GARDENER'S WORD

My geraniums came from plants pulled up from a friend's garden.  I knew I was getting pink and blue but I didn't know which plant was which when she put them together in a bag.  So, I planted them all together and I think they make a lovely contrast.  They grow at the lowest part of a north-facing border, where it is shady and damp in the not-too-glorious position next to the dustbin.  They really do look pretty.  I think they look so much better grown together.  However, the geraniums were swamping a clematis, Arctic Queen, which seemed to dislike the spot I had given it, facing north, and so a few days ago I dug it up and put it in a big plastic container.  I am babying it along.  When I dug it up the new shoots that were struggling to come out of the ground were only a couple of inches long when the plant should have reached to the top of the 6ft fence and been in full bud.  Here you can see what a difference a move makes.  I'm...

Compassion is a climber and a lovely rose.  I'm training mine to arch over a gateway but it will be another year or so yet before it makes it.  I have to train it quite high so that it doesn't attack any visitors coming through the gate although it isn't very thorny.   Compassion is an RHS award winner, the flowers can be cut for the home, it is quite healthy although mine did have an attack of mildew last year from which it has recovered and it's now throwing out really robust shoots from the base which I love to see.  All these flowers emanate from one stem!   It's a Harkness bred rose (1972), an apricot blend with a very strong fragrance.   One of its parents is Prima Ballerina (the other 'White Cockade') which I discussed in a post yesterday.  Compassion has received the Royal Horticultural Society 'Award of Garden Merit in 1993, as well as t he Royal National Rose Society Edland Fragrance Medal of 1973; Best Clim...

Be kind to bees.  Even if you only have a tiny space outdoors, grow something in a pot that flowers and gives pollen or nectar to bees.  They are more important than some might think.  I once read that it was no good growing honeysuckle for bees because they cannot access the pollen.  Rubbish!  Look at this bee having a great time on my honeysuckle (Lonicera Scentsation).  Once the flowers open up fully the bees manage to collect all the pollen they want.  Also, honeysuckles are loved by moths although few of us get to see that, when they come out at night.  You probably didn't notice that this bumble bee has an orange bum!   (Click on the images for a closer look).  See?   Some of the bees in my garden have white bums.  Check my other post.  Save our Humble Bumble Bees The British Beekeepers Association kindly provide a list of plants that bees love.  www.bbka.org.uk 　 http://www...

I don't think I mentioned that I bought a floribunda called Margaret Merril.   It is considered a white rose, although I would say it is creamy with an apricot centre and looks rather like another rose of mine, Champagne Moment.  Margaret Merril, however, is supposed to have a far stronger fragrance.  I think it will also be nice when cut and used in the home.  Margaret Merril (c) David Austin Margaret Merril is supposed to have a strong and exceptional fragrance.  Great!  What more could I ask for than a beautiful rose with a fragrance to match.  By comparison, my new rose of the year 2006 Champagne Moment has a light fragrance.  I have also discovered that it might be much taller than the 2ft it said on the label.   Caveat emptor and all that!  But still, it is rather lovely. I think I did a dumb thing.  I intended to buy a rose that I had grown before, many years ago, a very prolific and so fragrant f...

I bought three small pots of stocks today and have planted them in my garden.  I haven't grown them for years but I cannot resist white, fragrant plants.  While I pushed my garden centre trolley around, the scent was nearly knocking my head off!  They should be lovely in the garden.  They are grown as annuals and, really, it would be much more economical to grow them from seed but these were purchased on an impulse.  One of the pots of stocks, planted I understand that once the flowers are done, I can cut them off and more flowers will appear.  A once flowering plant never interests me so I am looking forward to seeing these bloom right through summer.  While white is not particularly my favourite 'colour' (I know, white is not a colour) I do like it in my garden as they light up at dusk when coloured flowers fade to grey and disappear.  I also bought a hardy herbaceous perennial today called Brunnera Macrophylla 'Jack Frost'.  I...

There's no better pick-me-up like adding to my family of garden plants.  Today I have bought a new rose, an Award Winner called Champagne Moment.  It's a bush rose which, arguably, only grows 24" x 24", is very fragrant and a floribunda so it is a prolific flowerer.  I just had to have it.  For a couple of years now my attempt at growing vegetables has been thwarted by dismal weather and so I am turning to herbaceous perennials, annual flowers, and roses instead to fill up my borders.  Vegetables, if I bother, will be confined mostly to tubs and pots. Champagne Moment Hardly surprising this was the rose of the year winner in 2006.   Champagne Moment Champagne Moment in full bloom Champagne Moment new leaf - macro photography Roses hardly ever let me down except for the common nuisances such as aphids, mildew, blackspot and rust which are all easily remedied with a chemical spray.  One particularly taxing problem I...

