Saving Seeds

Have started to save seeds from our plants this year. So far we have alliums, aquilegia, sweet peas and iris (generously given to us by a friend). We should soon have hollyhocks too.

A slice of Provence

I remember the first time we visited France in 2003. We had a copy of Lonely Planet France, with a cover picture of the lavender fields of Provence. We visited in October and though we travelled to Provence, the lavender season was long gone and there was not a glimpse of the vista we had in our mind's eye. Since then lavender has had a special place for us. The two cultivars we have in our garden are the popular English Lavender 'Hidcote' and a French lavender. The bushes have grown fuller this year, spilling over across the entire breadth of the bed.

The lush growth has meant there is little room left for the hydrangea that is struggling to make its presence felt amidst the lavender overflow. Relieved that we decided to move the buddleja, initially planted less than a few feet away from the lavender. We relocated the buddleja to the south of the garden and it has established well this year producing dense purple panicles.

The last few weeks of summer have been really hectic and there has been little time to tend to the garden or write about it. Some evenings, I would just about manage to tip a jug of water into the pots and hanging baskets, saying a silent apology to the other plants - they will just have to send their roots out in search of water. So I rejoiced when the weekend brought a fairly long spell rain and the beds got a nice, long soak-in.

Oh Sweet Pea

Spring makes way for summer and it is the turn of a whole new generation of plants to keep us enthralled.

The best surprise of all was to find the gorgeous red begonia emerge from hibernation. When this plant withered away last year, I wondered whether it was a natural process of over wintering or whether we had left it out on the patio too long and the harsh frost had got to it before we could bring it indoors. Instinct kept me from emptying the pot to house another plant. But the pot remained neglected all the same, propped against a wall near the compost bin. Sheer joy, when nine months later, I find tiny little leaves coming up for some water and fresh air.  The leaves are bigger this week and looks like we will have those beautiful blooms again.

The roses this year have been celebrating something pretty important as they make a spectacular appearance. I helped wire them to the supports and dead heading has been tough to keep up with. The floor of the rose bed is carpeted with petals. I had sprinkled a few leftover wild flower seeds from the rake 'n shake box and they have taken root and are in bloom as well. The bees sure are happy to have them wild flowers around.

The veg that we planted has made great progress and this morning we had very elegant courgette flowers. The beans are doing well too and so are the tomatoes. The carrots  have been less of a survival story and we will be lucky to get one carrot this year.

The strawberries looked fabulous a couple of weeks ago and our neglect meant that they dried up in the high temperatures in recent days. But they have been  rather forgiving and after a drink, have soldiered on.

The other joyful surprise has been utterly exquisite sweet pea in our hanging baskets. Grateful for the beauty these plants bring to our lives.

There are some signs of life from the sedum seeds and hopefully we will have a few robust plants for our front garden. The hostas this year have had very vigorous growth and there are some flowers in bloom there too. Other summer entries are the achillea which looks close to bloom in a range of pastels, the hydrangea which is competing with the lavender for room to grow and the buddleia cones.

There have been a few casualties too, but nothing that a little nurture and nature cannot fix. Clematis is growing well, though I fear for the dry leaves, are they just due to the heat or this clematis wilt? There is blackspot on the roses. And shiny red lily beetles have made a meal of our lilies and stripped them of leaves. The peach tree is full of leaves and a small little peach, with very limited traces of peach leaf curl still evident. The crabtree is now shooting out branches laden with purple berries. One branch in particular leans over the bird bath and the berries seem to make a Ribena of sorts for the birds that want a drink! I did move the branch further away eventually.

After pottering about in the garden we love to come up to the bedroom window and survey our backyard and it is looks like a happy place for all its residents.

Getting gardens buzzing

It is Chelsea week and we were glued to the telly each night on the look out for ideas and new plants for our garden.

This year the RHS launched a new program to attract more bees and insects into our gardens, called Good for Pollinators, and garden centres up and down the country will have this label on plants that do the job. Really pleased to hear this because our garden attracts loads of bees and insects and we have consciously planted varieties that are good for wildlife, also focusing on colours that insects and bees recognise, such as blues, purples and yellows. Look forward to the arrival of the Red Admirals when the buddleia is in bloom.

Of French Beans and Papaver magic

It has been so hard to keep pace with the garden this week. We have a corner of our garden that is planted with roses and practically overnight, they are full of roses and buds ready to bloom.

