Sun in the sky you know how I feel

It is still winter, but in a good way!

Still hunkered down, mostly. But did step out to the garden for a bit, to top up the bird food and for some tidying up around the beds.

Trusty hand Bruce came over to help with planting the roses I mentioned in the last post. Planted three bare root roses in ice cold soil, topped with a layer of frost. Lopped off the dried holly hocks stems and dried stems on the sedum.

New sprouts of sedum have grown from the base of the old stems, cute as buttons at this stage.

The warmer days have persuaded the tulips and daffodils bulbs to come up early too, but they will slow down when the weather gets colder come February.

We absolutely have to have the garden looking its best this year, through every season. Have been tipped off that Hunter's Farm is the place to go for some bargains. I saw this flower planted in large troughs in one of the public squares last October and noticed that it has remained in bloom throughout the winter. Definitely the kind of hardy colour we want in our garden. Turns out this is Polyanthus Primula, or the good ol' Primrose, and it is right on top of my shopping list, along with winter jasmine and  honey suckle.

Hunkered down for the winter

We did intend to get out and dig for England over the autumn. I got help for the some of the hard digging and created a new bed at the back of the garden. We could have lots of climbing roses there, I thought. We set off in earnest to the fancy garden centre and before long we had a trolley loaded with bulbs of all sorts, as well as the sedum  have been looking for. At the till, we realised that that we had nearly 200 bulbs of narcissi and tulips, but no  coherent planting scheme. That plus a time-starved week ahead and we decided to we put all the  bulbs back on the shelves with a plan to return the next weekend when we knew which bulbs we needed. Next weekend never came and eventually we missed yet another November with no new bulbs. A right disgrace. Anyway, I can at least share that Spring-Summer 2012 is going to see lots of tulips of the Parrot variety, not in our garden though, but most certainly in a lot of gardens up and down the country. 

The last new addition to our garden were six beautiful sedum with pink blossoms. We just about managed to plant them between days of blustery weather and very wet soil. Sedum are winter hardy and provide a carpet of ground cover, just what we need to fill up the gaps in our front bed. We did pick three bare root roses from David Austin, but they too remained potted over the winter - cannot be a good thing, but hopefully not a crime. 

On a more cheerful note, the warmer than usual November meant that the oriental poppies continued to grow and both plants appear to have established well.

We also bought some cyclamen at the garden centre at a deeply discounted price and the label said it would not last the week. A little TLC, a large pot, indoor placement and a whole month later, the cyclamen are thriving and bringing fabulous colour against the bleak hues of winter. 

Earlier on we had a sunflower bloom from a seed past its expiry date, well, a year or so past its expiry date. Should try my luck with the other seeds next year.

Last night we brought our geraniums indoors at 1.00 am, just before the next major frost. They continued their display well into December, probably confused by the warmer winter as the poppies were.





















Signing off for the year now, with a lot of promises and
plans for the next year.  Hope the birds will be fine over the winter.

Dahlia Triplet

Had to share these iconic giant dahlias! Not from our garden, but from a garden not too far away, currently gracing our kitchen!

ps: Use the skirting board in the picture as a reference to estimate the size of the florets! 

The most rewarding of 'em all

We lined our geranium pots along the path to our back garden when we brought them out of the conservatory in spring. Gave them a good prune and they promptly re-energised to yield a beautiful display. A friend who often travels to Switzerland remarked that it reminded her of Swiss Chalets with blooms spilling out of window boxes against the dark brown timber of the chalets. Very flattering, but it sort of does, doesn't it?

The geranium amaze me with how little they need by way of care and how spectacular they are. One of those great species in nature that take so little and give so much in return. No complaints against the more demanding types, it takes all sorts to fill this world!  

A beautiful display also from the crocusmia who have this casual air of elegance about them. The bulbs planted in the shade of the ceanothus have paler blooms compared to those that get more sun. Or they may just might be different varieties, who knows! The foliage is elegant too, long sword-shaped leaves with a dark green centre and paler towards the edges.

The crocusmia are special in our garden as they were the very first bulbs we planted after we dug out the flower beds. They have taken a few years to establish but the wait has been well rewarding. 

Talking of rewards reminds me of the hollyhocks. We bought two small potted plants less than 10 cm high in March this year and planted them in our front beds. Less than six months later, we have been rewarded by spires that over 7 feet high with buds and blooms along the length. The hollyhocks are now the defining feature of the front beds, bringing great sculptural value with the wine-coloured flowers, height and textured leaves.  

The Hollyhocks stand straight and tall
like captains in command. 

If they could walk, I'm sure they'd march like soldiers, 

to a band.
From 'A Day in My Garden' by Elizabeth Gest

A post on rewarding plants would be incomplete without mention of ceanothus, which has grown into a whopping big tree, now flush with lilac blooms!

A very becoming Begonia

Following on the joy of discovering that our red begonia had survived the winter, here is a picture for posterity.

Re-potting Rhodo

Rhodo, our pink rhododendron has had a rough start with us. First we planted him in the wrong soil. It was a year before placed him into a large pot with the ericaceous compost that acid-loving plants like. There would be be annual blooms which encouraged us into believing we had done right by him, but the blooms would wilt rather soon. And there seemed to be very few new leaves and new ones were very small. At one point I was counting the leaves to check if there was anything new at all.

Feeling like we had really let down this plant, we offered to re-home Rhodo to our friends' garden where it could be better cared for. However, our friends advised us to get a larger pot, water it more regularly as the soil seemed dry and to feed it. So we bought a beautiful, large, wooden barrel for a pot and a large carton of rhododendron food that weekend.

The pot was filled with more ericaceous compost, mixed with the food and ready for Rhodo. Re-potting made us realise that the original root ball had not grown at all, which was alarming in itself. How did this plant survive this long? That probably explained the small leaves and short-lived blooms, the plant was conserving all its energy just to stay alive.

A few weeks of being better fed and watered in the larger pot, and it still seemed like Rhodo's roots were still knotted tightly and the whole plant could be lifted out of this pot so easily. This time we were advised to tease out the roots so the original soil  would be shaken off and the roots would be free to grow again. Forking the root ball revealed dry and coppery roots, dreadlocked. Decided to soak the root ball in a bucket of water for a few hours so that the stubborn soil would relent.

Rhodo has now been re-potted for the nth time with some more food and hopefully this time it will all come together and he will thrive.

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.