My polytunnel is tucked as far into the top corner of the garden as feasible but there is still a fair sized space behind it. Until late May the space was home to a large Magnolia, two large Camellias and a mix of hazel and cotoneaster, all making the tunnel rather shady. The Magnolia was leaning at…
Six on Saturday – 25/8/2018
The weather is completely back to normal, a bit of this, a bit of that, nothing to remark on. Except that the effects of the hot spell are still playing out, with early flower here and renewed growth there, meaning that it doesn't quite feel normal. At least there is more colour about now, with…
How to prune apples.
I read a blog the other day entitled ‘How to grow Alstroemeria’ which started with an apology for its pretentious title, used because confident titles attract search engine attention. I imagine there is a lot more written about pruning apples than growing Alstroemerias, so confident or not, I’m not expecting the world to sit up…
Fuchsias; a good word for.
Fuchsias are a terrific group of plants for providing colour in the late summer /autumn period, especially in gardens that are a bit on the shady side. In this garden they have the further great merit of not being touched by slugs. Just need to sort out the capsids. We have a good number, both…
Six on Saturday – 18/8/2018
I don't have lawn in my garden, so in theory I don't have the regular chore of mowing. However, since nothing's ever that simple, I do mow next door's, except he's now gone into a home and his mower has been given away so I had to do it with my strimmer. Then I went…
Six on Saturday – 11/8/2018
Oh it's definitely changed now. Needless to say we get fed up with rain far quicker than sun but it's good to have the pressure of endless watering and badly stressed plants lifted somewhat. Autumn seems to have arrived while summer still has a few weeks to run so with two seasons overlapping I had…
Six on Saturday – 4/8/2018
The sight of a bud emerging on Amaryllis belladonna two days ago was a bit of a shock, it's hard to see it as other than an early sign of autumn. Much of the summer flower palette has been battered by the heat and blown through too quickly. The flowers on my Heleniums are half the…
Dahlias from seed.
Ignore the few pink blooms at the top left of this picture and what you are looking at is two rows of Dahlias raised from seed collected from the variety 'Orange Cushion'. The left hand row are from a 2016 sowing, the others from a sowing in March this year. Almost all of them are…
Allotment update – 29/7/2018
We have finally had a decent drop of rain, accompanied by quite strong winds. I don't know what I will find when I next go up to my plot, likely a mix of reinvigorated growth and devastation. Once past midsummer a sense of running downhill slowly settles in, with more crops being removed than sown…
Six on Saturday -28/7/2018
Earlier in the week I blogged about the many and various plants that I grow in pots. I thought I'd zoom in on half a dozen for this week's six. We had a little rain overnight but it's sunny again now; much of what is in the ground looks jaded. One. Impatiens auricoma x bicaudata.…
garden ruminations 