Tag Archives: Spring Flowers

A Stampede Of Cows

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As well as this gardener walking about in his shirt-sleeves and whistling, there are various other markers that spring has finally arrived:

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from the scent of wild garlic by the riverbank;

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to early purple orchids,

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Camassia quamash flowering on the meadow,

DSM_1937the rock border overflowing with forget-me-nots

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and butterflies emerging – albeit a cabbage white

But the big landmark spring event for me is the turning out of Margaret’s cows from their winter quarters to grass.

DSM_1830It is a sight I try not to miss; from their deafening impatient lowing and then their excitement and exuberance at being set free.

DSM_1625Having spent months in the sheds, they are a little hesitant at first; the calves especially so – having spent their whole lives indoors, they are blinded by the light.  (Those sheep really ought to get out of the way).

DSM_1647But suddenly, faced with all that space, these huge, matronly beasts (weighing in excess of 1000lbs)

DSM_1653start to hurl themselves about

DSM_1742with gay abandon.

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Last year, I had perched on a rickety stile and felt a little vulnerable as they thundered past me – just a couple of feet away.

DSM_1700So this year, I’d positioned myself behind a hawthorn hedge

DSM_1679which, as the cows got nearer, seemed increasingly flimsy and worryingly inadequate.

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Thankfully, the thudding of bovine hooves drowned out my whimpering as they barreled on toward me – with no sign of slowing.  Gulp.

DSM_1688An open gate was just to my right

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but

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it was only

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at the very last moment that they swerved away from me … and I could breath again.

According to the Office for National Statistics, cows kill more people in the UK than almost any other animal – accounting for about 5 deaths a year*.  Mostly the victims are dog-walkers who pick up their dogs (or hold onto the leash) when cattle become agitated. Please don’t do either; your dog can outrun a cow better than you.  And if it can’t, I would politely suggest that you don’t take it into a field of cows in the first place.

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One calf, with a whole new world to explore, sought out only the pleasures of the manure pile; Margaret and I spent twenty minutes or so cajoling him into re-joining the herd.

DSM_1857And so, all’s well with the world.  Job done and the cows back out to pasture – in the fields above the Priory greenhouses.  It is fine to have them back – just so long as they don’t come into the gardens again, goddamnit. (See ‘Cows in the Asparagus’).

If your local farmer ever offers to show you her galloping heifers, go for it.  You won’t be disappointed; just make sure you stand somewhere nice and safe.

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*  The animal which kills the most people in the UK is the horse, accounting for 10 deaths per year, 2nd cows, 3rd dogs – 4 per year, 4th bees and wasps – 3 per year.

Under Way

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I’m rather behind with blogging and as it’s been a while since I posted any photos of the Priory, here’s a quick, excitable splurge; a brisk whizz about the gardens, showing some photos from the past few weeks.

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This steep bank below the greenhouses is one of my favourite spots at the Priory. It is no longer strimmed from early spring onwards and has rewarded us with primroses and anemones;

DSM_0164dog violets, a few daffodils and, earlier, crocuses.  A reward for doing nothing.DSM_1075Similarly, bluebells and Erythronium ‘Pagoda’ are spreading and establishing themselves in another patch of uncut grass.

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On the meadow, under the huge oak, primroses are on a colonisation quest.  Here the meadow grass doesn’t get so long as to smother them.

DSM_1077They have helped make up for the dearth of daffodils.  I have realised, too late, that a lot of the meadow is simply to wet for the latter.

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It is a sodden environment but the fritillaries at least appreciate it;

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which, as they are personal favourite, gives me smug pleasure.

DSM_1081Also out on the meadow the ten young fruit trees are blossoming, safe behind their deer barriers.  Apart from quinces, the garden fruit trees didn’t produce any fruit last year.  Not a plum, not an apple, not a pear, not a cherry, not a … well, you get the idea.

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I think this year will be better.

DSM_0048Where the drainage is sharper (like here on a sloping lawn beside the drive), daffodils have done better – though my bulb supplier, Philip Nyssen’s quality control seems a little lax*.  These are four pockets of Narcissus ‘Ice Follies‘ but, as you can see, a few of another variety have slipped in.  Should I be annoyed?  Should I rant?  Stamp my foot?  Should I rip out the interlopers?  Probably, but that seems churlish and mean-spirited.  They can stay,  I suppose.

DSM_1072On the east lawn where again the drainage is good (there is a ditch cutting across this shot) another introduction is doing well: N. ‘St Patrick’s Day.‘

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My all time favourite daffodil is N. ‘Thalia‘ planted here on the east lawn and I’m pretty fond of

DSM_1079N. ‘Pipit‘ too – doing moderately well on a drier part of the meadow.

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Under a large oak these doubles have been here for years.  Even if I liked them (which I don’t)

DSM_0112the flowers are too heavy to stand upright.  What’s the point in that?  Silly things.

