Warming up now…

flowers, plants

so the garden is starting to get some lush green (and bronze/purple) foliage to cover up the bare soil.  More spring plants are blooming while some of the early ones are over already.  The corydalis, erythroniums, and some primroses are over but still have their leaves.  The tulips, epimediums, brunnera, myosotis, pulmonaria, dicenrta, vinca, fritilari, oxalis, erica, viola, some narcissus are in flower.  The anemone blanda white put on a great show last year but was a bit lacking in flower this year.  The lilac drumstick primula and primula veris are still flowering but the primula vulgaris has stopped flowering.  The hellibores are still flowering away.  The vinca makes great ground cover and I have the major and minor ones (violet, deep purple and white varieties).  The dicentra gives great cover under the rhododendron.  I had been waiting for my epimedium grandiflorum Rose Queen to flower so I could get a good picture of it along side the tulips Mystic Van Eijk but it is flowering quite late this year.  I do have blossom on the viburnum (bodnantense dawn) but it had quite a severe prune last year I will need to wait till next year for a better show. Same goes for the Osmanthus burkwoodii.

plants,
Tulips Budlight and some larger tulips (unkown)
plants,
Tulips Mystic Van Eijk
plants,
Epimedium grandifolium Rose Queen
plants,
Epimedium grandifolium Rose Queen
plants,
Brunnera macrophylla
Oxalis acetosella (woodsorrel)
Pulmonaria Lewis Palmer

Plant sale…

plants

Saturday 5th May 2018 at the Duddingston Kirk halls 10.30 till 12.00 (Duddingston Kirk Garden Club).  Due to the lateness of spring this year  some of our suppliers don’t have the plants we were after so I have divided some of my perennials and pot them up to help the sales along.  They are all good-dooers in the garden and I have never had problems with. They include: Heucheras, Tierellas, Corydalis, Heather, Carex, Chiastophyllum, Narcissus, and possibly an Arisarum if it has leaves by then.

plants,
plants for sale

Decisions, decisions …

plants

oh what to do?  For a few years now the ivy has been growing over the walls and trellis, which at least give us something green to look at during the winter and not just bare walls, but the garden has been getting increasing shadier with the surrounding trees of our neighbours and golf course.  So in order to get a bit more light in he garden we have decided to just have the ivy grow up the walls and chop it back from the trellis.  When we moved in, we planted a Chamaecyparis lawsoniana Columnaris Glauca in the top right hand corner but has outgrown the space and has been pushing the shrubs at either side over.  It was not only blocking out a lot of light but sucking up a lot of water which was also detrimental to the shrubs.  At first we tried to raise the skirt (crown lifting) to see if that would help overcome these problems a little but last year we decided to remove it completely.  It is quite sad because I loved the tree, especially when it was covered in tiny red  male globose cones.  Now this has left the corner looking very bare, the rhododendron completely one sided, the pieris lopsided and tall and straggly, and the spirea lopsided. Even the ivy is struggling to cover the walls.  How do I prune the shrubs to get them looking good again?  Or do I just wait for a couple of years and see what happens?  Maybe shortening the pieris will encourage more side shoots – but it is getting a few new side shoots already?  What can I do with that space now – maybe put in a corner seat which would be nice in the shade?  Maybe a statue?  At the moment I have just planted some Brunera macrophylla Jack frost and Aster divaricatus between the rhododendron and pieris and I will have another think.

plants,
Chamaecyparis lawsoniana Columnaris Glauca
plants,
Pieris japonica Forest flame
plants,
bunched up shrubs
corner top right
corner top right

Warm at last…

plants, pond, stumpery

finally a warm day to loiter in the garden.  Lots of things are coming up now but only in little clumps and they haven’t quite spread out as much as I would have liked, but then I am quite impatient in the garden.  I have a few Fritillaria meleagris (snakes head) in various places but they look a bit sparse so I may have to splash out more money and buy a few more to put on a bit more of a show.  I do have some white ones but they are not quite in full bloom yet.  The Caltha palustris (marsh marigold) is looking nice and bright and it is always the first thing in my pond to flower.   I just love my mossy-grassy logs in the stumpery and I do have a favourite one right now.  It is a shame that it will just rot away so I will just have to take lots of photos of it to stick in my scrapbook.

plants,
Fritillaria meleagris
plants, pond,
Calthea palustris
Mossy-grassy log
plants, stumpery, moss,
Mossy-grassy log
plants, stumpery, moss,
Mossy-grassy log

