GARDENER'S WORD

I drove over to the RHS at Harlow Carr today and had a mooch around their shop and garden centre, like I often do.  They had some lovely plants for sale but my garden is packed out with perennials and I didn't dare buy more.  They had some (what I think are) chrysanthemums in pots which are the same type as a plant which I grow in my garden.  Annoyingly, seriously annoyingly, I couldn't find any record of my plant mentioned in my blog or even the label.  Possibly somewhere hidden amid all the penstemons and what have you, there is a stray a label.  Mine, which I grow in the sunny garden border, grows in a delightfully compact bouquet-shape.  I hope to divide it at some point in the next year or two and have more of them.  Compact chrysanthemum plant in my sunny garden border - Sept 2017 Chrysanthemums in my garden - Sept 2017 I seem to have a fondness for bluish-pink and purple flowers.  Below, pot grown chrysanthemums ...

Autumn is upon us with chillier nights and mornings.  I've emptied and taken into the garden room the Smart solar-powered pitcher cascade which is not frost proof.  There are lots of things that need doing to wind up the garden for winter but I am taking it slowly, step at a time.  Today I picked more alpine strawberries.  They really are beautiful little berries.  When ripe they have such an intense, almost perfumed flavour, that I really love.  Getting to them before slugs is the challenge so I have placed my plant, which I grow in a largish pot, onto a plant trolley to keep them higher off the ground - dangling in mid air, the berries have more of a chance.  The birds seem to ignore them.  Good.  The berries are best picked when fully red and eaten straight away - lovely with breakfast cereal.   The alpine strawberry plant is fully hardy and here on the Pennine Mountains of West Yorkshire, I get flowers and fruit from late spr...

Last year I planted Buddleja davidii 'Empire Blue' and didn't take a photograph of its flowers.  Perhaps I bought it when it was not in flower.  Anyway, this year, despite there having been many flowers, I almost forgot.  Flowering has almost finished now but yesterday I remembered when it was raining and blowing a gale.  I managed to take a fairly decent shot of one of the remaining purple flowers, and a not so great photograph to try and indicate to you the rather ethereal growing habit of this delightful shrub.  The leaves are a grey green and pointy on slender branches and they sway around beautifully in the breeze.   Buddleja davidii 'Empire Blue'  This summer I have been carefully deadheading the flowers on buddleias  to promote more flowers.  Davidii are summer flowering buddleias and it is best to prune them back in early spring as they flower on growth made that same year.  If you prune them too early, like now...

A friend from Devon came up to visit me in here in West Yorkshire this week and wanted to see the charming old parsonage where the Bronte family lived in the 19th century.  Many people will know about the Brontes: about Charlotte who wrote Jane Eyre, and Emily who penned Wuthering Heights, and less well known Anne who wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.  Shockingly, perhaps, I had never been there, inside the parsonage.  So we went and the rooms were smaller than expected and in many ways quite modern.  Dare I say it?  Yes I dare.  I was more interested in the gardens, and I took some photographs with my iPhone from the shelter of the house, seeing as how it was raining cats and dogs.  I've added a couple of links for those who wish to see more about the house and the family. Statue of Bronte sisters taken from an inside window - Sept 2017 Bronte Family (Wiki link) The Brontes and Haworth (Bronte.org.uk) I can just imagine them strolling arou...

Although the internet states that it is officially autumn in the UK on 22 September 2017, the weather doesn't seem to know it.  Now I'm wondering what this winter will bring.   No, now hang on, wait a minute, because... Rainbow in West Yorkshire - image dated 01 Sept 2017 ...the UK Meteorological office (external link) kindly informs us that meteorological autumn begins on 1 September.  And astronomical autumn begins on 22 September.  We've had an on and off decent summer and the change to autumnal weather has been gradual, commencing with a nip in the air in the morning and sunshine diminishing as clouds take over during the day.  Before the rain came about three days ago, a rainbow appeared in the relatively near distance and since then it has rained spasmodically.  In a nutshell, it's miserable.  I like to keep a kind of record of the weather on my blog - when it freezes, when it's sunny, when it snows, and so on - b...