Month: September 2012
Greetings from the sunny south east. We’re having another lovely week. I’ve taken some pics of the ‘Hot Chocolate’ roses I purchased in the Arboretum on my day trip to Carlow. Hot Choclolate is a lovely deep redish brown rose and I’ve planted them beside other reds. One will be growing up beside Cotinus Grace, the other is surrounded by my favorite grass Imperiata Cylndrica and the persicaria red dragon I got recently in Cosy Meadows. I love my reds.
Rachel gave me this Hedychium earlier in the year and advised me to position it in the brightest possible place indoors until the temps warmed up. However, bright positions are a bit limited here in winter/early spring months. And over time, the stems started to rot away. I was disgusted, as it was a plant I had really sought out.
But as soon as the temperatures became more reliably warm, I put it out into the greenhouse and it steadily improved. It did have a short spell outdoors, but it’s now back in the greenhouse. It looks nice and healthy now, but no sign of a flower. I can wait. Even if I have to wait until next year. Thanks again, Rachel.
This manicured garden came in at number two on my list of favourites.
Built in 1989, my book describes this one as a mixture of styles, including English, but a good example of a modern French garden. It is privately owned and has won a list of French garden prizes.
Again, the thinking was to build a garden to enhance the beautiful château which the garden surrounds.
The garden consists of a series of ‘rooms’ and displays elements which we know and love – neatly clipped hedging, immaculately edged borders, dense planting and strong emphasis on contrasting leaf shape and size.
I had a hurried one hour to visit, being ushered through by my teenage son who was determined we would not miss our boat. I am so glad I didn’t miss this impressive garden.
No, I’m not giving you mine. Just letting you see what you have to look forward to. Brilliant plant.
This grass was looking great to day in the sunshine.
Given to me last year by Bill (Headgardener) as a baby, it is over 2m high and still growing.
Five healty new shoots have appeared over the last few weeks, so all is looking well for this grass clumping up in no time at all.
Like Dick I also enjoyed a good day in the garden today. The morning was changeable so i was ducking in and out between the showers, but the afternoon was brilliant! The sun brought the butterfly population out in force and one of the unexpected benefits from my new Sedum Bed is the huge increase in the numbers of these beautiful visitors to my garden! Passing that bed i was surrounded by a virtual cloud of them!
I got the Cosmos all deadheaded and tidied up, and then moved on to the “Inspiration” bed – the one full of gifts from my .ie friends! This bed had pretty awful soil to start with, and I dug in my entire compost heap when it was being planted up. Subsequently I gave it a bit of a top dressing of peat compost. A few weeks ago I spread some fresh shreddings on it but they dried out too much.
I have a tool that I find very useful – see photo – called a “stand up tiller” that is great for lightly turning over the top of beds so I used it to tackle that bed. (It is ideal because I could use it without straining the poor wrist) It worked very well to start digging in the shreddings. I was surprised to see how the soil in that bed has improved and I’m hoping that when the worms do their stuff it will finally be decent soil!
I’m having visitors this weekend and since the front garden is still a mess, I’d like to have the back looking as neat as possible!
If they are on a rockery they are fine for a few years but then they get very big-Im talking about your normal bog ordinary fern that looks magical in the scrub. Today as i was laboriously weeding the rockery I felt they had taken over. More a fernery than a rockery so I took them out-not an easy task. There are few things as stubborn as a fern that has spent four or five or more years getting in under a rock. It refuses to be budged. But budged it was or most of it!
Then again the danger of a rockery is that Scrubber is tempted to reset a stone here or there! Or hollow out a little cave so that he can set something, not a fern- into it. However today there was very little resetting done but lots of weeding and deferning.
I did feel a bit guilty cutting back the lavender as there were still bees and butterflies coming to it but i think theres enough other flowers for them at present and the Rockery was wild. I couldnt see the rocks for growth. Ive put up my three pictures. They are not good as there was no sunshine to lift them but they show how it has been cleared. And the ferns are not missed!
This pot of geraniums is revelling in the last couple of weeks of sunshine. They stayed outside last winter so deserve their day of glory!
We had rain on Monday and I was pleased at that as the ground was so dry for perhaps over a week. Now the weather has improved, dry yesterday but cool. To day the temperature rose again and I was pleased to be attired for it in the front garden. The rockery has reached a state that I didn’t expect. I thought at one stage that I might require more plants but mainly due to the rain in June and July, they have grown so much that some of them have to be removed and put some place else. The Geraniums and Geums have really outgrown. One Geum (Mrs. Bradshaw) was transplanted, so also one geranium was divided. Some ground was dug, and some of the Antirrhinums which gave great service, were removed. It has been a case for years that I had plenty of space and needed plants to fill the same. Now it is the reverse so when we meet again like in Johnstown in January, I should have quite a lot of plants to give out. The Yuccas are coming up by the new time. I have a third Phal orchid in bloom now, a small one. Every day new flowers are appearing. I will show them when they are similar to those of Myrtle. While it was warm to day it got cold quite early.
The garden, around the medieval castle, was designed and built in the 1920’s and today it is still privately owned
We all loved this beautiful garden, alive with frogs, lizards, butterflies and dragon flies, and spent a leisurely three hours there. It was very Mediterranean in feel, with lots of water and stone and, of course, the magnificent topiary.