Patio chit chat…

patio

I do love watching  the birds in the garden so I always have bird food out for them.  This of course can get a bit messy when they poop every where, especially the pigeons, so every day I hose down the patio and small wall, empty their water and clean their water dish.  I do wish they wouldn’t poop in their water dish! But sometimes I have a bit more than that to clean up.  After a lot of rain I sometimes go out and find they have pulled out the moss/lichen/liverworts up from in between the paving slabs to get at the worms and grubs lurking in there, or they have ripped out the moss from the top of my plants to add to their nests.  They may have even been tossing out the dead leaves from the guttering and dropped them over the patio.  Messy things birds.  I give them a wee hand with their nest building by putting the dog’s hair, that I have brushed out, into an old pudding basin holder.  I don’t often see them gathering it up but I did catch a glimpse of a coal tit stuffing some into it’s beak the other day.  I put a cloche over the patio trough so it wouldn’t get too wet over the winter with all of the rain we have had and my Saxifraga x urbium looks a bit odd.  A long time ago I miss-heard the name my mum used for this plant so I have always called it Nancy pretty.  My mum was actually saying none-so-pretty, but it is also known as London pride.

patio,
lichen and liverwort pulled up by the birds
coal tit, birds, patio,
Coal tit with beak full of dog hair.
Patio,
Moss pulled out by the birds

patio, plants,
Strange Saxifraga

Rain, rain, rain…

conservatory, flowers, plants, raised bed, stumpery

sleet, and then more rain!  My goodness when will we ever get into spring proper?  I am not venturing out over the grass in the garden as it is like a very soggy sponge at the moment but there is a bit of sunshine and some sturdy plants flowering.  Before the Acer  (palmatum dissectum Garnet) are clothed in leaves, creating dense shade, there are a few Chionodoxia in bloom but they are taking a very long time to naturalize so are looking a bit sparse at the moment.
I moved the Dens-canis (Erythronium) from the raised bed to the stumpery area as the large fern in the raised bed completely smothered them.  They look really pretty in front of the drumstick primula and I hope they will make a nice clump fairly soon.
I am trying to dig out all of the Ornithogalum out of the small bed out the front where my lavender is as the leaves have a similar habit to bluebells , where they fall to the sides and cover up anything under them and, as they go over and turn brown, look very tatty coming through the woody stems of the lavender.  So I potted them up in the conservatory for the time being just to make sure all the little bulbs were indeed Ornithogalum and not mixed together with snowdrops.  They were sold to me as nutans but I think they may actually be umbellatum instead.

flowers, raised bed,plants,
Chionodoxa luciliae
flowers, plants, stumpery,
Dens-canis snowflake and Primula denticulata
plants, flowers, conservatory,
Orinithogalum umbellatum and violas

Happy and sad…

front garden, plants

I don’t do very much with the front garden but last year I noticed that the Mahonia has some powdery mildew on it so I took off most of the affected leaves and cut back some of the top growth.  It still doesn’t look very happy although it will be flowering very shortly and I might just pull off the poorly looking leaves, give it a feed, and see what happens.   The daffs look just fine though.  I think these are called King Edward but I lost the label years ago.  The clumps need dividing so I can fill the gaps.

front garden, plants,
Mahonia
front garden, plants,
King Edward

Bulbs and …

conservatory, flowers, plants

It is a lovely day here again and there is some pretty colours in the conservatory.  I planted a few daffodils (Pontresina) in a pot to bring indoors so they are in flower now whereas the outdoor ones will be a while yet.  The little blue bulbs are Puschkinia libanotica, which were free when I bought my tulips, from Bloms bulbs last year.  Some of which came up flower first yet others came up leaves first.  There is a little viola, cyclamen and a cactus too in this picture.

conservatory, plants,

Hens and chicks…

conservatory, flowers, plants

no not chickens but houseleeks or in other words Sempervivum ‘Reginald Malby’ to be precise.  I bought one last year at a charity stall planted up in an old tuna fish tin and it had a central plant with lots of little ones surrounding it.  I split it up and planted all the little ones and gave them to friends and family and kept a couple back for myself.  I planted then individually in tiny pots and this is one of them sending out runners with the little chicks on the end.  It looks really cute from above.

I noticed a few days ago that the frogs have finally surfaced and we have a few blobs of frog spawn in the pond. Trouble is, it is exactly where the birds like to bathe so I hope the birds don’t disturb them too much.

conservatory, plants, flowers,
Sempervivum ‘Reginald Malby’

Sparrowhawk woohoo…

birds, wildlife

So I haven’t been out much in the garden for a few weeks due to the snow.  It only snowed for a few days and lay for a few days but is has been pretty darn cold.  It looked almost the same as it did in the winter of 2010/2011 so I didn’t take any more photos of the snow.  Today though I spotted the sparrowhawk and this time is sat on the fence for a good 10-15 minutes – enough for me to race through and grab my camera.  It was too far away for a good closeup, and it was through the mucky window, and the sun was creating glare on the window too but I took the shot anyway.  It had it’s left leg tucked into it’s breast feathers and only put it down to fly away.  Now the garden is just soggy so I will wait for a while yet before doing much.  The frogs should be making an appearance about now and a few more bulbs too.  Bring on some decent sunshine and warmth.

birds, wildlife,
Sparrowhawk