Cathy

I failed to say that the reconfigured rose garden featured yesterday is far from a ‘fait accompli’, and won’t be completed till much later this year or probably into the next. Firstly, I need to do something with the six slabs removed from the central area, the largest of which are 30″ x 18″ and all of them far heavier than they were when the last rose garden layout was established back in 2012. Although they are concrete, they are cast from moulds of real flag stones and there is a pleasing variation between them. We used these extensively when we laid the paved area and many of the paths and, although they were fairly reasonably priced when we first bought them, prices have escalated as we found when planning another project more recently – and hard to source, especially singly. At the moment, I cannot see where we might use them, but I am reluctant to get rid of them and they will need to be stored – which involves moving them… Then there are those nine bags of rubble (already moved down to the front of the house)…fortunately a local friend is happy to take rubble to fill in a boggy area where she stables horses…

Not having used fiery colours for a few weeks, that is what I had in mind for today’s IAVOM contribution but, having picked a stem of Alstroemeria ‘Indian Summer’ as my starting point, I found there were no suitable blooms on Dahlias ‘David Howard’ or ‘Totally Tangerine’ to continue my planned theme. However, there was a single bloom on new Dahlia ‘Blyton Softer Gleam’, albeit looking slightly more yellow than the colour that attracted me in the catalogue, so this was snipped and the search continued.

Although June’s abundance of bloom and colour has moved on, July has brought its own striking sights throughout the garden – plants blooming for the first time, growing much taller than usual or otherwise making an impact in a way they never had before. I have already shown Clematis ‘Prince George’ a number of times this year, but it is now flowering literally from bottom to top and I can’t resist sharing it again (below). The individual blooms are delightful too, intriguingly crinkly (above).

Today’s boozy vase shares some elements with last week’s although lacks its fullness, containing less than an armful but more than a small posy, although with more time at my disposal it could have become more fulsome than it is. Having achieved my personal challenge of creating a vase with such a large number of blooms, I feel more confident of repeating the exercise and the garden is certainly proving the material to do so.

Not new to the garden, that is, but new this year, like ‘carpet rose’ ‘Magic Carpet’ above, which has come into flower just in the last week or so at the end of the shrub border. On this raised bank, it is perhaps the ideal type of rose to loll about here, but it does seem to start flowering several weeks later than all the other roses and probably even later this year. Campanula ‘Loddon Anna’, shown below with white Sweet William and a pink flowered Stachys officianalis, possibly ‘Cotton Candy’, is certainly later as she is normally in bloom along with alliums in May/June.

The garden as a whole has looked pretty hot in recent weeks, with June’s abundance filling it with glorious colour and lush foliage; the gardener, however, sees it very differently, and will quickly provide a list of its defects, things which a casual visitor might overlook. As simple as the overblown geranium above (probably G ‘Ann Folkard’), perhaps, draping itself over several smaller choice plants in front of it, or a more complex problem like the lack of support given to Rosa ‘Strawberry Hill’ (gearing up for a repeat flush) by its current support, below. Certainly, as I see it, everything is NOT coming up roses, or maybe it is but just not in the right place.

I was planning on taking the contents of whatever vase I created to Julie, whose Pilates class I have been attending for 12 years but who is stepping down as of today; however, she is poorly and unable to take the class so I will arrange to see her with a fresh bunch when she is well enough to mix with people again. I shall miss her weekly classes, but have always enjoyed those taken by her replacement, who has covered for illness and holidays and teaches a slightly different style, so all is not lost.

I have mentioned the performance of my clematis this year several times, and thought I would do a quick reccy of them today to substantiate my feeling that it is a poor year for them here. Not including those that didn’t perform at all last year (mostly herbaceous clematis in the middle of borders, which have unaccountably been reluctant to establish), there are 15 in flower, 17 not yet flowering (many a long way off doing so) and 5 no-shows. All those not yet flowering would usually have been blooming since mid-June or so, other than ‘Duchess of Albany’ and ‘Gravetye Beauty’, who don’t start till later (strange then that ‘Princess Diana’, also a C texensis, is one of the first Group 3 clematis to flower).

