What's flowering this week?

You blink round here, & something else flowers. Here's who's flouncing about right now.

Can anyone fill any of the blank name tags?

Smoke bush - identified by Kay when I spotted one at her house

Dunno what this is, but there's lots of it.
Love how the rain beads on the leaves.
Update from Roger: "Alchemilla mollis. Beautiful if a bit of a brute!"
Also known as Lady's Mantle.



We've several similar geraniums.
This lovely clump is at the foot of the South Lawn Cherry Tree.

Not a clue about this one but I see it about a lot.
A municipal planting favourite in our Drive Bed.

Another flowering shrub in the Drive Bed.
They're cheek-by-jowl in there.
Update from Bryony: "escallonia I think"
Certainly looking likely from interweb photos & descriptions.

There's 2 big clumps of this in the West Boundary Bed.
TBH it's probs a single plant attempting to swallow a third.

We currently have the most glamorous, most fragrant compost corner.
The rambling/climbing rose went boom!
Update from Kate: "Rambling rector?"
Looking very likely, & how fitting given that Hubby is a Reverend...
I may start referring to him as such here...

We brought these guys with us.
Still no idea what they are.
Update from Roger: "Some kind of veronica"
But searching Google pics I'm not so sure
(even after eliminating all the pics of ladies in their pants.)

Not flowering, but looking wonderfully fluffy in its new growth.
One of several conifers at the top of the North Lawn. 

A flush of buttercups, before I chopped their heads off yesterday.

No idea which leaves go with these flowers.
It's all a bit hectic behind the bench down at the Circle.

Our lovely friends gave us loads of plants as housewarming gifts.
Sarge's cactus bloomed!
Update from me (cos I read the label): Opuntia indica - prickly pear!

Tackling the Lawns

Small, or far away...?

This time of year, you really can watch the grass grow... You can almost see it heave itself upwards before your very eyes.

Hubby's done all the mowing since the move - a Herculean effort of one man & a flymo against the marching sward. Mind, this early Summer cycle of sun & showers means that keeping on top of it has more than a whiff of Sisyphus about it.

It's time I went to mow.

The South Lawn

Done & dusted on Wednesday evening. Yay!

It's about the size of the old lawn but the terrain is a tad more challenging. New house is on top of a small hill, & the land falls away quite rapidly on most sides. We're not talking cliff-side gardening here, but it's no snooker table either.

The South Lawn has 2 key obstacles: The sharp drop to the Big Beech Hedge; & the loop around the Laburnum.

On a slope & heavily shaded, neither spot is ever going to be lush & verdant lawn, but at the mo we're happy with bramble-&-nettle-free.

Even with these tricky bits, I guess it took less than an hour. Most doable on a sunny weekday evening. Marvellous.

The North Lawn

I didn't bother timing this task, largely cos I didn't want to rush myself. Getting it done Saturday morning before the rain arrived was going to be a close call, but let's not go mental & be exhausted by Noon, eh?

The North Lawn is an isosceles triangle to the West of the drive. A 20m run up by the side of the gravel, then 15m in front of the house, then back along the boundary hedge. It slopes mostly North West, is pretty damp, & is balding in many places due to mature trees past & present.

Not as flat as it looks...

Hubby gave it a weed n feed a few weeks ago & that's done wonders, but in some areas the measures may need to be more drastic - there's a row of Leylandii by the road & they are big. The heavy shade from them stops anything growing underneath - not even brambles or ivy dare to tread.

We already know our Westerly neighbours are not fans of the Leylandii, but they're also not 100% sure who they belong to. We'll need to have a sleuth around before getting the chainsaw out...

The North Lawn is also home to a smattering of daffs. They made us feel very welcome as we moved in during April. Their dying back leaves make mowing a bit of a slalom though, so I used Mum's old technique of tidying them up. The theory says the longer the leaves are photosynthesising, the stronger the bulb next year.

Use an old flower stem as the tie - they're stronger than the leaves

Not that Mum uses this technique anymore. I'm not surprised - it's a bit of a chew on! But to me they look like little haystacks & I'm enjoying that :)

With a little help from Hubby, who mowed while I tied, we were done just as the first spots started to hit. Timing!

