Christmas Posies

Did the usual Christmas harvest of flowers for the dinner table.

From top left, clockwise: Winter jasmine with Setterwort (Helleborus foetidus) and Arum italicum subsp. italicum 'Marmoratum'; Camellia susanqua 'Narumigata', Hesperantha coccinea ''Major', Rose 'Irene Watts', Dame's Violet (Hesperis matronalis) Setterwort flowers; Agapanthus 'Headbourne Hybrid' Sarcococca (flower buds not cold-primed to open yet); Bergenia cordifolia - old pink cv.; Prunus subhirtella autumnalis 'Rosea'.

Late December

I went to Uppsala just before Christmas.  I was invited to examine a thesis on P. infestans as it attacks potato in Sweden by my colleagues Jonathan Yuen and Bjorn Andersson. Sweden was in the middle of a cold spell with maybe 20cm of snow and subzero temperatures for seeral weeks.  The snow was still decorating the trees with white tinsel.


Jonathan Yuen's garden

My Hotel room was very quiet and looked out on to the garden of the real Carl Linneus

 

When I landed in Mancester, it was still raining and a balmy 8C.

 

Our topiary holly at the front door is a male and needs a bit of adornment for the festive season so Lorna took this year's harvest of Agapanthus umbels and gave them a coat of red paint. La voilà



Merry Christmas!

Today was the day for digging up dahlias and noticing that the labels didn't really correspond very well to the flowers we had last summer.
The unlabelled light orange cactus-flowered plant gave us by far the greatest number of flowers through to mid-November. Karma Sangria seems to be the name of the Karma type we had. Flowers were in general a bit smaller than previous year, and I think I need to put in more food for them when I take up the tulips.
Which have now all arrived and it is time to plant them, pronto. Hope for some decent weather for that tomorrow.
November must have been yet another month for record-breaking rain. The A55 was flooded by the Ogwen at one point.

Dahlias

I'd say the star of this year was Karma Fuchsiana, exciting magenta and gold colouration and good long, strong stems. New Baby, the vivid orange pompom, hasn't such strong stems but is very pretty.  Autumn Lustre (described as orangey) was a good yellow with long stems, but I think Glorie van Hemsteede is better as a flower.  The big dark crimson pompom has good stems but not great numbers of flowers. Chat Noir had a few flowers but is not so interesting to me as that pompom.  Taratahi Ruby, so I thought, was nothing like as red as the one with that name last year. Hillcrest Royal, dark red cactus, was a bit disappointing. However, the plants didn't grow very well in the wet and cool summer. Actually, they grew a lot of leaves but the flowers were slow to open.

Willow, part three

The two willow structures got off to a good start this summer, the wettest of the last 100 years. I've just finished bending and tying in the long shoots from the top of the willow arbour in the new garden. It seemed best to place them where they would naturally bend to,  giving a random appearance to the roof. The shoots from the sides turned out to look best and work most comfortably if they were brought down to the horizontal. I've started several horizontal bands of woven-in shoots. I hope they will sprout well from the horizontal plane next summer. If growth continues as it did this summer, it won't be many years before I shape the whole thing with a hedge trimmer once or twice a year.

There was at least one occasion when we sat in the shade of the willow arbour not wearing winter clothes.

I want to make the willow trellis a couple of feet higher, but haven't figured out how to do that yet.

What June was like

Not good, is the two word description. The wettest June ever on record in Wales, and distinctly cool for most of the month, finally warming up to a bit below average. Sunshine was well down, with June 2012 ending up 20% down for sunlight compared to June 2011, which hadn't seemed very good at the time. The solar photovoltaic panels don't lie. Only  398.6 kWh of electricity were generated.
The group garden visit on 12 June had few roses to see. By today, July 5, all is flowery, with the midsummer Rosa Mundi and Brenda Colvin looking gorgeous. Young stems of Brenda Colvin were broken by the persistent easterly winds last month.

Roses at Siambra Gwynion

this week our garden was open to a group of 40 U3A garden enthusiasts.  After hearing my talk on roses, they asked to come and see them in the flesh.  Tuesday was the best day we have had in weeks, apart from a stiff breeze at times.  The roses were not at their best and would have needed another week of good weather to excel.  Anyway they were much appreciated and all had a good tuck in to tea/coffee/corbie's lemonade and biscuits of superior brands.