I could never be an agricultural farmer.  When I saw what the wind and lashing, horizontal rain was doing to my garden yesterday, when I saw what it had done on inspection today while the wind was still blowing strong, it made my heart hurt.  Some of the raspberry canes have been almost dragged out of the ground, the leaves are battered, the embryo fruits damaged.  Two of my climbing roses have broken in the wind - Aloha and New Dawn.  The polytunnel which I bought early April has turned out to be a load of rubbish and a waste of money (it tears too easily and it seems as if the plastic shrinks in sunny heat - what sunny heat? you might ask!), and it has ripped in three places so it will not see another year.  The tomato plants that were harbouring within the confines of the polytunnel are smashed out of shape and I wonder if they will revive, and part of the loganberry vine was ripped from the fence.  At the front, of my house, rose blooms have n...

The trough under my window which, more or less, faces the sun is doing well.   I did rather pack in the plants but they seem happy enough.  There are pelargoniums, trailing pelargoniums, and white trailing lobelia, all fighting to outshine each other.  While they are not yet in full bloom, they are coming along nicely and I can see them from my living room window.  Sunny trough - 21 June 2012 Sunny trough - 21 June 2012

Despite the appalling weather, or because of it, the Lonicera Scentsation is doing sensationally as is the loganberry vine.   Both are churning out flowers or berries.  At least something is happy about our English summer.  It is the first day of summer today, rainy and miserable and I do hope that this isn't the way it means to continue.    Centre - Lonicera Scentsation To the right of the above photo is a climbing rose called Aloha.  To the left is the well known climbing rose, New Dawn.   You can just see at the far left of the photo, climbing up towards the trellis, the jasmine officinale which has taken off this year.  Took it long enough!  It's been growing since 2010 and hasn't flowered yet.  But it's all my own fault.  I planted it in a north facing aspect and they like full sun.  I reckon once it gets to the top of the fence it might be happy because it will get sun from the south th...

The idea is, at the front of my home, to have a long bed of glorious yellow Arthur Bell roses.  Unfortunately, I miscounted how many I would need when I first planted them and needed to buy another.  I bought another, except it had the wrong label on it and now it has flowered I see it is no Arthur Bell at all but an imposter.  What is so odd is that the buds look exactly the same as those of Arthur Bell - yellow with a tinge of orange.  What is rather wonderful is that, although the rose is the odd one out, it is an absolute beauty!   I might need to move it and put in an Arthur Bell in time but I won't be giving it away or throwing it away.  I wonder what its name really is.  Arthur Bell - 21 June 2012  Arthur Bell - 21 June 2012  Unknown rose - 21 June 2012  Unknown rose - 21 June 2012 The unknown rose reminds me very much of a rose I used to grow in a garden many years ago, called Just Joey but I know it isn't that one...

It is a while since I posted on my gardening blog.  Apart from things rotting, going bad, going mouldy, turning to slime and so forth in my garden, there has been nothing much to say.  Except!  Except the strawberries have botrytis and are producing mostly inedible fruit, the cucumber plants have drowned in their pots, the buds on David Austin's 'William Morris' rose are dropping off before opening because they are saturated, and this dreadful, consistant rainfall is driving me nuts.   Today I cheered myself up by buying another rose for my garden in the hope it will do well.  It is another David Austin rose called Golden Showers, a fragrant, repeat flowering climber which is suitable for a north facing aspect.  It is to replace the clematis 'Arctic Queen' which, although it is showing new shoots struggling out of the ground, is not happy where it is facing north.  It should, by now, be covered in white flowers, however, it died back to the...

While gardening has its joys in abundance, it brings along disappointments too.  We've had the wettest April in 100 years this year, it was heading for the coldest May until we had some sunshine towards the end of it and June, so far, has been well below average temperatures for June.  And rain!  We've had enough rain to float the Ark up here on the Pennine Mountains of West Yorkshire.  Wet Yorkshire.  My strawberries are showing signs of botrytis.  The idea was that I would shelter them so that they would not be set back by the weather but no matter how much ventilation they have had, they couldn't fight the dampness in the air.  The tomatoes, on the other hand, which were kept in the polytunnel with the strawberries, have come out fighting fit.  Perhaps I shouldn't speak too soon. Tumbling Tom Red Tumbling Tom Yellow I noticed last year, and this, that Tumbling Tom Yellow has a slightly different growth habit.  Lankier....

Rainfall certainly does make a difference to a garden that has been surviving on tapwater for a week or so.  I think the nitrogen that comes naturally with the rain must give it a boost.  But, also, the lawn feed, weeder, moss-killer (Evergreen Complete) that I put down last week must have made an enormous difference too.  The heavy rain we had all yesterday must have washed it into the grass's roots good and proper!  There is still a small problem of clover though which is a resistant little survivor of a plant.  Ok if you want a lawn of clover but I don't.  I think it will have to be cut out with a sharp knife as the clover lays quite flat, under the mower's blades, and spreads by way of tough little runners.  Some people actually have lawns of clover although I am not sure if they always realise it! The hanging baskets have taken to the rain and I have pierced the black plastic in places for fear the plants might drown.  I always pi...