I have been watching and admiring the white antirrhinum, A ‘Liberty Classic White’, in the cutting beds for a few weeks, not wanting to cut any stems until all our garden visitors had departed. Now that they have indeed all gone, I was at liberty to use the stems in today’s vase, where they form the mainstay of an all-white arrangement.

With garden openings over for 2024, my ramblings around the garden involve a combination of “this is gorgeous!”, “aren’t we fortunate?”, “thank goodness that’s over” and “how can I improve this?”. Already thoughts have turned to potential ‘tweaks’, nothing major, and ways to improve things I don’t feel have really worked – perhaps I will write a post on them in due course…

The garden is full of seasonal stars at the moment, so picking out just six was not easy – but let’s start with the most asked about plant on our garden open days, Clematis texensis ‘Princess Diana’ (above). Almost every plant in the garden is labelled, something I like to see when I visit a garden myself, but very few visitors seemed to take the trouble to look, preferring to ask the gardener or the dogsbody: fortunately, Princess Diana is one variety that the dogsbody/Golfer knows! Smothered in blooms, it deserved all the attention it got, and is possibly flowering better than ever before, despite the issues with several of my other clematis. This variety was the first clematis I actually sought out after seeing it performing so spectacularly in a garden more than 20 years ago; up till then, I had only bought whatever clematis were available at my local garden centre. The current plant, however, is a replacement for the original, which suffered when moved to the clematis colonnade.

Monday vases following any Sunday garden opening usually take advantage of flowers used for table decoration, which in June inevitably means sweet peas. However, being even more prepared this year due to an early group visit, I had time to think ahead and made my vase on Saturday.

After a day of tweaking we are all but ready for tomorrow’s garden opening (although there are always things that can only be done on the day), and I am enjoying sitting down while I write this post. Things are generally in order and the garden is poised and waiting, so a chilled evening is more than justified.

I have chosen roses to go in my Monday vase this week because they are the most floriferous blooms in the garden at this point in mid-June. There are two varieties, growing together in the gallery border, and both seem to have done better this year than before – behind the gallery fence is the woodland which blocks sun from the south, so the roses only get the morning and late afternoon sun. However, our neighbours cut some of the lower branches from their huge mature beech over the winter and perhaps this allows more light to filter through.

Although our first proper opening of the garden is not till a week tomorrow, we had a group visit on Thursday, a mixed blessing, as it meant the garden had to be more or less ‘ready’ over a week sooner than it might otherwise have had to be. We didn’t have any group visits last year, the first year that we hadn’t, and this was the first time we had a visit before the main openings as I had previously avoided this – June is probably the most floriferous month, and sometimes we could be in limbo for two or three weeks after the main openings until all group visits were over, before we could loosen the reins a little. Interestingly, this gardening group, from one of the local villages, had previously visited us the first year we opened, although all but a handful of them were new members so the garden was new to them.

My early sweet peas, grown in the greenhouse, are now flowering prolifically and I have to work hard at picking them regularly – but will have to work even harder soon as there are now buds on my outdoor varieties. The indoor ones have been bred specially to flower at lower light levels and in the UK have to be grown in a greenhouse. For some reason the lavender blooms are more dominant this year, although I sowed the same number of seeds of each colourway.

Oriental poppies in any shade may look dramatic when in bloom, but don’t flower for long, flop unattractively and certainly don’t die back well. Somehow they still merit space in a border, but if they start thinking they can take over the world then they are OUT, although removing them is never as easy as one would like it to be. I have a basic fiery scarlet one, pale coral pink Papaver ‘Princess Victoria Louise’ and the more recent acquisition above, ‘Royal Wedding’. The blooms on this one seem particularly large, especially when the petals are splayed out like a frilly tutu – no doubt they will be gone by tomorrow!