This is R. 'Complicata'; it is unique in lasting in water for at least 5 days

Roses at Siambra Gwynion, 2012

Lane leaving house

Rosa canina: Dog Rose; on hedge; common but worth having

Rosa rubiginosa: Eglantine; on hedge; strong rose pink with good hips; foliage has smell of apples in damp weather



On East side of drive

Trier: small flowered hybrid musk with white-pink flushed flowers

Smarty: sprawling shrub with sprays of single blooms like our wild, Rosa canina

Rosa pimpinellifolia: The Burnet Rose, grows on dunes around our coasts; this selection is from the Altai mountains in Central Asia; larger lemon-yellow flowers in May

Blush Noisette: clusters of pink, semidouble flowers on vigorous bush, flowering into winter; good scent

Rosa nutkana: from Western USA; single pink blooms in June

Rosa farreri persetosa: Farrer’s threepenny-bit rose; NW China; attractive spiny branches lined with small pink blooms in May

R. multiflora: wild species from Japan and China with clusters of single white flowers



On West side of drive

Scintillation: large clusters of single pink flowers with red blush in June; good orange-green hips

Rosa californica ‘plena’: a double form of the Californian native; once flowering

Rosa glauca (syn R. rubrifolia): good glaucous green foliage with red and white flowers followed by dark red hips

Polyantha Grandiflora (syn. gentiliana): by the electronic substation; old far-eastern hybrid with huge bunches of single, white flowers with golden boss of stamens in late June; well scented; colourful hips; vigorous



Car park and front of house

Brenda Colvin: vigorous rambler, large bunches of semi-double pink flowers; well scented; July flowering

Max Graff single rose-pink; mound of foliage

R. moyesii: dark scarlet, single blooms in June and flask-shaped hips

Phyllis Bide: climbing; intriguing apricot colour fading to cream; flowering into winter, one of the best climbers but no scent



East side garden

Agnes: rugosa hybrid; lemon colour and lemon scent. Flowers into autumn

R. multiflora: wild species from China

Belle Sultane: single crimson, once flowering

Bouquet Tout Fait: an old climbing Noisette rose with pink/white blooms.

Masquerade: climbing, daughter’s favourite

Tour de Malakoff: gallica with marbled, mauve petals in June

In box bed

Roseraie de l’Hay: rugosa hybrid with strongly scented, dark purple flowers all summer long

Pink Surprise: rugosa hybrid with delicate, pale-pink, single flowers with prominent ring of stamens

Ruskin: rugosa hybrid with deep scarlet, highly scented, double blooms

Sarah van Fleet: rugosa hybrid with pink, semi-double flowers

On rose arch

Morletii: old Boursault rose; semi-double, dark pink; blooms once; thornless; good autumn colour on leaves

Grandma Jenny’s Rose: an old American climber with double pink flowers in August (found in Virginia)



Back wall of house

Agnes: rugosa hybrid; lemon colour and lemon scent. Flowers into autumn

Cupid: climber with crushed, large, single flowers in clusters early June followed by large orange hips



Wood garden

Alain Blanchard: semi-double, crimson with purple mottling, once flowering shrub rose

Penelope: hybrid musk; repeat flowering

Scharlachglut: vigorous sprawling shrub with intense scarlet flowers in June and good scarlet hips

Gloire de Dijon: Noisette climber with buff-yellow, scented, double flowers; repeats well.

Complicata: stunning large, single, pink flowers on sprawling plant; once flowering

R. rugosa: common Japanese species; single flowers in crimson and white; colourful autumn leaves and hips

Windrush: vigorous shrub with semi-double yellow flowers with sharp scent; repeats well



Top border

Albéric Barbier: lemon-yellow climber, shiny foliage; once flowering; tough

American Pillar: climber; big sprays of rose and white single flowers in July.

Albertine: climber with copper pink flowers and coppery foliage. Apple scent to some



Back garden

Blush Noisette: clusters of pink, semi-double flowers on vigorous bush, flowering into winter

William Lobb: moss rose with dark purple flowers fading to mauve. Once flowering

Rosa glauca (syn R. rubrifolia): wild rose from S. Europe; good glaucous green foliage with red and white flowers followed by dark red hips

Mutabilis: ancient china rose; flowers open apricot pink and fade to crimson

Rosa Mundi: old gallica hybrid with striped rose-pink and white flowers in late June



Conservatory lawn

Irène Watts: China; large, pale pink flowers; repeats well; reddish foliage

Dainty Bess: hybrid tea with pink, single flowers and dark stamens

Mrs Doreen Pike: in pot; rugosa hybrid; double, pink flowers; Doreen is a tad tarty