Note the four clumps of lotus in the main pond! Apparently a major achievement, considering the garden’s northerly position. The great Christopher Lloyd tried, with expensive underwater heating, to grow Lotus and failed where Château le Pin has succeeded.
Today is a day for deadheading. I’ve hurt my wrist so no “real” gardening is allowed at present. At this time of year there is just such a variety of plants all begging to be tidied up so they can give us their last burst of colour.
My Cosmos have gone totally ape this year with all the rain – they are in the new bed near the Coffee Corner and are truly the best value for a packet of seeds with oodles of flower buds still to open. they got bashed about a bit so lots of the stems are lying over but once they are stilll attached they just keep on flowering! I actually had to thin them out a bit because they are smothering everything else in that bed!
the sweetpeas are also still giving of their best but need to be deadheaded every day at this stage …
And then there are the Dahlias!!! I am so proud of them this year as they are plants I grew from seed last year and kept over the winter. deadheading them is a pure joy with the bees and butterflies keeping me company. This little beauty seems to have taken on a faint pinkish hue that I didn’t notice earlier….
Rain is stopped now so back out with the secateurs again …. 🙂
We are trying to put together a garden trail in this region. There was a Limerick one before, but it fell by the wayside and died a death. So with the full backing of Ballyhoura Failte, we are hoping to get one up and running for 2013. If anyone has ideas or suggestions please let me have them! This is a press release going out to local and regional media this coming week.
How Green are your Fingers? – The Ballyhoura Garden Trail
Recognised internationally as one of the best Regions in Ireland for its range of Trails open to the general public, Ballyhoura Failte once again takes this opportunity to strengthen its visitor attractions in the area with a comprehensive new Garden Trail
Expressions of interest are now sought for the owners of gardens to participate in this new initiative for the Ballyhoura Region
Do you own or can you recommend a garden that fits any of the following
- Manicured Garden
- Award Winning
- Encourages Wild Life
- Appeal to the Gardening Enthusiast
- Include restored historic / old buildings
- Privately or Publicly owned
- Specialist Nurseries
- Award Winning Garden Centre
- Forest Park
The garden can be open on specific days or by appointment only.
The new Garden Trail will provide a unique opportunity to showcase some of the finest private & public gardens in the Ballyhoura region of North Cork, East Limerick & South Tipperary to Visitors
Ballyhoura Failte will fully support participation in the Garden Trail
Please contact Fergal Somers, Manager, Ballyhoura Failte, Kilfinane 063 91300
Email – fsomers@ballyhoura.org
I thought you might all be saturated with French gardens so I’d give it a break tonight.
But check out this cool idea I saw in a French Garden Centre.
Okay, imagine vertical wall planting (all the rage now)!
But imagine, you don’t have to go to that much trouble!
Here is the solution.
It’s like a picture that you hang on your wall. But it’s made of plants!
The frame is a few inches deep (to allow for watering, moisture retention etc) and the plants are easy ones. I saw many common house plants, Tillandsia and Saxifraga stolonifera used.
Okay, there are lots of questions. Like, how often are you going to have to adjust that artistic arrangement! But I thought it was dead cool and a great idea.
I’ll wait for the price to come down though before I buy a small one at €70!
When you buy a plant and it is flowering, then 4 months later it is still flowering you know your on to a winner.
Alstromeria andez vanilla is still producing flowers, 4 months later,
that’s what I call a winner ;-))
I know some of you could not figure out the idea behind planting ferns like this.
But from the time I planted these up I have done nothing to them, but look and admire.
They are coming on great, one seems to be struggling/slower than the rest so may need to move it.
Once again Matin, thank you.
This is the biggest of my selfseeded (or self spored) Shuttlecock Ferns.
Really pleased with these, thanks Pal.
A great trill in a day or two when I pot this one up to keep safe over the winter.
I got this sedum in Mount Venus at the end of March, and it has turned out to be a really nice one, with dark green leaves and white flowers and red stems. It only produced 4 stems this year (it was tiny when I got it) but hopefully it will be bigger next year. The only problem is that I have forgotten its name and cannot find the label… I have a spreadsheet with plants names, and I must keep it updated!
A chill in the air tonight but still a bit of colour lingering in the borders
Can you help me with the the Id of this please – it came in the same pot as another plant from Huntingbrook so i repotted it and it has really come on – A Euphorbia of some kind ?
I was out for a walk the other day and spotted this garden, in the making, just down the road from us so back l went with the camera to-day. The Dry River is made with blue chippings sunk in cement and is very effective.
Ooooh, loving stir-fries with these ‘Cayenne’ chilipeppers, added to the other vital ingredients. Only one plant and, having picked them regularly over the last two weeks, there are still about 30 or more to go.
thats all i have been up to the last two days and i still have loads to do, the small pots are taking more time once these are done the bigger ones will take less time.it is a very laxy daisey job really, because it is cooler and wetter i am using the old method of the barrel in the tunnel where it is cosier and listening to the radio what more could you ask for????. i am trying to get hubby to make a frame for my sink and then i can put it in the tunnel at the back door and a pipe to take the water out, he said he will so fingers crossed.
there is definately a chill in the air these days brrrr, went out to check on the front to see was anything else flowering but quickly came in again.
thinking of galavanting to a few garden centres on friday was supposed to do it on sunday but had no money so didn t bother
What wonderful ferns are the Polypodiums. Will tollerate dry and sun and spread a bit. A bit late to come into frond but will see you through the winter.
One of my rare successes from seed