New house! New garden!

I've been stressing again. Moving house is stressful - we all know that. But I've been topping that stress with a whole bunch of blog guilt. It's a special talent.


But today that ends. I am reminding myself of my 'Post it!' resolution from the blog's First Birthday round-up. I will, as my friend Clair would say, rip it off like a plaster.

So what's the new place like?!

Vast!


Not quite Capability Brown-worthy, but our old back garden would fit into the new one several times over. It took hubby TWO HOURS just to mow The North Lawn. & yes, that means we now have more than 1 lawn - there's a smaller South one too.


I'll get around doing a map & some panoramas & stuff, but in the meantime, here's a few nice pics of some of the plants that came with the place. I freely admit I've no idea what half of the resident greenery is, so I think a horticultural soirée might be helpful - an evening of cake, cava & can-you-tell-me-what-this-is-please?

The new growth on this shrub is much more red than the pink in this pic.
Update from Sharon: "Pieris 'forest flame'"

It's a fairy grotto under one corner of the Big Beech Hedge.
These guys remind me of kodama.



The Cherry Tree on the South Lawn.

Snake's Head Fritillaries! We've always wanted some of these! *dribble*

One of the many large grassy clumps. This one is in the Shed Bed.
Update from Sharon: "Carex pendula"
The wiki page says "preferring damp, heavy clay soils"... sounds about right ;)

We had no idea what the large old tree in the middle of the South Lawn was...
until it flowered. Laburnum it is then.

They've got these in the Farmshop carpark beds & I've always admired them.
We've not got as much as them - only this small clump at the top of the North Lawn.
But it's a start.
Update from Steph & Clare: "Perennial Cornflower".

We brought our own, but there are a lot of ferns here already.
I'm amazed to see Hostas tho' - new place has an abundance of snails AND slugs.

One of the other grassy clumps turned out to be this gorgeous Iris.
This was in the Fence Bed, but there's another clump over in the Birch Bed.

Hibernation & migration

No posts since September, eh? A bit pants really, especially after the "Post it!" resolution in my end-of-year-one round-up :/

However, I have some excuses:

Not much to write about

The Autumn has been full of doing other stuff, like running away to gigs on the weekends (woohoo!) & learning Italian. I've not been out in the garden AT ALL.

We're moving...

Yes indeedy. Pretty serious stuff & lots to do. So I'll endeavour to post about that - which plants will we take? Which will we leave behind? What's the new garden going to be like?! It's all very exciting :D

So if you want to buy a 3 bed house in Bedlington with an awesome garage, a pizza oven & a lightly wrestled garden, check out hubby's rad 3D modelling skills & drop me a line. The house will be listed with an estate agent in the New Year.

How it's done

Last month my friend had a garden warming party. She's been in her new home for a year now & boy has she been busy.

The Layout

The North-facing front is paved parking so all the garden fun is out the back.

Previous owners added decking by the house to make the most of the Southern sunshine. The deck also organises the hefty level changes that come from living on the side of a hill. The staged drop to the main garden, combined with strategic boundary hedging, makes for a secluded spot, shielded from passing gusts & prying eyes.

Packed with treasure

I really struggled to get an overview photo that does the garden justice. This is a section from a Photosynth panoramic, hence the left hand bendy shed.

When my friend arrived a year ago, the main area was lawn with small edging borders and a couple of small trees, but it's all change now. The trees remain, jazzed up for the party with some beautiful glass globe tealight lanterns. But the changes are much more than a few cosmetic touches - the garden now has a series of distinct spaces, each with their own atmosphere - no mean feat in such a modest plot.

Moving left to right:

• Raised veg beds, on the deck near the house.
• Lounging seating area, also on the veg deck.
• Crafting hut terminating the veg deck (the bendy shed above). This doubled as the party's bar.
• Pond, in the back left corner - the latest addition.
• Pergola with chimenea, for evenings round the fire.
• Potting shed/glass house (right, above).
• Dining table & chairs on the right hand deck off the kitchen/conservatory.
  and finally, the star of the show
• Major central flower bed.

