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Lyn and Malcolms Garden Blog
May 2010
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29th May 2010
Wandering round the garden with my camera today, I saw
what at first seemed to be our 'Dopey' canary, dead in the aviary.
On closer inspection the canary was not
dead. It had taken a bath, and was laying in the sun to dry, balanced on one of
the perches. How on earth it managed to balance in that position, I don't know.
To one side of our front door we have Clematis 'Josephine'. It has just started
to open it's flowers, some people like it some don't, we do.
26th May 2010
Still sunny but a cooler breeze. Quite a few summer plants
beginning to flower now, so I will show a few pictures of them.
Crinodendron hookerianum buds just about to
open.
Polemonium caeruleum
Geranim sanguineum 'Ankums
Pride'
Geranium himalyense 'Baby Blue'
24th May 2010
Another very hot day today, had to do lots of watering in
the garden.
It was refreshing tonight in the cooler air, have just come in from the Exotic
garden after taking a few pictures in the dark.
The bananas have just started to unfurl new leaves, so
look a bit bare at the moment, it is about four weeks before we have our first
private group of the year visiting the garden, so hopefully they will fill out
by then.
The next picture is of Trachycarpus fortunei with a watery moon in the
background.
22nd May 2010
It has been a very hot day today. Now that nearly all the
plants are out of the conservatory, it was time to clean the inside of the roof
and then put up the blinds which I made several years ago from old sails I just
happened to have from my dinghy sailing days. It keeps the temperature down in
the conservatory a lot.
Lily Beetle eggs
Sparaxis
Rosa cantabrigiensis
19th May 2010
I will probably upset a few gardeners now by saying, at
last Lyn has got rid of Nandina domestica 'Fire power', I never did like it, so
I am glad it has gone and been replaced by more showy plants.
Eranthis seed head
Continuing with the watering I then found seven Lily Beetles on some of the
Lilium plants. Keep a look out for these beetles as they will decimate the
foliage, total found so far this year is thirty six.
Mr or Mrs Robin
18th May 2010
I had no paid work to do today, so as Lyn was home to
help, we got most of the tender plants out of the conservatory and greenhouse
and into their homes for the summer in the "Exotic" garden. We started
at 8.45 am and finished at 6.00pm which included short stops for food and drink,
all consumed outside as it was such a lovely day. The conservatory now looks
huge.
It was good to set out the Brugmansias, not too hot a sun, otherwise it
can burn the leaves, which are not used to full sun. This applies to pretty well
all plants so go careful.
In Lyn's cottage garden, the Allium flowers are just bursting out from their
buds, Lyn has nine different Allium, don't forget you can see all the plants we
have in the garden, on our Plant
Guide
Allium hollandicum 'Purple sensation'
17th May 2010
Well there are lots of blogs around, I
thought we might be missing out, so here is our attempt.
We always have so much happening in the garden, and I often take pictures of the
plants at different times of the year. Most of those pictures are just stored on
hard disks, only we see them, a chance to share.
Down here near the south coast of the UK, the winter of 2009/2010 did not have
such cold night temperatures as the previous winter. But we suffered more broken
clay pots and damage to tender plants than normal. Much of this can be put down
to day temperatures staying below freezing for longer and failure of the
greenhouse heating on two nights didn't help, especially as that happened on the
coldest nights.
We lost our biggest Agave americana variegata and Agave americana, which
although a shame, was a sort of relief as they were getting difficult to handle
( my pierced and cut arms ) and also the difficulty of storing such large
plants. All was not lost, we have others slightly smaller to replace them.
We may also have lost the largest Hibiscus rosa-sinensis, which was over
wintered in the greenhouse near the insulated door, one one of those nights when
the heating failed, It must have got too cold for it, all the leaves eventually
fell off, and we have a bare plant, which is refusing to shoot despite the fact
that the branches are green, when a small piece of bark is removed. We will give
it a bit longer.
After having been delighted with the Spring flowers we are now in what I call
the "green time". The old leaves from the spring flowers have to die
down, and the summer flowers will soon take their place.
Lyn's front garden has had a makeover, with
all the fences and obelisks repainted in a willow green colour. It took me many
cold hours in the early spring, before the new growth from the clematis had
started, to complete that job. I also made a couple more of the tall obelisks to
replace shorter ones.
We have loads of plants we propagated last autumn, ready for our open days,
plant stall sales. And new this year for sale in the kitchen is a laminated and
bound ten page recipe book, containing ten of our best open day cake recipes.
Here are two of those pictures taken a
couple of days ago, which would have been unseen on a hard disk
Tulipa batalinii 'Bright Gem' and a new leaf
on Geranium 'Blue Sunrise'
The weather is just beginning to warm up a bit now, which has allowed us to
bring some of the Brugmansias out of the conservatory, however the nights are
still on the cool side at plus 2 or 3 degrees centigrade, higher night
temperatures in the next couple of days will mean we can bring more of the
tender plants out into the back garden, a busy time of year.
