The Tea Garden and Tea House

A lot of new gardening and plant books have landed on my mat this spring, and I need to up my book reviewing game! I like to do them justice, and spend some time reading them before I write a review, so that does create a bit of a backlog. Right at the time when the garden is demanding my attention. Anyway, the book that has found itself at the top of the list is one that really encompasses the gardening zeitgeist – The Community Gardening Handbook, by Ben Raskin. I looked him up, and he has impeccable credentials. He’s currently Head of Horticulture for the Soil Association; prior experiences include working for Garden Organic, running a walled garden and being a Horticultural Advisor for the Community Farm near Bristol.

Features to Expect in a Japanese Garden

This species of plants originate in central China. The closely related species R. molle japonicum come from Japan. Both these deciduous varieties are relatives of the popular Ghent and Knapp Hill hybrids.

Ornamental Japanese Maples are widely available for planting in your garden. The autumn colouring makes these trees spectacular when planted en mass in a woodland or Japanese garden setting.

It shows how long this blog has been operating. The Rio Olympics 2016 will be the third time we have commented on suitable Olympic  flowers. See Beijing 2008 and London 2012 below. Today is the ‘Anniversary Games’ in London a curtain raiser for the Brazil games. For Brazil we should start with the nut (OK so that is the author) and then the Cacti as he is a prickly sort of guy. Feeding plants and flowers with fertiliser or hormone treatment will not fall foul of the drug testing rules – there are no plant urine samples to test!

After salad crop failures in Spain and shortages of courgettes, broccoli and other ‘long distance’ vegetables gardeners could to worse than focus on traditional and non-traditional root crops.

Kiwi fruit known as the Chinese goodeberry grow on the woody vine Actinidia deliciosa and its hybrids. The vines should be grown on sturdy support structures as it crops more than the rather weak vines can support.This plant has a cold greenhouse for protection but they can be grown outdoors in a sheltered spot.

Cornwall and the west coast of Scotland have some fine temperate gardens well worth a visit but Yorkshire has the grandeur of the stately home garden.

Despite my garden being full to overflowing after the spring rain I have decided to create a new area for a Japanese Garden. When starting a new project I was advised to have a name that may colour the end result. I opted for the grand title of ‘Japan Land’  This will be a long term project and I won’t rush it as I have on other projects in the past.

Mesclun is a name for a traditional melange of salad leaves. The name mesclun doesn’t feature in any of my gardening reference books before 1980 so old gardeners may not recognise the term.

This summer has been damp and the plants have grown lush. In some way this has contributed to a dramatic cut in the number of greenfly on my roses and other plants (perhaps they found other feeding grounds or did not mate as prolifically).

Lilacs are members of the Syringia family and are named for the colour. There are deep lilacs verging on violet and light pinkish lilacs even some pretty floriferous white flowering Lilacs.