DSM_1065The Priory has two Amelanchiers; this one planted too close to the tulip tree by the house

DSM_1073and another smaller one in one of the kidney beds.  Beautiful, huh?

DSM_1092And after last year’s rubbish performance the blackthorn on the river bank has put on a good show this year.  It is getting a little too large – I think next winter I shall lift its crown by a few feet and reveal the mass of wild garlic at its feet.

DSM_1230And finally a shot across the east lawn to the greenhouses – taken yesterday.  Which brings us up to date.  Phew.

Yep, the gardens are certainly under way.  Now, if I can just stay on top of it.

* An addendum.  Within hours of publishing this post, I had a very nice email from Karen at Philip Nyssen, apologising for the strays amongst my Ice Follies and offering replacements.  How gracious – though on reflection, I ought to apologise too. I should have contacted them as soon as the problem became evident rather than waiting almost four years before having an online moan. 

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.

Slowly, slowly …

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… as we head into June, May is arriving.  What should have been a show-stopping leap centre-stage, has been a slow, very late and frankly embarrassing shuffle in from the wings.

Not much is flowering at the Priory therefore though there is plenty of new, green growth.  Here in the rock border, ferns (which survived the-years-of-neglect and being strimmed!) are stretching up and out among a drift of the forget-me-nots I introduced a couple of years ago.

The bank of rhododendrons behind the kidney beds (also still just foliage) are starting to flower – so a that’s a jab in the arm.  And, for the first time in weeks, I’m on top of the mowing.  Who knew that a sentence like that could give me so much pleasure?

But the long borders are still a damp squib; the allium leaves have rotted away like the tulips.  And all that cold weather has burnt the emerging persicaria in the foreground.

The Acer palmatum dissectum in the kitchen bed looks fine though and once again I’ve planted the bed up with Lobelia ‘Crystal Palace.’  Bedding plants?  I know, I know – but I’m a bit of a convert to lobelia.  I like lobelia – there I’ve said it.  Anyway, I’ve also added a few shuttlecock ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) – though I wonder whether they won’t dwarf the tree and box.  Probably.  If so, I’ll move them; but for the moment I like the little lime-green fountains.

Birds are pressing on with birdy business despite the wet, cold pseudo-spring.  Most of the nest boxes are in use …

… and the moorhens bring their young to feed on the scraps beneath the bird feeders.

The chicks may look ungainly but, being very shy, they don’t half leg it when they catch a glimpse of me – those huge feet disappear in a blurred whirl as they scoot off to the ponds.

Inconveniently, a blackbird has made a nest in the woodstore by the house.  I crept in and, using my most powerful lens, took a couple of snaps.  I’ll leave her be now, put up a sign to warn others and delay topping up the wood-pile.

On my drive to the Old Forge last week, May was more in evidence …

… with the lanes lined with cow parsley and …

… a great slab of rapeseed as a backdrop to the garden, while …

… a neighbouring paddock had a rather nice buttercup field-of-the-cloth-of-gold going on.

The grass in Margaret’s fields has grown long too.  But all the rain has forced her to defer the Great Stampede as it is known (but only by me).  I didn’t realise, until I met Margaret, that cows (at least in this part of the world) spend about six months of the year indoors.  She normally lets them out in early May but the ground has been too wet and the cows’ hooves would churn up all that lush pasture all too quickly.

Last week it was finally dry enough; watch out – here they come!  You can imagine how very excited they get at the prospect of fresh grass after months of silage.  Galloping …

… towards and past an anxious photographer (quaking on a wooden stile) and …

… careering out into the field above the Priory greenhouse.

For a couple of weeks a bull will keep the cows and calves company.   He probably thinks his luck is in – but unbeknownst to him, all the cows are already in calf.  Poor lad; disappointment looms.

Still, the cows are happy and so am I.  With the cows out in the fields at long last, it feels like May has finally arrived.

Albeit, almost in June.

Wild Places, Wild Flowers

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April is a busy month for gardeners and the sheer amount of flower can be a little distracting.  Plants are elbowing through to the fore, hurling themselves into flower and screeching, “Me, me, me.  Look at me!”  And very pretty it all is too but I do wish (a little) that they would just calm down a bit.  I find myself whispering, “Very nice, but just take it easy, OK.  Slow down pal, slow down; there’s plenty of time.”  As distracting as it is, I want the show to run and run.

But realising that they won’t take a blind bit of notice, I continue to edge and dig, mow and plant; all the while taking time to enjoy the spectacle.  Even plants that I wouldn’t have planted myself, such as …

Forsythia in bloom. A neighbour's cottage at The Old Forge.

… forsythia, are looking mighty fine in this, their lime-light moment.

There is a forsythia up against the house and under a window at the Priory.  Seems an odd place to plant one as, once the main event is over,  it is a dull shrub.  But, with an underplanting of forget-me-nots, I have no plans to remove it.  Yet.

