Tag Archives: Flower borders

A Priory Pause

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I’m about to toss my blogging beret (with ostrich feather) to one side; take off my blogging smoking-jacket (burgundy with faux-ermine trim), lay down my blogging cigarette-holder (fake ivory with diamante inlay) and flick-out my blogging monocle.

Yep.  Time for a break from the blogging treadmill.  At least for a while.  But before I go, I’ll leave you with some recent snapshots from the Priory.

The kidney beds with absurdly huge (and very stoutly staked) echinops – left, have put on a good showing this year.  Over on the right, behind the persicaria is …

… Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’.  This is a widely grown garden stalwart … and quite right too.  A gorgeous, and reliable, thing.

The long borders are looking neat and trim but I shall be giving them a major revamp over the coming months.  The cardoons for a start will be coming out – their enormous leaves take up a huge amount of space but then die back leaving unsightly gaps.

Here, in the rock border, is Lobelia cardinalis ‘Queen Victoria.‘  I’ve grown this in my garden before but this is its first year at the Priory.

You will have to do battle with slugs, to get it to flowering size.  Persevere – she’s worth it.

For these past four years, I’ve experimented with different climbers on this wooden post:  morning glory, passion flower, Spanish flag and this year black-eyed Susan (Thunbergia alata).  I can now announce my climber trial is over and we have a clear winner.  Of the four, I am most impressed with (…drumroll … bugle … more drumroll … a touch more bugle …) the Thunbergia.  It has won itself a permanent spot. *Applause, whistles and foot stomping*

I started clipping the box the other day – of which I’ve planted rather a lot.  This hedge is a free-form shape.  A sleigh?  A recumbent giant (waist down only)? A pair of racing caterpillars?  No idea.  It will become clearer in time, perhaps.  Or maybe I should run a competition?  You suggest it; I’ll clip it.

A view across the new path beds (planted with but not yet filled by Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’) to the new tropical border.

It hasn’t been a brilliant year for establishing a hot border.  But it is now, finally, beginning to plump up and have a romp.  Agonizingly, my Echium pininana are still only three-foot tall.  Will they flower this year?  I demand it but your guess is as good as mine.

Dahlia ‘Bishop of Llandaff’ adds spots of colour …

… as did Lilium pardalinum and …

… Canna coccinea; all three are new additions to the gardens.

And if you haven’t grown Eucomis bicolor before (like me) I would heartily recommend it.  The flowers are simply (insert superlative of choice here) and very long-lived indeed.  I do so like a hardworking plant.

I’ll finish with this shot of an only recently transplanted Verbascum olympicum.  As a ghostly specimen this particular plant takes some beating.  The silver, unblemished leaves; the symmetry, stature and slightly bashful nod; that promise of gold flower.  I shall be transplanting more of these from the Old Forge.

Right then.

That’s enough.

Break-time, already.

See you soon ….. Dave

Of Flowers And Foes

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I’m rather fond of lilies.

I know not everyone is.

But I am.  I grow them in some of the borders and …

… in pots.

After two years grace, lily beetles have now arrived at the Priory.

Did they smell the perfume from across Margaret’s fields and home in from some distant garden?  Smacking their lips?  Or were they smuggled in by my Arch Gardening Enemy (responsible for skewing so many of my gardening efforts)?

I wouldn’t normally relish squishing any creature; especially so handsome a beetle as this.  But having grown potted lilies for several years now, I know LB’s intimately and despise them.  And … and … and … (splutter) their larvae are overwhelmingly revolting.

They cover themselves in a thick, towering coat of their own slimy, glistening excrement – a deterrent to being eaten.  Works for me.

Gross, huh?  Want another shot of one?

Probably not but here you go anyway.

In addition another favourite plant has been subject to attack: Solomon’s Seal (polygonatum).

There is one small clump which survived the-years-of-neglect and, during April, it tends to draw me over.  Or causes me to stop and pause as I walk past.  It is a plant that re-pays being closely studied.