Bloom of the moment here is undoubtedly the delphinium, displaying its stunning deep blue spires in the blue & white border. I have had this plant many years and although it lost its label it may be ‘King Arthur’; it was moved from its original position about 3 or 4 years ago and has done even better since – so much so that it was split and part of it moved to one of the bold borders where sadly it declined to return after its second season. Although it does have side shoots, it never really reflowers to the same extent later in the season as perceived wisdom suggests it might.

It wasn’t actually a lie, but I was misleading myself as well as anyone who reads my blog, when I talked yesterday about how behind the clematis were. In reality, it seems to be mostly the C viticella and C integrifolia that are either slow or not showing at all, whereas  C texensis like ‘Princess Diana’ and ‘Duchess of Albany’ are as floriferous as usual although not yet in bud, and the few Group 2 clematis are growing and flowering (or about to) as usual, like the striking Clematis ‘Kingfisher’ above.

I can only marvel at May and what it has brought to the garden…

It’s a strange in-between season at the moment, no longer really spring, but surely not summer yet, despite all the roses. Summer, however, is definitely on its way, despite the 36mm of rain on Wednesday and the thundery showers yesterday, and today’s vase contains the first evidence of both summer colour and summer abundance.

The garden continues to race along, filling out its borders, opening its blooms and generally providing an endless degree of wonder and awe on every ramble. There are new shining stars waiting to be discovered each day, and I have included a selection of them for Jim’s Saturday meme at Garden Ruminations, making no apologies that there are yet more roses amongst them.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, Alone and palely loitering, The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing. John Keats You could be forgiven for thinking that today’s vase was a bit of a cop-out, that I had spent next to no time preparing it, but you would be wrong. It took several circuits and a fair degree of thought to come up with the vase and its associated prop. It may only be a single stem in a vase, but I am more than satisfied with the combination and the title and prop.

Every day I seem to spot the first rose of the year on yet another bush and, today, the first of hundreds on ‘Rambling Rector’; in the warmth and sunshine this afternoon there was even a hint of fragrance in the air. I can’t post any fragrance on this blog, but I can share the beauty of the roses along with their varied colour and form, beginning with ‘Olivia Rose Austin’, above, which grows into a neat and shapely bush.

Having decided to spare a few allium (probably A hollandicum) for today’s vase, I sought other material on the purple spectrum, cutting Geranium phaeum ‘Raven’, a deep purply-blue aquilegia and foliage from Persicaria ‘Red Dragon’ – but the combination just didn’t seem to work. Glancing up at the wisteria W floribunda ‘Multijuga’ in all its glory, it occurred to me that the purple hints in the racemes were on the same spectrum as the allium – would they last in a vase? I have no idea, but I decided to give them a try.

We have had some very pleasant days this week, warm and mostly sunny and never uncomfortably hot, so lots of gardening jobs have been done – perhaps as well, as our open days are suddenly creeping up really quickly.  I still took time out to go for a walk on one of the days, choosing a route I have avoided for some time because it crosses fields which will have been muddy and difficult to walk through for many weeks. Taking a slight detour, I entered a small woodland which from experience I know is host to naturalised bluebells. Unfortunately, a fallen tree and overgrown paths meant I failed to get the full experience this year, but it made me aware just how realistic our own little woodland is. Despite being planted with trees, bluebells, wood anemones, wild garlic, fritillaries, snowdrops, comfrey and more, many other things have arrived uninvited and there is a real woodland feel to it, even more so at this time of year, as the green canopy closes in and brings an air of coolness and greenness. Lovely…

Having cut spent flowering stems from all the hellebores over the weekend, amassing a large trugful of them, rather than compost them all I decided to use several stems in today’s vase. Not only was it the last opportunity this year to use hellebores in a vase, but this time I could also be sure, with seedpods well-swollen, that the stems will remain upstanding, unlike vases when the blooms were fresher. I wish I could tell you what colour the original blooms were, but I can’t; now, they are a very pale green with dark speckled centres, giving them a kind of vintage appearance.

