- OF THE GARDEN
Off to Uganda on Sunday to climb the Mountains of the Moon!
February 7, 2007
Our first snow of the year. Lunaria 'Corfu Blue still blooming! I can't believe it.
February 5, 2007
My Miscanthus hedge has been a great success, a semi-transparent grass barrier between the grass of the lawn and the grass of the field. Seedheads beginning to thin now, but still substantial.
2006
December 23, 2006
Frost caught Salvia vanHouttei, just when I thought it was going to be the perfect Christmas decoration, what a shame
December 10, 2006
Lunaria 'Corfu Blue' blooming again in the garden. Same plants. They bloomed, set seed and appeared to die, but have now suckered and are blooming again. How weird is that?
Salvia van Houttei still sizzling red with undertones of purple. Burns a hole in my green landscape. Dahlias dead but a few Nasturtiums hanging in there. How can this be December?
Clerodendron wallichii usually blooms at Christmas, it's early this year
Oct 1, 2006
Garden flourished despite the heat and drought. I did have to water which I don't usually, but rain has been plentiful since mid August and it is looking as lush as possible. Has been raining most nights and sunny in the day recently. May be the most beautiful moment, everything full of flower, bowed under the weight of water, sparkling. Mellow fruitfulness abounds but the days are shortening horribly and I dread the end of all this beauty.
Had two coachloads of visitors last week, and a gardening group. We made 150 flapjacks! Am I a gardener or a cook or just the bottlewasher?
April 20, 2006
By the dawn's early light the rusty sculpture ('Vessel' by David Mayne) glows. Rhodocoma capensis, a South African Restio which is hardy for us, fdroops elegantly in complementary colours.
No leaves on the trees yet, but Viola corsica, which has had a few flowers all through the winter, is now a carpet of purple with seedlings popping up all over the place. I love it, the largest flower of any wild Viola.
April 10, 2006
Paeonia moloskovitschii (Molly the Witch) amazing as it emerges in the garden. A week later and fat buds have appeared.
On the North side of the house the shady woodlanders are looking glorious depite the still freezing temperatures (ice every night on the water troughs and horrid cold winds all day despite the sunshine). Ranunculus ficaria Double Mud - a celandine by any other name - spreads just like any other miserable Celandine but its double pale cream flowers tinged with grey at the tips are irresistable, and it disappears completely in a month or so. Corydalis chilanthifolia seeds everywhere, turning bronze where the sun gets to it, staying green in the shade and flowering most of the summer, in full whack already
Cardamine pentaphylla one of the very best groundcovers for flowerpower in deep shade, also disappearing by the end of May. It is happy to be smothered by other plants all summer long and come back full throttle the following March.
March 19, 2006
Contrasting gold and silver Hellebores. H. foetiddus 'Gold Bullion' in full flower, leaves not as gold as they were, but whole plant seems to emanate light. And H. argutiolius (corsicus as was) 'Silver Lace' still only tight buds, lovely matte silver flat leaves. They say it likes sun, but these are growing tight up against a North facing wall doing fine. We hope to have seed of them soon.
No flowers, not even much plant yet, but the glorious Smyrnium perfoliatum is popping up all over the place. Very hard to get started as only really fresh seed germinates and then it takes several years to get to flowering size. Hard to recognize the young leaves without the flowers and it is only above ground for about 8 weeks a year. So everyone thinks they have failed, some tidy-minded people even succeed in weeding all the babies out, but most of us are in for a big surprise in a few years when it starts poppoing up all over the place in glorious acid yellow. I have it on the other side of the house now which I am sure is from seed trays and pots that have mistakenly been thrown out. Very hard for a nursery to deal with a plant that looks stone dead 10 months of the year. Even harder to sell it!
March 8, 2006
Misty moisty spring. Driving to Wells last night to give a lecture, the road was closed. Drove all round the country lanes in the dark looking for a way in to the city. Arrived as the lecture was due to start! Then managed to leave an entire tray of plants behind afterwards.
March 4, 2006
Chionochloa rubra so beautiful today, glistening and glimmering in the weak sun. Does this all year round.