Perle d’Or: China with apricot, pointed-bud flowers

Old Blush China: two in pots; a great old China flowering non-stop if weather is kind; great scent

François Juranville: old climber, a bit like Albertine only better; flowers in June but sometimes later too.; watch out for mildew

Mme Alfred Carrière: excellent noisette climber with off-white, large, double blooms bourne throughout the summer and autumn

Rose de Rescht: old double Portland rose; purple flowers; repeats well

Joan Morgan rose: an old sprawling single like ‘Tuscany’ found in hedgerow near Joan’s house in Cororion, Tregarth

Stanwell Perpetual: a pimpinellifolia hybrid; flesh-pink fading to white; scent of Turkish Delight

Tuscany Superb: on willow tripod; sumptuous dark crimson-purple with golden boss of stamens

Celestial: Alba rose with bluish foliage and flesh-pink flowers in late June

White Wings: hybrid tea against wall; white with startling dark red anthers

Ispahan: Centifolia rose; double with good scent; once flowering over many weeks

Phyllis Bide: climbing; intriguing apricot colour fading to cream; flowering into winter, one of our favourite climbers but no scent

Cornelia: hybrid musk; bunches of small, deep rose flowers, repeating well

Little White Pet: small bush with pink buds opening white



Tower garden.

Violette: climber with bunches of tiny semi-double dark violet blooms in June

Summer Sunset:: on tower; repeat flowering but with undistinguished blooms

Snow Goose: an Austin climber with white blooms in June

It was cold in April, and May was just as cold for a week or so. Then it warmed up, so the temp was getting above 10 degrees most day. Finally a few days ago it turned May-like, and now it's even warm. Had dinner in the new garden and watched a red kite, the first definitely spotted around here.

Tulips: Moneymaker, Ballerina and China Pink make a great combination, Doll's Minuet did add something to that mix, a little extra craziness. I didn't enjoy Princess Irene as much as expected. No more greigiis. Remember to label the pot with species tulips, let them bake in the poly tunnel, and replant, leaving out the largest bulbs from the types with too-big flowers.
Dahlias have been potted on for planting out when we return from Scotland in early June.

Roses are all starting at once, except for Phyllis Bide and mutabilis, both severely damaged by the north winds of April and May. They hardly have a leaf yet.  Lord Lambourne and Discovery apples are almost as bad. Charles Ross apple shrugged off those storms but not likely to have any fruit.

Planted a row of sweet peas in front of new willow trellis, with an angled mesh to climb up the first few feet. The new willow arbour  is nicely leafed, still more basket-work than shaggy shed. It was pleasant to sit there and enjoy the shade yesterday evening when it was hot.

Tulip Time

Tulips have been doing what they do,  shining out with such a jolt of vivid, intense saturated colour that we gladly pay to renew them every year. Well, most of them.

The greigii tulips up by the shed came first, but I don't think I'll be planting that kind again. The flower heads are just too big for the height of the tulip so they look a little awkward when they are the only flower in the bed. At around the same time we were astonished by the appearance of a big clump of White Triumphator or Purissima (check this) next to the new willow arbour in the new garden. They must have been buried there when I removed the old playhouse and added whatever compost came to hand--pots that needed emptying-- to bring up the level of the soil. In that cool shady sheltered spot they kept going for a month.

Our week of summer in March brought everything on rather quickly, then winter came back (and stayed) in the first week of April. Two days of a Force 9 easterly shredded the new leaves right off the roses and challenged tulip India growing in the bed by the white lilac. From the kitchen table we watched the flowers bending  in the wind, the stems nearly horizontal. Amazingly,  when the storm ended, there were still flowers there, and they gradually stood up straight again, no harm done at all.  Now, at the end of April, another easterly is blowing and the flowers, now faded to pink with white edges, still look well. Note for autumn 2012: plant more tulips in this bed. Note for now: feed the foliage and hope India might pop up again. Another note: in this relatively sunny and not at all sheltered spot, they are still going after nearly a month.

Ballerina, Moneymaker and China Pink lily-flowered tulips

I planted a mixture of small species tulips in a big pot and they  did very well. I'll try to keep that pot going for next year. Possibly add some muscari? The muscari planted in the north border of the conservatory garden among the tulips look very well. The intensity of the blue works well with tulips. The Jan Reus tulips there, very dark red, have performed well, but they would show up better in a brighter spot. Tulip Princess Irene is just showing colour in this bed and up by the shed. Up by the shed the tall  lily-flowered red, pink and orange tulips are the fairest of them all. And that is saying a lot.