Having mentioned before that the rhododendrons seemed to be flowering better than any other year, I can also say that I don’t recollect ever seeing anything with blooms as dense as this before – R. yakushimanum ‘Vintage Rose’ is absolutely astounding! Mind you, I don’t think I remember seeing destruction quite as quick or efficient as that experienced by Fritillaria imperialis either!

April has been a mixed and breezy month, with April showers and sunny periods, and although it has been pleasant in the sun we have not really felt much warmth from it, with temperatures rarely rising above the mid teens (centigrade). Today has seen a change, however, with a mild night and blue skies from daybreak onwards, and our weather monitor recording temperatures over 19°C – but we still have the breeze! We are forecast more days like this, and I feel confident of beginning to plant up the cutting beds.

Averting my eyes from the tulips which were shouting “Pick me! Pick me!” as I walked past, I headed towards the bottom end of the garden to pick some of the marauding Spanish bluebells that have sneaked their way in under/over/round the fence. The impact of bluebells in the garden has really registered in recent days, with the uninvited guests and the more local residents joining forces to provide by far and away the biggest splash of blue in the garden out of all the seasons. There may be little patches of blue from spring bulbs and isolated spots in the summer months, but bluebell season is something else and the splashes will only get larger and more widespread as time goes on, with even the English bluebells popping up in other parts of the garden than the woodland. By picking the Spanish bluebells, however, I can at least try and restrict their desire for dominance!

Once again, a large degree of editing was required to get today’s selection down to six or thereabouts, to meet the rules of Jim’s Six on Saturday meme. Why not visit his blog to check out his six and those of other bloggers around the world?

Technical issues will keep this post brief as a mammoth Windows ‘update’ and ‘cleaning’ of my laptop yesterday evening would have kept me up way past my bedtime otherwise!

We have had a few days away visiting my Mum, and although I wouldn’t usually choose to leave the garden at this time of year it was a case of needs must. Fortunately, one of our neighbours can be relied on to water everything in the greenhouse in our absence, my main concern, and this is where I hot-footed it to on our return. Not only were the seedlings still thriving, but they looked increasingly sturdy and bursting with health, necessitating several hours in the last couple of days potting them on.

I was trying to avoid tulips for today’s IAVOM, as they could easily become a mainstay for many weeks; however, these creamy tulips were tucked out of the way where they mightn’t otherwise be seen and, like last week’s fiery contribution, they are also a bit of an enigma. They are growing in the cutting beds where they were planted around 10 years ago with the sole purpose of cutting them. Presumably, they flowered in the first year of planting but, although there has been foliage in some of the intervening years, I don’t think there have been any further blooms until now. My guess is that these are mature bulblets from the original bulbs, now large enough to flower: I have only picked the two blooms that were in full flower, but there are others to come. They may be ‘Exotic Emperor’, which I have bought periodically over the years.

Although winter and early spring flowering plants might have started flowering a little earlier this year than some, they were not unseasonally early; this is not the case with Rhodendron ‘Wine and Roses’ (above) and the large unnamed specimen below, which is light pink in bud but white in boom. Unlike last year, when blooms were sparse on all but ‘Cheers’, all our rhododendrons are smothered in swelling buds.

I promised you tulips today, but even I wasn’t expecting these ones, remnants from a previous planting in a pot now filled with Carex ‘Everillo’. I can remember buying some fiery tulips two or three years ago, but have no idea why I would have put them in that particular pot, as their bright and brash colouring would have necessitated a planting location near the bold borders. Nevertheless, there they were, pushing aside the grass and cocking a snook at the main borders filling up with foliage of plants that will in due course have pink and purple blooms, so I had no qualms in cutting short their exhibitionism.