Helleborus niger, the Christmas Rose, is late. Many plants still in bud. Amazing contrast with the dark leaves and nearly black buds of Helleborus orientalis 'Darkness'
Lithospermum rosmarinifolia has been in bloom under my south-facing window since Christmas. I admire it every morning on my way to breakfast. Don't know how hardy it would be in a less sheltered place, but what an intense colour and totally lime tolerant.
Feb 13 This morning I started experimenting with my new digital camera. Can't believe it will ever feel as natural as my 30-year-old Nikon.
Sarcococca confusa grows on either side of my front door. The smell is almost overwhelming in January and February. I have always found it very difficult to photograph. The glossy leaves and little wispy white flowers and shiny black berries look good but they lack some essential element of drama.
On the other hand -
Clerodendron wallichii has drama in spades. It starts blooming every year at Christmas and cheers ny heart all through the dull days of winter. Totally tender, it is one of the great houseplants in my book
Feb 26 Some other houseplants with winter appeal-
Chiritas Keiko and Hisako, Clivia miniata Aurea (the first of our seedlings to flower and hurray its yellow!)
- OF THE NURSERY
January 30, 2007
Double Hellebores we divided last autumn all blooming already
2006
December 10, 2006
Sorry about the gap. Have just come back from 2 weeks in Yemen. Wonderful but tough. Whole cities made of six story mud brick buildings. Every window and door outlined in white. Exquisite. Perfect weather in the mountains - warm sun and cool shade.. Went to the coast for some heat and had the most torrential tropical downpour I have ever seen. Bedroom 2" deep in water. First rain they had had in five years!
Late October
Took every plant out of the greenhouse and steam cleaned it inside and out. Immaculate, sparkling, so much more light.
Oct 1, 2006
What a summer! Our best year ever, more visitors at the nursery and more visitors to the garden and they spent more money each, bless their cotton socks. Of course we nearly died just trying to keep the plants alive during July. Fortunately we have our own spring so no fear of hosepipe bans. All sorts of exciting new plants bloomed for the first time ( I have over 1000 pictures taken since april, When I have sorted through them I will show you some)
Our new growing on area is both wonderful and terrible. Unbearably hot when it is hot, why? We are deeply grateful to have a place to put things, but the weeds have to be seen to be believed
April 20, 2006
Spring is finally springing. Every single plant in the nuyrsery wants potting up or dividing or at the very least moving to a new place. I can't keep up with it all, my head is in a whirl. Fabuolous Easter with 20 people for my Easter egg hunt
Nemophila Penny Black outrageously cute as she peeks out of a Willow Pottery basket. Actually a perfectly hardy annual, it seeds itself in light shade all over the top of the retaining wall of the big raised bed. Blooms so early my garden visitors never see it. You can sow a few seeds now to get it to bloom later
Pulmonaria 'Blue Ensign' is the top favourite plant in the nursery at the moment. It is the bluest Pulmonaria I have ever grown. Easy, shade tolerant and almost gentian blue
But the plant Iam most excited about (because I can't resist anything I have never seen before) Is Lunaria 'Corfu Blue'. A friend gave me the seeds last winter and here is the result, the first blue flowered Honesty (bluish anyway). The calyxes are deep pink and the flowers a lovely luminous pale purple blue, and the stems are dark which sets it off nicely. We have a few plants for sale, but expect to have masses of seed by July. My friend says it has come true from seed in her garden, so here's hoping.
April 10, 2006
Well I did say month by month didn't I? March is just too busy to sit down at the computer and write about. Every single plant on the nursery wants splitting or potting up or at the very least moving. We have emptied and refilled two of the big supercloches twice! Now there is no more room outside either. Phil and Tom (now replaced by his friend Ben) have been remaking the raised benches in the nursery, making them level and covering them with capillary matting, trying to help with the endless summer watering.
The most exciting thing on the nurser for me are the new paeonies coming into leaf, those tender red-flushed shoots of Molly the Witch (P. molokosewitschii - sure I have spelled it wrong again, whoever invented such an impossible name? if I was Russian, could I spell it?). The elegant silver topped red leaves of P. cambessedesii. The hair fine leaves of Pl tenuifolia. And most exciting of all lthe famous Rock's Variety (P. rockii). I have spent twenty years trying to buy a single plant of this most beautiful of all tree paeonies (I once spent an hour at Kew lying on the grass, bowled over by their P. rockii. It covered the entire wall of a little shed with enormous 7-8" flowers, each one sumptuously white with big black blotches bleeding out into the pristine whiteness, not only that, they were fragrant!). And last year someone offered me seedlings from China at an exorbitant price which I paid, so I now have some for sale to you at an even more exorbitant price.