Willow, Part Two

Willow arbour, just finished

I've long wanted to build something at the top corner of the garden bordering the wood. I didn't know it was going to be an arbour made of living willow.  There were a lot of willow rods left after the trellis was complete. I pushed them into the soil in an  oval around the concrete floor of the former playhouse on that spot, and started weaving.  What I had was enough to make the perimeter of my structure, but not enough for the roof. So Musgrove Willow sent another bundle, 10 to 12 feet long. It was a bit of a puzzle, how to weave a roof. Eventually, it all got  woven in together and the whole structure feels sturdy. Once the roots get established, new shoots will be woven in and it should be pretty solid. In the burning sun of a North Wales summer, we can relax in the green shade with our potato or juniper or barley drink.

The picture happens to show the two ends of the tech spectrum, with the unlovely but worthwhile solar panels on the roof of the house. The arbour itself looks over the planting in the new garden, designed for summer days.

Light and air

The daffodils in the "meadow" by the apple trees are doing very well this year. As you look up towards them,  they are seen against the stone wall that backs the new garden behind them. That's a very good example a simple picture working  well.  And an example of a nice effect come about purely as a side-effect.

Before we took down the beech tree and the old tin hut, and the ash in the hedge that had grown past control, that area was a shady jumble of nothing much, and the daffs were going backwards.

Pruning the Charles Ross apple tree

With that area opened up to vision, we've been motivated to have fewer weeds and more meadow plants. I am hoping the camassias I planted in the winter will come up strongly. Or will the rabbits have them....

Willow, Part One

For a long time I have wanted to make something out of willow rods that would grow when pushed in the ground.  For an even longer time I have wondered what could be done about the fact that the poly tunnel is so visible from the house.  Now, I'm putting the finishing touches on a living willow trellis placed just right to hide that plastic tunnel.

This is the site of the old glass-house, only the foundations of which remained. It was too windy for a glasshouse there. Latterly Shandy and her numerous offspring lived pleasant lives in the glasshouse, burrowing to their hearts' content.

Last month we coppiced the willow shoots planted beside the roundabout so long ago, harvesting some firewood. I thought that the younger shoots might do for willowy projects, but they were thin and short and riddled with anthracnose. Looking on the web, I found that specialist growers offered long disease-resistant bundles for not much money. Musgrove Willows of Somerset had the bundles delivered here two days after the order.

So, willow week!  Starting with erecting two strong end-posts set in concrete. I found bedrock about 6 inches below the grass at one end and spent some time chipping out a socket. Then it was time to dig in  several  barrowloads of home made compost. Finally came the fiddly pleasure of pushing in the rods and weaving the design, just when the east wind was blowing. I've used guy lines to gradually pull into position the rods twisted around the end-posts

  However, that wasn't really final--what ever is, in gardening?  I thought it better to spread a good layer of soil-based compost over the surface, with special attention to the area where the soil is so thin.  We had a clear-out of old bags of compost for that. Phormisol came next, and finally (really?) another layer from the compost heap to hide the phormisol.

I went out to the woods and dug up a few spadefuls of snowdrops to plant along the front edge of the willow-bed. I imagine a bright line of snowdrops cheering up the winter trellis  next January. We will acquire some helleborus argutifolius for the area just below the willow-bed to hide the block foundation of the old glasshouse..

The rest of the willow may make an arbour around the  base of the old wendy house at the top of the new garden. We shall see.

Other garden news: the two camellias transplanted to the north border in front of the top wall of the garden are both coming into flower and looking happy. You can see the bright pink camellia behind the Lord Lambourne apple this year and it will give a better show every year as it grows to the size of the camellias at Bodnant.  In a century or so..

How to have fun in January

Well, you can gather snowdrops and crocus. Or you can cut down some trees, which is what corbies have been doing this weekend.  Along the drive, the ash and sycamores are getting tall and taking light away from the roses. We are taking out the biggest. They will be next winter's firewood. We are taking lower branches away from  most trees now, and leaving the skinny ash and sycamores to put on some width before cutting them down. It was not part of the plan to coppice the trees I planted on the drive 20-odd years ago. But it's good that you can remove a lot of trees and still have a lot of trees.