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.

Fag-end of the year

We had a bumper crop of flowers to choose from for the Christmas table.  The photos show roses Old Blush China, Phyllis Bide and Cupid hips, bergenia, winter jasmine, feverfew, dame's violet, osteospermum, sasanqua camellia 'Narumigata', late hydrangea from Chas Ellis and marigolds. This is the first Christmas we have had snowdrops actually blooming (sheaths split) in the woods. The mild weather has also allowed rasps to ripen in the tunnel so we had a plate with our muesli this morning - and more to come!  There is a lot of rust on the old rasp leaves and also some hyperparasite (Darluca?).

November news, more tulips

Young sprouts

 Eira is almost as big as the new plum tree. It's a sucker that has been selected to replace the old plum tree behind it, which has very few branches left. After researching plums that do well in in the west, we decided we couldn't do better than continue with the small dark blue plum with no name that is found in the gardens all around here.

Blush noisette and Perle d'azur adding to the autumn colour

This mild autumn has given us some new colour combinations.

More tulips have been planted: Princess Irene to the left of the steps in the conservatory garden, along with grape hyacinths on both sides of the steps. Thalia and tulip India have been planted by the white lilac. Twenty-five camassias have been put in the "meadow". A few tete-a-tete daffodils are tucked under the turf in the tower garden, experimentally.

Mid November and looking back

It has been unusually mild for the last month and dry-ish due to a blocking high over Scandanavia.  So we have been able to do more outside now and then.  I am still havesting good rasps from the Moy in the tunnel every few days - they are ripening on terminal trusses on new canes.  The rust is abundant but does not seem to reduce yield.  The plant sale at Treborth last month made more than £1k and took a bit of time to grow seedling salads and harvest hobby spuds from Henfaes to sell at £1 or £2 a take-away bag of 1 or 2kg.

The algerian iris has produced many blooms but suffers predation by some voracious critter.  An ancient, neglected susanqua camellia, Narumigata, is starting to bloom, our reward for releasing it from its pot into the garden.  Rh. pachysanthum is flowering again and is extra special now with its silver indumentum now a rich rust brown.

I gave a talk at Rowen Gardening Club on roses and took a bucket of flowers to hand around.  There were various roses that almost never flower at this time including American Pillar and Francois Juranville.  Old faithfuls were Stanwell Perpetual, Blush Noisette, Mutabilis, Windrush, Mme Alfred Carriere and Phyllis Bide.  Large hips of Cupid were nice and I took cutting wood of Brenda Colvin.

We have had good late flushes of Shaggy Parasols and Blewits, some of which have gone in the freezer as duxelles. 

In the potager, the kale from 2010 has persisted and is still producing on 3ft high stems. We have plenty of Swiss Chard and some sorrel.

Corby lifted the dahlia tubers from the shed area and tucked them away safely (I hope) in the garage. Then what might be a glorious display of lily-flowered tulips went in, Ballerina, Moneymaker (bright red, but not as boring as the tomato of the same name), Doll's Minuet, a viridiflora, very tall and late, and. China Pink.  In the front row, a mixture of Greigii and Princess Irene to wake things up in April.(26 April 2012: greigii not that interesting and completely over by the time Princess Irene begins. Can't yet see Doll's Minuet in the row of lily-flowered tulips)

Jan Reus, which is supposed to naturalize well, went in to the conservatory garden in the amelanchier corner, along with another 10 Princess Irene. That leaves India and yet another 10 Princess Irene to plant somewhere else.