GARDENER'S WORD - IDEAS AND TIPS

These are just a few photos of the inside of the conservatory (within the walled garden) at Temple Newsam.  I was amazed to see pelargoniums being grown so tall, as well as many other things such as passion flower which was in full fruit, hanging from above our heads.  They had trained fuchsias up long stems which led across the ceiling.  You can just see, on the right of the photo immediately below, the bare stems and then the leaves and flowers of the fuchsias higher up.  Click on the images to enlarge them.  Pelargoniums and fuchsias I knew that pelargoniums could grow tall but I have never seen anything like this before (below).  They don't appear to be the trailing kind of pelargonium.   Pelargoniums Hydrangea and other plants   Abutilon  Abutilon  Ipomoea - Blue Dawn Flower  Canna

Today, as a change from me and my roses, I am going to post photos of my day at Temple Newsam, a historical country house, walled gardens, and farm, which is just outside Leeds in West Yorkshire.  It was a wonderful breezy day out with sun and just a few light showers of rain.  Inside the house, photos were not allowed but I took quite a number inside the walled garden and conservatory (shown on a separate post).  Hope you like them but I'm sorry that the photos didn't turn out better than they did.  You can see a lot more about Temple Newsam on the link which I have added at the end of this post.  If you click on the images you will get an enlarged image.  Entrance to the walled garden Entrance to the walled garden http://www.leeds.gov.uk/museumsandgalleries/Pages/default.aspx

It has been an awful year for my tomatoes, Tumbling Toms.  I have four: three red and one yellow, and they have only just started yielding fruit.  The reason is that we have had weeks of cold and wind and rain high up on the Pennines where I live.  Sunshine alone is not enough for tomatoes, they have to have heat.  Last year was pathetic too but I had hopes for this year, hopes that it would be the same as 2010 when I had so many tomatoes off three plants that I was having to make soup with them and give them away. When you compare the above images with a photograph of one solitary tomato plant, a red Tumbling Tom, taken 8 July 2010, you can see how relatively disappointing the tomatoes have been this year.  Maybe they will get a spurt on.  Forever the optimist.

Did I mention already that I became so sick of discovering blight on my strawberries that I threw nearly all of them away?   The Sonata, the Cambridge Favourites, the Honeyoye, the Elsanta.  All gone.  It is a waste of time, space, and effort growing crops that are unhappy in this ever changing West Yorkshire, high-up-on-the-Pennines climate and it is better to spend my money on good quality fruit from the stores.  However, there was one strawberry type, just one, that remained untouched by such fungal problems and that is the perpetual flowering and fruiting one.   I had just one and it was expensive.  Last year it gave fruit but no runners.  This year it is throwing out lots of runners and I am securing them into small pots of compost to grow on.   That solitary strawberry plant has been flowering since spring and producing perfect fruits, albeit not in abundance, not yet, ever since.  ...

I couldn't help it.  Today I went to Betty's in Harlow Carr for lunch and the cafe is right where the Royal Horticultural Centre is.  As anyone who reads my posts will now know, I am mad about roses.  I want to grow some in tubs.  Around my fencing I have purposely planted roses that are not too strong in colour (so that they are like a subtle background on a painting) and I have a few white or cream ones in my border.  What I need now is a striking but complementary contrast and so, along with the recent patio roses, I have bought myself another David Austin rose, an English rose called Sir John Betjeman.  It only grows to about 2 1/2 ft - 3 ft, it says on the label, and I am hoping it will fare well in a tub.  I do realise that, although I have potted it into the largest tub I have, which is only about 15 inches deep, it will have to go into a bigger one at some point quite soon, not only to allow for the deep roots but so th...

As a thank you, someone bought me a little clematis plant in a very small pot from a supermarket.  It had no name.  It didn't take me long to realise that it was very unhappy in the pot and I didn't really have space to plant it against a fence.  All the same, I stuck it in the ground between two roses: Compassion and Princess Alexandra of Kent.  The clematis seems to be quite happy between its thorny companions and is producing flowers. I stuck a stick in front of it to try and hold it against the trellis until it managed to 'get a grip'.  It seems to managing quite well although it is only about 30cm high right now.   Please, powers that be, don't let it turn into a monster that I have to hack down to spare my roses. Somehow, I don't think it will.

Last year I found myself in a bit of a dilemma.  I grow the honeysuckle called Lonicera Scentsation and I could not decide whether I was supposed to cut off the berries to encourage new flowers or if it made no difference at all.  What I did discover is that the berries are quite beautiful.  Very red.  I have noticed that the climber is continuing to turn out new flowers at the same time as other flowers are dying back and producing berries.  Think I shall leave it alone and see what happens.   Lonicera Scentsation - flowers, buds and berries Just feel it is important to mention that I trimmed back the honeysuckle very early in the spring as it was getting out of shape.  It does not seem to have stopped it producing flowers.   Lonicera Scentsation berries http://www.shootgardening.co.uk/plant/lonicera-periclymenum-scentsation

Yesterday I took photos of my garden from a low level, a slug's eye view, so to speak: a lazy reclining view rather than a bird's eye view.   It occurred to me that you get a totally different perspective while reclining on the hammock/swing.  Speaking of slugs, I saw something this morning that really surprised me.  I was watering the hanging baskets and trough and I noticed that there was a slug dangling from the trough on a silvery thread.  It was just hanging, mid-air, swiveling and I thought it had caught itself on a spider's thread.  Apparently not.   Minutes later, when I looked again, the slug had gone.  My question is this, if a slug has to lower itself on a long gluey thread to get out of my flower trough, how did it get in the trough in the first place?  I can only assume that they arrive with the plants when I buy them from the nursery.  I shall have to watch out for that, the little suckers. A...