But now, in July, it is just a food crop for the Solomon’s seal sawfly.  In the past I have just let these grubs be – they don’t seem to affect the plant’s flowering.  But I read recently that having stripped the leaves, the fully fed and nicely fat larvae simply burrow down into the soil and pupate the following year.  Repeated annual feasting can’t be good for the plant’s vigour and, as it seems such a simple life-cycle to break, I have begun picking them off.

Another sawfly, which attacks birch (yep, it’s called the birch sawfly) has been a problem these past two or three years.  If I hadn’t removed them all last year, they certainly would’ve stripped my three young Betula jacquemontii ‘Snow Queen’ of all their leaves.  This year I found only one larva (and quickly crushed it thinking there would be many more – hence no photo) and only one branch slightly affected.  Did birds eat them?  I like to think so.  It would be a little payback for all the money spent on birdfood.

But not all the plants are under sustained assault.  Opium poppies survived the-years-of-neglect too – though this year, their numbers are way down.  They self seed prodigiously but I do pull them out of some of the beds.  You can have too much of a good thing.

But as much as I like them, some are too frilly by far.  Not only do I find them too fussy, bees struggle to get at their nectar.

The kidney beds are at long, long last putting on a show though it is not as hyper as last year.

Day lilies (again these are survivors from before my time and so variety unknown) have only just started flowering.  Behind them is …

… Campanula lactiflora looking jolly smart and at one bed’s end …

… a Stipa gigantea has reached maturity.

Also in the kidney beds are Verbascum chaixii ‘Album.’  I originally grew these from seed and they are now increasing in number sufficiently for me to spread about elsewhere.

And, talking of verbascums, out on the drive a single plant (which I didn’t have the heart to strim) has developed into a sizeable grouping.  Goodness only knows where the seed came from.  I shall dig some up and use in the gardens.  Anyone know the variety?

I also transplanted some Verbascum olympicum from the Old Forge – where they flourish on the dry, chalky soil.  But here at the Priory, they are still a long way from flowering; if indeed they will flower at all in this wet and cold, drab and overcast ‘summer’.

My Ligularia przewalskii (written with confidence but pronounced with none at all) has many more flower spikes than last year.  It, at least, appreciates all the rain we’ve had.

But roses do not relish rain.  A couple of weeks ago, this old Rosa ‘New Dawn’ around the front door to the house looked pretty but the flowers didn’t last as long as usual.  The rain and wind soon battered them to a sodden, pulpy oblivion.

The rose tunnel is also in flower (though there are gaps.  I have planted new bare-rooted plants to fill these).

After a visit last weekend to the stunning gardens at West Dean, I can at last identify the climbing rose on the tunnel.  I had suspected it was Sanders White but it’s nice to be certain.  What a beauty it is.  Just a shame we haven’t got the sunshine to show it off at its best.

Perhaps next year?  Or the year after.  Or the one after that.

Slug Feeder

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This cool, wet “summer” has been fabulous for our slug and snail chums.  And I’ve learnt that I’m really good at something.   (What a relief that is).  I’m simply brilliant at feeding slugs.

I can grow a constant supply of slug food;  my repeated sowings of radishes and salad leaves have been much appreciated …

… as have newly planted out sweet peas, runner beans, marigolds, heleniums, salvias …

… and cannas.  All have been nibbled, munched, shredded or have simply disappeared.  And, of course, …

… dahlias have proven particularly popular.

Though I skip about the gardens scattering (organic) pellets to my left and to my right, it makes little difference.   The following morning all the pellets will have disappeared and the devastation will have continued.

So no, this hasn’t been a great year for gardening; too little rain, too much rain; sloppy soil, baked-hard soil: buffeting winds and pro-longed periods of cold.  And those sluggy, snaily things.  One might even say it has been a rubbish gardening year.  So I shall.  It has been a rubbish gardening year.

Still, in the mostly slug-free greenhouse, …

… my four cucumber plants and eight tomatoes are coming along …

… and it won’t be long before we have our first cucumbers.

I’ve bought an irrigation system for these bed-grown plants and it seems to work fine; watering away over the weekends.