We also had high drama from the French Beans. The seedlings grew a few inches high and were expecting to be replanted into a larger space and, more importantly, be provided supports to climb on. When the bean shoots do not find the support they are looking for, they abandon leaf production and send out long tendrils in search of something to climb on to. Now, these pots were on a window sill with nothing but glass on one side. So, looks like the seedlings had a conference one night and decided to support each other. The next time I peeked in to see how they were doing, pairs of shoots had coiled around each other and formed two spires each almost three feet high. The protest worked! I decided I had to give these guys some support immediately and took the pots outside and placed them at the base of the cane tepee frame we had used last year that still stood in the garden. The beans were duly pacified and behaved well till the weekend when we had some time to plant them in the soil all good and proper. Who knew French Beans could throw tantrums like this!

We also have had to abandon plans to have a formal veg bed, partly due to our laziness and partly due to a paucity of creative ideas on where to create it. We will use spaces in our flower beds to plant veg. So the courgettes went in next to the beans along with stakes. In another bed, we potted some of the prolific mint to give away to friends and created space for six small tomato plants. In the same bed, we also carved out a neat little area near the lavender for the carrots. Relieved to have got these into the ground giving them a better chance of growth and survival.

Went on a shopping binge at a Garden Centre recently and Mr Macaron who gravitates towards species exotic was trying to convince me that we should load our trolley with this plant which has flowers the size of saucers and was so irresistible to bees that the bees came along with the pot to the trolley. Turns out they are hardy and will tolerate our alkaline soil, so I had no excuse not to have them. Soon our trolley was filled with two large Papavers and three Papaver Gnomes, which as you guessed, is the smaller version of the same. I have to admit that the Papaver is most expressive flower I have seen in recent times - one of Nature's Grand Designs.

The rest of our trolley included anthemis, salvia (which harks back to my childhood days, when we had an assortment of salvia in our garden), lily-of-the-valley, digitalis, agapanthus and seeds of sedum.

So we had lots more planting to do. We also inaugurated our barbecue, though I did worry whether all the heat and smoke would scare away wildlife that our garden attracts in small measure. There are blue tits who are regular visitors to the bird feeders. Spotted a beautiful ladybird while removing weeds the other day. And we watched in fascination as a collared dove picked up bread crumbs from the bird table, carried it to the bird bath in its beak and dunked it in water to soften it. Quite like how we dunk biscuits in our tea!

There is more to do, but we are exhausted! The lawn was mowed too, I noticed. Hoping that all the new plants will take to their new home and settle in nicely with their neighbours.

Over the summer, we have plans to create a little bench somewhere, clear out the overgrowth along the south wall and plant more roses in the rose corner.

Green Bed et al

We always look forward to the viburnum display in spring - spectacular though short-lived. The viburnum stands tall in what we call our Green Bed - where most of the planting is green or white. We have an old Christmas tree in here along with lupins, ferns, fatsia and hostas. The soil here remains rather moist from all the shade and the plants seem to happily co-exist. 

Elsewhere, alliums, aquilegia and wiegela bring a touch of purple and pink. I love aquilegia, has beautiful foliage as well as well as delicately formed flowers, and like the mint, it seems to have self-propogated. 

We were away recently, driving down the coast in the Abruzzo region of Italy, when we pulled our car in front of the home of an Italian mama gardening in her front yard. She came over to the fence and told us it was okay to park our car there while we hopped to the beach across the road. Before we drove away, Mr Macaron asked if we could have her picture. Here she is, her pitch fork in hand! Bless her!  

We simply cannot postpone the dig for the veggie bed any longer. The beans and courgettes have outgrown their little pots and desperately seek space and stakes. The hanging baskets look set to bloom shortly too. And the potted rhododendron, which has remain inert for ages, has gorgeous little pink buds. More on all this next week! 

Mint Treasure

Mint really does self-propogate, as this picture demonstrates. A dear friend gave us a plant from her garden last year, advising us to plant it in a pot if we did not want it to take over the whole bed! At the time I wanted all our plants to do just that and provide some ground cover. The dried up bit in the centre of this picture is last year's mint and this spring, we have had lush new growth all around it, nicely filling up space! I will have to take some out into pots and pass them on to friends this year though, before its neighbours, rosemary and thyme, protest.