Although it seems to have rained relentlessly here in West (Wet) Yorkshire for months on end, it has been quite dry for the last week or so.  Dry, just at the time that I reseeded my lawn and needed the rain to germinate it.  However, as you can see from the image below, the new grass is starting to grow.  This is a tiny bald patch which occurred when I destroyed a particularly tough weed.  If you click on the image you will see that, among the older grass, new seeds have sprouted.   I've been hesitant to turn the garden hose on it as I keep expecting rain. TIP:  If you water a lawn that is already established, you have to water the ground very well, give it a good soaking.  This is to encourage the grass roots to go down into the soil for the water. When you sprinkle only enough water to wet the top bit of the soil, then the grass roots come up for the water. So what? So, when you do that and then you get a drough...

This could get boring for a lot of you, I appreciate that, my passion for roses that is.  If I had a huge garden, say the size of what they call an average garden on the television programme, Gardener's World, I might have enough variety in my garden to be a little more varied in my blogs.  I can see I might have to extend beyond my boundaries at some point.  Meanwhile, I took these very fascinating photos of the innards of roses. Champagne Moment Compassion Compassion Golden Showers New Dawn    The Generous Gardener  The Generous Gardener  Wild Eve

If you have little hovering insects in your garden that look like tiny bees or even, to you, wasps, don't kill them.  They are gardeners' friends.  They will eat decaying matter and aphids, and will pollinate your crops as they gather nectar and pollen.   Love them and leave them alone.  Hoverfly taking pollen from a pelargonium http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoverfly  Greenfly infestation - photo taken at an RHS Centre, not my garden!

I have to add this photograph to my blog.  You see, I have my hammock/swing positioned so that it gets the very last bit of the day's sunshine when the rest of the garden, all of the garden, is in shadow.  The sun reaches the swing about mid-day - naturally it depends on the time of year - and then enjoys whatever sunshine there is until the sun disappears from view.   It works out very well, I think.   Today, the sun shone on the swing until 8.05pm.  Soaking up the sunshine

For those who may doubt me when I say it is windy where I live, today is a lovely day, a day that is intermittent with cloud and sun, and there is a strong breeze.  Not a strong wind, not a gale, but just a strong breeze.   This is what it looks like here.  You can hear the wind-chime tinkling away.  And all the while, today, it is warm.  Imagine what it would be like if there were no strong breeze but just a light one?   That would be perfect, for me, if the wind were just a little less, let's say, vigorous!  I keep trying to read while lounging on my hammock/swing but the noise from the trees is really, seriously, distracting and the windchime is nearly blowing off the washing-line on which it hangs. My little bit of heaven Love lounging on my hammock/swing.  It actually folds flat into a double bed!

Because the weather has been so bad this year, with week upon week of spring and summer rain, cloud, and wind, I thought the Polka raspberries would be non-existent.  So, I am pleasantly surprised to keep finding fat and healthy fruit ripening, hidden among the canes.  Polka - a thornless variety of autumn fruiting raspberry What surprises me so much about the raspberry canes is that only a few weeks ago I thought I was going to have to dig them all out and burn them because the leaves started to get covered in rust.  Now, I don't like the idea of spraying fruit and vegetables.  If I'm going to do that well I might as well just go and buy them at the store, save a load of trouble.  So, I just cut off every single leaf that had rust on it and chucked them in a waste bin.  I made sure that I didn't miss a single leaf.  Now they have no sign of disease at all.  Wonderful.  Another thing about my Polka raspberries is ...

A few short weeks ago I bought a Golden Showers climbing rose, a David Austin rose, and planted it in my shady border.  I confess I was really worried about it because we had nothing but dull days and downpours and I thought, it can never survive this.  But, so far so good.  It has produced plenty of buds, two of which have opened very beautifully, and the leaves remain relatively healthy.  Fingers crossed. I want this climber to reach the top of the fence - which is 6ft high including trellis - where it can take advantage not only of the weak sun which manages to reach it in the afternoon when the sun is travelling westward, but it would, having reached the top of the fence, be able to get sun from the south. That's the plan. What I particularly love about this rose is the wonderful golden stamens.

I am really pleased with the result of the two troughs under my kitchen window.  Because there is a water tap there, and the wastepipe from my kitchen sink, I couldnt put a full, long trough along there.  I wanted to try and planted it so that it looked like one long trough and I think I succeeded.  On thing I have noticed in the troughs and in the hanging baskets too is that lobelia has dominated the bacopa plants.   In the troughs you can just see a bacop jutting up on the top left of the photograph (click on the image to enlarge it).  It's as if lobelia are far more vigorous.  What is so strange is that late last autumn, long after the lobelia had died back, the bacopa were still flowering.  I wonder what will happen this year.  You know, the lobelias I bought were supposed to be all white.  I bought them from a charity nursery for the disabled and it looks like some of the staff managed to get a few blue seeds in by accide...