In the rock border, the foxgloves are showing off nicely.  Each year I dig up self-sown seedlings, pot them up and then dot them about, aiding their further colonisation of the gardens.  In addition, I grow white ones from seed.

Some dahlias did manage to survive successive slug mauling; this is Dahlia ‘Smarty.’  No two flowers …

…are the same and unlike some varieties I grow (‘Fire and Ice’ springs to mind) this is a  resilient, vigorous plant.  (Slugs often ‘go’ for weaker or poorly, less robust plants).

Also in the rock border, amongst the ferns,  I’ve discovered polemoniums.  Never seen it before; never grown it; never bought any seed.  Its seed must have lain dormant in the soil.  Waiting.  Just waiting.  Either that or there’s a  guerilla gardener about!

 

At the rock border’s far end, and increasing year on year, is a clump of yellow loosestrife (Lysimachia punctata).  To the left of it is bergenia – which I moved here from another part of the garden.  Incidentally, I always cut off all the bergenia leaves in spring; this removes all the tatty, browned ones.

This was the bergenia de-frocked in April; looks a little startling but the new, fresh leaves soon emerge.

In one of the kidney beds, my Crambe cordifoila has flowered again.  Last year the stems collapsed, so this year I’ve given it a damn good staking – and it is holding up.  Oddly, the slugs don’t seem to bother it.

At the back of the kidney beds are Foxtail Lilies (Eremurus stenophyllus).  I’m hugely pleased with these  – the first I’ve ever grown.  But they were prone to slug attack too and from ten bulbs, only two or three have flowered.  Hopefully they will do better next year.

Also in one of the kidney beds is a lovely, understated plant: Gillenia trifoliata.  This pretty, little thing is one of the very few plants I took from my old garden when I moved house.  It doesn’t seem to be widely known or grown.  It ought to be both, I think.

On the west wall of the house is a marvellous (and huge) climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea petiolaris).  Last year all the flower bud was lost to frost.  This photo, taken a bit too late, doesn’t do it justice – the display this year was a good one.

At the back of the house, a very old rose (possibly ‘New Dawn’) fills the confined space with scent …

… and in the car-park, four Rosa ‘Ferdinand Pichard’ are getting established.  Planted bare-rooted a couple of years ago, they also have a superb scent.

On the rose tunnel, and flowering for the first time, is Rosa moyesii ‘Geranium.’  No scent but a beautiful, simple flower which later form large brilliant orange, flagon-shaped hips.  (Thanks to Francie for introducing me to it).

And finally, another plant which I haven’t grown before (put in a pot to protect it from slug-dom); the exotic looking Peruvian Daffodil, the Spider Lily or Ismene (Hymenocallis x festalis).  Rather lovely, don’t you think?

So, despite the best efforts of all those blasted gastropod molluscs, there is some flower in the Priory gardens.  With, I hope, lots more to come.

Finally

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The Priory is a grand, old Dame and I love her dearly.  But will she be rushed?  She will not; she’ll put on a show in her own good time – thank you very much.  Despite my whines that everybody else’s gardening blog was awash with pretty flower pictures, she blithely ignored me and pulled on yet another layer of green .  And then another layer (after all it gets cold down in this valley), with nary a flower in sight.

It is only in the past couple of weeks, that she has, at long last, languidly fluttered her verdant petticoats and given us a glimpse of her summer charms.

And so now (suddenly) there are flowers at the Priory (phew); here are some of them.

The south wall of the house has a dependable honeysuckle – covered in blooms and delicious to sniff.  And sniff again.

It requires little attention; just a light clip after flowering.  The scent is best experienced very early in the morning (or in the evening) – so if you get the chance, fill your lungs.

The one surviving tree peony flowered a week or so ago.  Two out of the three original little trees died last year.  They were old and had been strimmed (yep, true) in their poor blighted lives, so I’m quite surprised that they survived as long as they did.  This one has a big blousy flower which is always welcome.  But they last such a very short time (three or four days) that I shan’t be so very sad if this one gives up the ghost too.