My friend used to work in horticulture so she's far more interested in a range of interesting plants than a monoculture. Up came the old central lawn, and in went the huge central bed. With a gravel edge and a winding bark chip path through the middle, you can get up close & personal with the planting, to weed or just to drool.

Here's some pics of my favourites - I have no idea what most of them are, so if you spot some familiar faces, please shout up!

Update

My friend has now kindly provided me with some names for the plants below. She's not 100% about them all, but hey, they'll be close enough & better than nowt!

Flowers

Thistle-type thing

Little spiky blue & silver thistle globes
Echinops ritro (globe thistle)

I've been looking longingly at thistles for a bit, but I hear they can be invasive - perhaps why this pale blue beauty is in a pot on the path.

Fiery daisy

There was a lot if buzzing in the garden but this clump of fiery daisies were particularly popular.
 

♪ Fire! (Do do do)... ♫
Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer'

I love the flame coloured petals, surrounding a raised black pompom shot through with gold - just like glowing embers. Gorgeous.
 

Foliage

Freaky frenzy

The garden was packed with foliage of all shapes, all colours.

All the foliage
Sedum spectabile 'Autumn Joy'
Artemisia 'Powis Castle'
Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple' (smoke bush)
Philadephus 'Belle Etoile' (mock orange)

What fabulous contrasts here, so much texture cheek by jowl. Just blew my mind.

The gold leaf edge is brighter than this pic shows
Berberis thunbergii 'Golden Ring'

Fancy corn

In pots dotted around the garden & deck were these statuesque sweetcorn stems.
 

Fancy candy-striped corn
Zea mays (Japanese ornamental corn)

 

She picked up these as seeds on holiday in Canada. I've seen multi-coloured corn cobs before but not on the plant. Those bold stripes remind me of the seaside windbreaks of my youth!

 

Frosted fern

Lots of leaves were from the red end of things, but some aren't always the same colour. There were nice examples of leaves that change colour as they mature.

Candy-floss fern
Sorbaria sorbifolia 'Sem'

I love this kind of thing - plants with changing interest as they age & with the season; so useful in small gardens where everything needs to work harder to earn its keep.
 

Green grey shrub

Along with the reds, hints of silver were another recurring foliage theme.

A wall of silver green fluff
Euphorbia characias

This beast sits below the crafting hut and was taller than me. It's cool to have interest at eye level, especially something so bold.

An old friend

Also below the hut was something more full-on silver; something familiar:

We used to have one of these!

I know this! It's a curry plant, so named cos it gives a fenugreeky niff when you brush past it. Ours is long gone, possibly due to over-zealous pruning on my part, but at least I now know who to talk to if I want to re-introduce it.
And I think I might.

2 stars out on Sunday

I was out having a bit of a tidy on Sunday & a couple of beauties caught my eye.

Japanese anemone

A light in a dark place

I bought it & planted it out late last year, & crossed my fingers. I had no idea if I'd put it in a suitable location. I had not a clue what soil type it preferred. Then we had a long cold Winter. & then a bit of the boundary wall fell off & landed on it. Talk about a rough ride.

But it's made it through all that trauma & has just started flowering under its own steam. Hooray! A late season glow in The White Corner.

Common frog

Can I go now?

I found this fella at the bottom of the raspberry canes whilst doing the annual tidy-up. Every year we spot a frog in the garden: sometimes in the compost; even in the greenhouse! This always confuses us as we don't have a pond...

After posing for its close-up, this healthy hopper headed toward the house. Aha! Hubby's hunch was spot on - there's a rainwater drain & soakaway in that corner, right under the raspberries. Suddenly it all makes much more sense.

& while we're on about the raspberries, The Alnwick Garden loop method for corralling long canes worked brilliantly. I heartily recommend it.

Happy birthday to me-blog thing

26th August was the 1st Anniversary of my 1st post. Coinciding with Summer starting to head for the door, it seems a perfect time to reflect, tho maybe not in South Park style, on what I've learnt.

1. Do structural work in Winter

There were 3 structural jobs I wanted to do this year:

• Stairs & terracing in Stinky Dog Corner.
  Achievement unlocked! (as the kids say)
• Seating semi-circle around the gravel.
  Well I bought the sleepers... That counts as progress, right...?
• Wall consolation & seating in The White Corner.
  Yeah well given how much the wall has moved this year, it'll have demolished itself by the time I get around to it.

