sky, which in the early months of the year is more likely to be cloudy than clear. Magnolia ‘Heaven…
This little patch of mine.
Somewhere on this site is a map of my garden, carefully measured and drawn to scale by me a year or two back. Only there is no scale marked on it, so you don’t know how big it is and nor did I. Well, I revisited it and worked out that my back garden is…
Euphorbia mellifera
There are one or two spots in the garden where it's a struggle to get anything to grow. One such place is behind a brick retaining wall where I suspect the builders back filled with a load of rubble. Somewhere down the line we planted a Euphorbia mellifera there and it has loved it, growing…
The modern world.
On 14 June I was down at Glendurgan Garden and saw a plant which I didn’t recognise and which didn’t have a label. I photographed it and posted a tweet asking Glendurgan what it was. They came back with Aristea major as a name. I Googled that, found a seed supplier who had it and…
Not the Chelsea Flower Show
I've been to the CFS a couple of times, exhibited there just once. I enjoyed it, from both perspectives. The older I get though, the less it moves me. I'm happy pootling away in my own garden and on the allotment. I'm interested in what other people like me are up to, somehow Chelsea is…
What I think I know about soil.
Soil is the stuff I grow most of my plants in, the ones I don’t grow in pots. It is derived from the local rock, soft slatey stuff, small bits of which are visible and sometimes abundant in the soil. Everybody describes it as “shilletty”. If I analysed the distribution of article sizes I would…
garden ruminations 