I prefer the longer flowering herbaceous peonies …

… of which there are several; including this one up against the house (pre-dates my time so no name, I’m afraid).

Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve’ is a fine stalwart, flowering all summer long though not always surviving the winter.  Luckily, cuttings take easily.  Isn’t the lichen covered wall lovely?  Least I think so.

I’ve planted fourteen clematis around the gardens, including …

… C. ‘Westerplatte’ and this beauty …

… Clematis koreana ‘Blue Eclipse.’   Perfect, delicate flowers that stutter on through to July after its first flush of flower in April/May (certainly the latter this year).

Because there was already a large bank of rhododendrons, I swallowed a bitter, lifelong aversion to the things and planted four more of them.  I’ve become a bit of a convert (as I have with so many plants which I used to dislike) and particularly wanted (and hunted down) the above; R. ‘Sappho.’

I’ve added many other shrubs to the gardens including the marvellous …

… Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii.’  Three years ago, I put in a small plant on the west lawn by the pond.  It has tripled in size and eventually, its many tiered form will be four metres across and ten feet high (bit of a metric and imperial mix there for you – I like to be even-handed).  Can’t wait – at maturity they are a stunning spectacle.

Alliums and nepeta dominate the long borders.  Gosh, isn’t it blue?  Though that will change as the season progresses.  Really it will.

And what I call the Eve bed (it has a standard Viburnum tinus ‘Eve Price’ centre) is shaping up nicely; what with its box edging and …

… heuchera in fill; the latter hasn’t completely filled the space yet.  (A young Kerria japonica is to the left).  The box hedge is new-ish and hasn’t yet been tightly clipped.

The rock border is plumping up nicely with Viburnum opulus ‘Roseum’ in flower (top left) and …

… aquilegias and silene all a-jumble.  Foxgloves will join the mix soon.

At the far end of the rock border are hostas …

… which I have salvaged from other parts of the garden and …

… planted here, where the soil is moist all summer (and boggy in winter).  They seem content.

Now that we’ve drifted away from flowers to those green petticoats, I have to mention the beech hedge.  The Priory is most certainly female but the beech is not.  He’s a great big …

lumbering, shaggy beast marching along the southern and western garden perimeter.  Having tugged on his summer overcoat …

… he does dominate the garden.  For which reason, I am so very grateful to the unknown person/persons who had the foresight to plant him.

In 2010, I planted a fifty foot double line of beech saplings (thirty odd plants) in front of the gate on the west lawn.  I’ve lost two of them so far but thankfully have a small stock of replacements to hand.  In time, they will shield the house from prying eyes out on the public footpath.

Out on the meadow, the 200 Camassia quamash which I planted in autumn 2010 have flowered.  Last year there were perhaps a dozen blooms but this year they have begun to make more of an impact in various small patches.

But there is always something in the garden to bring you back to earth with an uncomfortable bump.

One of a pair of standard hollies I planted by the house (with another V. roseum in the background).  One is hale and hearty and this one?  Well, it’s not.  Gardening, eh?  So very fulfilling and then the Gardening Gods turn around and slap you across the face.  Just to remind you who’s boss.

oooOOOooo

It is only too easy to frame and crop photographs to present the image one wishes to portray.  To counter that, I thought you might like to view a shortish video clip of part of the Priory gardens.  It hopefully will give you a better ‘feel’ for the place.  You might want to turn off the sound – I do drone on a bit, well a lot actually:

I’d like to hear what you think.  Not about the shakiness of the camera or the lamentable (lack of) script but whether the gardens are how you imagined them; especially those of you who may have read about the Priory for a while.  Is it how you imagined?  Bigger, smaller?  (Not that the clip shows all the grounds, by any means).  I make no secret of how I feel about the place but, as it gets so very few visitors, it would be interesting to get your views.