The only reason Stinky Dog Stairs got done was cos I did it in Winter (it was snowing ffs, but once I got going I was fine).

Working in Winter has a bunch of advantages:

• I don't overheatKey factor for me as I'm a bit prone to heat stroke.
  Heavy work = Tired.
  Tired + Overcooked brain = Losing a limb.
• No plants to knack
  All the annuals have gone, all the bulbs & most perennials are underground, leaving only me, the shrubs & trees. There's a lot more room to manoeuvre, & a lot less to get precious about, so I can get stuck in.
  
  Later in the year, when everything's up & leafy & growing, it seems like the height of bad manners to turf 'em up & mess 'em about.
  Plus they sulk:

You moved me!

Right in the middle of my big dance number!

How DARE you!

Well tough titty, big boots,

I'm going to cry for the rest of the season

& every time you look at me

you'll know it was

All.

Your.

Fault.

• I have the time
  I like to be a busy bee but things quieten down during the shortest days.

All this said, it would be nice to do the heavy work in more clement weather, but I now know this is delusional thinking. Even if all the above weren't true, big Summer work just won't happen as...

2. Summer is for having a life

I like to do stuff. Lots of stuff. In the Summer there's generally more stuff on. Can't do it all. Weekends get packed out with exciting new opportunities, leaving only the occasional day here & there, maybe the odd evening, to get out into the garden & tidy up a bit.

But that's OK cos...
 

3. Mowing the lawn = instant makeover

Such a quick job, such a transformation.
Dead easy to pop out on a sunny evening & give the grass a quick hoove.
The sharp contrast with the wild & unruly the beds works beautifully.
Full of win!

Unfortunately the mower doesn't quite get
the grass in the path gaps

4. Power tools rock!

As well as the mower, there's my new best friend: the hedge trimmer. Truly, it is a sword of power worthy of Hattori Hanzo himself. Even removing the cover feels like unsheathing a katana of legend.

The hedge trimmer has transformed the biggest job of the year - the annual hedge hack.

In the dark days of yore, attacking the hedge was a gruelling marathon. At least 3 sessions of hacking with shears & loppers, and then several more stuffing the trimmings into bag after bag, garden waste bin load after garden waste bin load.

But not this year - 2 sessions, all done. Woohoo!

Admittedly not all this is down to the awesome power of Excalibur. The odd Spring confused the crap out the laurel. Its initial growth was badly burnt by the late cold snap & only now has it started to recover. But I'll take any assistance on this mammoth task. The laurel is tougher than old boots; it'll be back to fight another year. But this year, it did not claim the lion's share of my Summer garden time, & there are no words for how grateful I am.

Not to say I am completely unscathed tho'...:

A bit of a poor effort by Emo standards

This? Yeah, well I sort of fell through the hedge.
Backwards.
yeah, yeah, laugh it up fuzzball...

I was stood on top of the wall, both hands on Excalibur. I needed to turn around.

When using the shears I'm happy to walk backwards, but when I have the trimmer out I prefer to see exactly where the cable is. 

As I was halfway through my pirouette, I started a slow fall backward... into a gap in the hedge.

Fortunately both hands were off the triggers so the blade wasn't spinning. Plus the hedge gap wasn't quite as wide as me, so I came to rest at a jaunty 45° recline. The ground level is much higher on the hedgeward side so I was able to stand.
In the hedge.
I felt like a pillock.
But it could've been sooooo much worse...

5. The hedge yields weird harvest

No hedge treasure during this year's annual haircut, apart from me, obvs.

The mug I once found in the hedge is a bit tatty so sits at the back of the cupboard & will do for decorating.

The lovely spotty pint glass was perfect & is now my regular garden refreshments glass. It makes me smirk every time I use it.

But it's not all treasure.

There's usually quite a lot of litter. To be expected really on an end of terrace.

The unripe apples were a disappointment - lobbed over the hedge & landing in the gravel with tell tale titchy teeth marks in them. Fortunately, & after a bit of a word, the kids didn't strip the tree completely bare, & 5 apples made it to full size... if not quite full maturity - scrumpers left us with 1, so we snaffled it ourselves.