Something I would have planted (had there not already been one) is Magnolia stellata.  Such perfection is rare on this particular little tree but the absence of late, hard frosts this year has left the delicate blooms unblemished.

Tulipa bakeri 'Lilac Wonder'

I must stress that, actually, I have planted some stuff myself (this is important; it’s my job).  Here Tulipa bakeri ‘Lilac Wonder’ flowers against a backdrop of fresh crocosmia leaves.

Primula denticulata with the first Peacock butterfly of the year - 28 March.

And beneath a young fig tree, a clutch of primulas attract an early visitor; always gratifying that I have helped to attract wildlife.

But as much as I would like to claim credit for all the beauty in the gardens, sadly, I can’t.  One of my favourite areas of the Priory is a bank, running down from the greenhouse to a drainage ditch.

I strim it once or twice a year but certainly not in Spring when, after the crocuses are over,  it is speckled with primroses, the odd daffodil, wood anemones and cuckoo flowers.

Primroses (Primula vulgaris) grow throughout the estate.

Here forming a carpet (or at least a rug) in the wild-flower meadow,

here popping up in the lawn and …

… here self-seeding themselves into places they really shouldn’t.  But, bad as such behaviour is, I can’t always bring myself to root them out.

Usually I’m unimpressed with pink but, while I still prefer the common yellow primrose, I do rather like some of the variations; such as this one.

Viola odorata

Even more widespread than the primulas are wild violets (Viola odorata).  A visitor to the gardens was really quite excited when she noticed the white form …

White Viola odorata

… as she thought them quite rare (though a quick internet search seems to dispute this).  The white violas don’t mix with their common-or-garden cousins; remaining haughtily separate and aloof.  We have several patches of them along the drive and by the river-bank.

Cardamine pratensis

The Cuckoo Flower or Lady’s Smock (Cardamine pratensis) is common in these ‘ere parts, lining hedgerows and field margins, and is now spreading into the meadow; which pleased me no end.

Under three large oak trees, on the east lawn, is another area of grass which I leave uncut until the autumn.  Chiefly because later in the summer it is home to a small colony of …

Dachtylorhiza fuchsii. June 2011

… Common Spotted Orchids (Dachtylorhiza fuchsii) which I wish to encourage (obviously) but also…

… because of a growing spread of bluebells and …

Erthronium pagoda

… a little something extra that I have added:  Dog’s Tooth Violets (so-called because of the shape of their bulbs).  I have planted three different varieties but only this one, Erythronium pagoda, has deigned to flower.  The un-mown grass is also home to a steadily increasing number of wood anemones (Anemone nemorosa).

I’d like to say that their gentle, perfect spacing is down to me.   But that would be a lie.  I know how tricky naturalised planting is to achieve and it doesn’t come any better than this; careful where you tread.

I first noticed wood anemones as a twenty-one year old visiting Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire.  Coming from the city, I had no idea what it was but, thinking it gorgeous, plucked one to press within my angsty journal – for later identification.  Now almost thirty years later, the pressed flower is still in my angsty journal and, remarkably, perfectly preserved.

Up on the drive, where it passes through Margaret’s wood, anemones grow much more abundantly.  They have erupted in number since the  trees were thinned a couple of years ago and sunlight now washes the woodland floor.

Caltha palutris

In the water margins of the gardens, I have added Kingcup (or Water Marigolds if you prefer; either way: Caltha palutris) and, unsurprisingly in this perfect habitat,  it is thriving.

Another Marsden introduction (and mentioned in a recent post) are Fritillaria meleagris.  I boasted then that there were hundreds of this handsome charmer dancing across the meadow … but only posted photos of single flowers.  So were proof needed …

Ranunculus ficaria

Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) is endemic at the Priory and (very annoyingly) infests some of the formal borders.  But here in the meadow, it may do as it likes – and does.

Nearby is a swathe of wild flowers that, were they not already well established, I certainly would have planted.  Along the river bank, on either side of the post and rail, is a heady, salami-scented expanse of Ramsons or Wild garlic (Allium ursinum).

Allium ursinum

So far only one or two have flowered but …

… when they all do, it is quite a sight.  And smell.  The sight I’ll share, in due course. The smell?  Er, garlicky.  Go sniff a salami; you’ll get the idea.

Prunus spinosa not yet in full spate.

And providing the shade that Ramsons love?  A large bank of Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa).  I certainly didn’t plant this but I did save it from being felled.  The chap who put in the post and rail fencing wanted to clear it (would’ve made his job much easier).  But I fought its corner and the thicket was reprieved.   I’ve been delaying publishing this post for a few days now, as I wanted to show you the Blackthorn at full throttle; unfortunately though, that is still a few days off and (as a good friend has just pointed out) it has been a while since I last posted.  So …

Looking over Apeldoorn tulips to the Blackthorn. April 2011.

… we must make do with this photo from last year.   It is a magnificent, completely over the top, distracting performance – which I love and never tire of.  I’m so glad it wasn’t chain-sawed.  Aren’t you?