March 21, 2006
The first day of spring. Ha! Still bloody freezing. Winter seems to go on forever. I have no desire to go out and do anything. But it feels just as cold inside. I am sitting in front of my computer with jumper, fleecy, massive scarf and fingerless gloves on, still freezing. I can't really moan though, we had a lovely sunny day in London at Roots and Shoots for our first plant sale of the year. Wonderful food, wonderful people and sold masses of plants so very happy. Went with all my ski gear as the East wind cut straight through me as I was packing up on Saturday. But stood basking in the first real sunshine of the year. Best day god could have chosen to make it nice.
March 9, 2006
A customer from Australia has sent fabulous new seeds, including white Geranium maderense! and fresh Melianthus (very hard to germinate old seed) and Erythrina crista-galli which has never set any seed for me. I am thrilled.
And from France a customer has sent the most amazing assortment of rare Mediterranean seeds, many of which I have never heard of and some of which I can barely find any mention of on Google. Many of them in big enough amounts so I can share them with you. See our new seedlist (updated this morning).
March 4, 2006
Finally finshed cleaning the plants in the supercloches. Top section of the nursery looks imnmaculate. Main nursery looks set to explode into weeds once warm weather arrives.
Last winter we commandeered a quarter of the parking field above the nursery as a growing on area. We had always used the driveway before, but it suffers from the distinct disadvantage of being downhill from the nursery. So we think it is brilliant to deliver pots, plants and compost to the top nursery and let them work themselves downhill by gravity (with a little help from us). Of course we did not finish it in time, but we used it anyway and it really helped our space problems, though somehow it did not clear the driveway, we just expanded. This winter we finally laid the sand and mypex and rudimentary watering system which should make our lives much easier. We shall see.
You could eat your dinner off the Mypex!
March 3, 2006
Amazing Impatiens species have bloomed all through the winter under the staging. Flowers tiny but adorable, and so many of them.
Impatiens kilimanjarii ssp kilimanjarii (yes a buzy Lizzie which grow on Mt Kilimanjaro!). And the pink one an interspecific cross (ie between two species therefor sterile and ridiculously floriferous) - Impatiens pseudoviola x kilimanjarii. We will have to think of shorter names or we will be here all day just writing them.
Feb 13 Today I have been crawling round on my hands and knees weeding the plants in the supercloches (like miniature polytunnels 3ft high and 6ft wide) Very mild and damp and springlike. I got great pleasure from the fat little nubbins of growth breaking through the soil.
Bitter cold winds have kept us inside, almost made us appreciate the joys of the computer and the sign laminator.
Feb 22 Sarah's first day - "Snowflakes on snowdrops, these are a few of my favourite things"
Feb 23 My new scanner has come (I am trying hard to enter the 21st century of digital images), looks like a spaceship has landed on my desk, miraculously clearing a space among the mountain of papers which keep threatening to slip off. Opening it feels like opening the door of a Rolls Royce
Feb 24 Very proud of myself making the scanner work without any help. But don;t know what settings I need, so reluctant to proceed
Feb 25 Packing seed orders all morning, experimenting with scanner all afternoon, maybe guesswork will work. The first crocuses just emerging, but still bitterly cold.
Feb 28 Crystal clear morning, tidying plants in the supercloches again. Began to snow during lunch. Within an hour it looked like Christmas, big fat flakes falling slowly. Plants turning white. Julie and Sue fled for fear of not getting up the lane. Then brilliant sunshine - our south-facing slope melted, while the neigbour's fields looked like you could ski on them
SPECIAL PLANTS is about 100 miles due west of London, seven miles north of Bath and four miles south of Junction 18 on the M4. Greenways Lane turns west off of the A46 100 yards south of the A420 roundabout. We are not in Cold Ashton village. It is about a mile down a very narrow winding lane. Please drive with care. There is plenty of room to park and turn around when you arrive.