A bit tart, & hopefully enough next year for a tart

But without doubt the weirdest thing to arrive over the hedge was the rat in a bag. Still no clue what the hell that was all about.

6. You tend vegetables

The flowers, fruit, herbs, trees & shrubs in our garden do a grand job of looking after themselves. Whether I'm out there or not, they carry on regardless.

I was keen to give more veg a go this year, & with hindsight I can see that I expected them to do just what the other plants do & get on with it.

But no. It was a endless round of sewing & potting on & watering & feeding... & I just could not be arsed. By mid-Summer I was proclaiming, loudly, to anyone who would listen & those who couldn't run away, that vegetables were needy. They wilted, they bolted, they got infested, they got nibbled, they got mangled. Jeez, what a bunch of lightweights!

Then I visited my Dad's garden & the truth slapped me in the face:
You get out what you put in.

I'd been expecting a free lunch, but we all know there's no such thing.

It's not been a total disaster though. A couple of tough buggers have soldiered on.

Courgettes

Still going strong, still flowering, still fruiting. The one veg plant that suits my inability to micro-manage.

Courgette flower in full pomp 

Radishes

They worked! First attempt with these this year & they're bright, fresh, crunchy & peppery. I'm chuffed to bits.

All shapes & colours from my mixed seed pack

Their location in the greenhouse might be unconventional but at least I could keep an eye on them, & the snails tend to stay out of there.

Borlotti beans

The snails definitely found the beans, but I'm surprised the damage wasn't more extensive.

Bit of a snail mauling in the middle there...

The snails first attacked while the pods were tender, so we harvested some beans then & Hubby steamed them whole, runner bean style.

At this end of the Summer the remainder have really taken on that trademark red colour, so hopefully we'll get beans too.

Onions

Yeah, not a great result here. In a variety of locations they've been universally terrible. These survivors are barely larger than the sets they started out as (20p off the right edge there for scale). But they've done better than their brethren, who are M.I.A....

Call them shallots?

The veg experiment has been interesting, but I think next year I'll look to expand hardy herb selection instead.

7. Seedlings compost is only for seedlings

The Greenhouse Guttering experiment has worked much better in Spring & Summer than it did over Winter. We had lots of salad leaves and tender herbs and things germinated very well in there... but they didn't last.

Hmm... row 2 looking a little dry there...

I finally twigged with the little gem lettuce: they were going well but after a little while they started to fade - literally. The colour started to leech from the leaves. Hubby was baffled. After a few days something pinged in my head: food. So he gave them some liquid feed & they perked right up again.

And then I remembered hearing that seed compost isn't like normal compost. It's finer plus it doesn't have as much nutritional content. So potting on isn't only about giving the roots more legroom, it's also about getting more scran into the soil.

8. Post it!

Not all the year's lessons are from out there. Some are from in here, in blogland.

Some posts have had a long gestation. I've still got Japan posts from Christmas sat in drafts. I have a phone memory card stacked with photos waiting to be processed. I have emails marked as unread so I don't forget to write about them.

All these posts sit in the back of my mind like gravel, grating away. They force "should" statements into my subconscious.

If I have a year 2 resolution, it'll be Post it!

It doesn't have to be perfect, but it needs to be out, or let go...

9. A diary, for me

When I started the blog, part of my motivation was to show the world that gardening is far more hit & miss than the experts would have us believe. But the way it's panned out, this blog is more like my gardening diary. It definitely feels like it's of more use to me than you. Does that sound rude?

Half way through the year I realised that to be useful to others, I'd have to be posting like clockwork & running around social medialand driving traffic to the site. Advertising to only my Facebook mates doesn't really get the message out there.

But frankly, what a chew on. It's got "time swamp" plastered all over it, & I already spend much longer writing about gardening than gardening.

Having said all that though...

10. Folk are actually interested

I've had some really nice comments about things I've written over the last year, & that's been unexpected. I'm frankly astonished that anyone takes the time to read these witterings.

& I love the stories it brings out of you. You tell me what you're up to & we all get to learn from each other. & that's great.

So thank you for taking the time. I'm really touched.