A Quick Catchup

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I’ve been painting gloss work at home; door frames galore and literally mile upon mile of skirting – or so it seems.  I’ve also grown increasingly annoyed, irritated and badmouthed at a new laptop.  A new laptop that  won’t connect wirelessly to the net.  I’ve tried so many ‘IT solutions‘ but it still won’t OBEY me.  Next up is solution 36 – hurling it against a brick wall.  So what with painting, a sulky laptop and a couple of novels that were physically impossible to put down, there has, I’m afraid, been a bit of a gap since my last post.

The days are whizzing by and we’re hurtling into autumn with no brakes. STOP!  Please.  Despite writing a few weeks ago how I was relishing the prospect of autumn, I have now changed my mind (a gardener’s prerogative) and am savouring these long, hot and hazy summery days.

Turks Cap Lily growing in the possibly mythical and …

I have built up a logjam of photos over the past few weeks – my computer is groaning under the weight of them all.

… certainly mysterious Priory Fern and Turks Cap Lily Boat.

So here’s a quick splurge to free up some disk space.

Mina lobata
I hadn’t grown Spanish Flag (Mina lobata) before.
Technically it’s a perennial but not in Sussex, where I grow it from seed and treat as an annual.  I’ve been impressed by how easy it grows and the sheer amount of flower, and at how pretty it is.  I’ll certainly grow it again next year.
Dahlia ‘Dark Spirit’
Normally, my dahlia tubers sail through the winter wrapped in newspaper and stored in a cool, dry place.  But this year I lost about a third to fungus.  I suspect I hadn’t dried them out as well as I ought to have done.  The ones that did survive were potted up and nurtured to a height of six inches or more before planting out into the new ‘Tropical’ bed.  Otherwise, I find planting the tubers directly out into beds results in an almighty battle with slugs and snails.   It’s the same if I leave them in the ground overwinter (heavily mulched against frost, of course).   Planted out when they are of a size and a little more robust seems to afford them some protection.  That and organic slug pellets.
Dahlia ‘Fire and Ice’
I did lose some varieties of dahlia altogether though – which is sad but an excellent shopping opportunity next spring!
Dahlia ‘Smarty’
This is a tall elegant dahlia with no two flowers the same.

Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ is just so reliable and so darn cheery.  Couldn’t be without it; here growing with linaria.

A combination that I’ve really enjoyed (sunglasses required) is Achillea ‘Cloth of Gold’ with the vibrancy of Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’.

Far, far more muted is Hydrangea Kyushu (the only hydrangea in the garden – apart from the climbing, Hydrangea petiolaris) and Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’.

Here, shasta daisies (Leucanthemum x superbum – a glorious name, which is reason enough to grow it) against a backdrop of Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’.
The amount of self-sown flowers has been wonderful this year.  I think that is down to an absence of late frosts in May.  This Cosmos sprang up on its own accord in one of the kidney beds – with errant Stipa gigantea seedhead.

Also self-sown is lovely Cosmos purity

and Zinnia ‘Red Spider’.

I’m not a huge fan of fuchsias but this hardy Fuchsia molinae just drips flowers at this time of year.  Here growing up against Zebra Grass (Miscanthus zebrinus) and above Ajuga reptans ‘Braunherz’.  The latter is brilliant ground cover with loads of blue flower spikes in spring.  All three plants went in during late 2008 and are now well established.
Like the dahlias, I find it a battle to get Salvia patens up and out of the ground without a titanic life and death battle with slugdom.  This is one of my favourite perennials though so worth the trouble.  That blue – wow.
I should be able to show you a photo of my favourite salvia, S. ulignosa, growing in this spot in the kidney beds.  Sadly though it was one of the plants I lost during our last, severe winter.  You’ll have to use your imagination.  Thanks.  A real shame as it’s a tall stately plant that flowers for yonks, and the flowers are of such a pretty pale blue.   I was still willing it to emerge long, long after it was obvious it was dead.
And finally (I’ve still got an awful lot of gloss work to do and a laptop to beat into submission) the badly named toad lily (Tricyrtis formosana).  I was given a pot of this gorgeous, if unusual, beauty and I’ve split it again and again to increase my stock.  It’s only just come into flower in the past few days, is happy in shade and just invites close study.