The importance of evergreens in the winter garden.

26/01/2020evergreens, plantsJackie Elwin

I hate seeing just a load of brown in the garden at this time of year, it is so dismal when the quality of light isn’t great either. Now that the perennials are closing down for the winter there are a lot of bare patches in the garden so it is nice to have some ‘greenery’ that lasts all year round. (For the sake of argument I am using the term ‘evergreen’ to describe a plant that is not deciduous ie. it keeps it’s leaves on throughout the year. They may not necessarily be green.) Not only do evergreens provide a focal point, when you scan the garden your eyes jump form one focal point to the next rather than to the bare earth, but they also help to form structure in the garden. They are good for the wildlife, not only by providing some protection from the harsh winter weather, but also protection from predators. Often people think of evergreens as being just shrubs, but there are plenty plants that are classed as evergreen that are not shrubs. They all give the garden some much needed colour during the dull, grey, winter days. In my garden the winter colour of the evergreens comes from a variety of plants: a few different types of ivies adorning the ugly walls, golden grasses, gold and green holy, berberis, purple huecheras, carpets of dark green cyclamen foliage, periwinkle, epimedium foliage, mahonia, privet hedge, mosses, ferns, hellebores, osmanthus, rhododendron, pieris, chiastophylum, saxifrages, hebe, tree heath, heather, some succulents, and rosemary to name a few. Don’t forget the lawn! Many gardens now have lots of decking and slabbing and can look very drab and dead, but even just a small lawn can add a touch of evergreen life.
There are some plants which are classed as semi-evergreen, which means they may hold onto their leaves in mild winters but shed them if the weather gets too cold. And just to confuse things there are some plants that hold onto their dead leaves during winter but shed them once the new growth starts such as beech trees. As far as I know beech is not classed as evergreen because the leaves they hold onto are dead.

Ferns, epimedium, chiastophylum, purple heuchera, and ivy.

Ferns, moss, grasses, hellebore, osmanthus, ivy, and periwinkle

Of course colour in winter can also come from non evergreen plants too. There are pink flowers on the bare branches of viburnum right now, as are the fiery orange flowers of the witch hazel. There are sporadic pink flowers on the hebe, some of the hellebores are about to flower, and the corkscrew hazel catkins are forming, The bark of my neighbour’s silver birch is very bright and silvery, as are the papery white honesty seed heads. The spring bulbs are just popping through – the snowdrops will be the first to flower in my garden. One plant that has amazed me though by still being in flower in January is the lychnis ‘white robin’. I have 3 little pots of it on my patio table waiting for me to plant them and they look superb just now.

Lychnis, flos – cuculi alba white robin.

Parakeet visitor.

28/12/2019birds, parakeet, wildlifeJackie Elwin

So Christmas is over, I do hope you all had a happy festive time. A few good days with unusually mild weather has certainly brought the squirrels out to play. They are digging in ever plant pot, and pulling out the cyclamen and other small bulbs, and generally being a bit of a pest. Harry put chicken wire over some pots to protect them from little paws, but it can’t really be done over some other pots. It doesn’t look very attractive but it does work.
We did get a rather noisy, colourful visitor over the last few days – a green parakeet! I don’t know if he/she is an escapee from somewhere near, or if it is one of those that have now found a home in Edinburgh. Apparently they originated from the foothills of the Himalayas so they have acclimatised well to living in the UK. So far, I have seen him eating the last few berries of the Rowan tree, and either the buds or flowers (or both) of the Viburnum. He has been getting mobbed by the crows, jackdaws and magpies but he doesn’t seem overly bothered by them. I did read somewhere that in areas where there are flocks of these noisy parakeets, the chattering and vocabulary amongst the other bird species increases. We shall see (or hear). As much as it is nice to see him, I don’t fancy have a flock of them around, making a racket and eating everything in sight.

Green parakeet eating Rowan berries

Green parakeet eating Viburnum buds or flowers (or both)

And cue the rain…

02/12/2019ferns, frostJackie Elwin

well we did have a couple of beautifully sunny, but freezing days here, but now it is back to the drizzly rain. The poor wildlife, the pond and bird bath were frozen over so I have to keep taking out fresh water for them. I do hope my frost-proof terracotta pots will be ok – we have had so much rain that most of my pots are waterlogged despite some of them being on little feet, or under the bench or table. As much as I detest being cold, I love taking frosty photos, so out I go, wearing loads of layers to brave the chilly weather just to take some snaps – so here are just a few. The sun is low at this time of year so a lot of the garden gets no sunshine at all, but when it does hit the frost, it twinkles. The frost crystals on the saxifrage are so long that it makes the normally flat rosettes of leaves look positively fluffy.

frosty fern

frosty saxifrage

sunburst on frost

low sun on frosty branches

frost on rose

low sun on hair fern

Cold and frosty mornings…

20/11/2019frost, plantsJackie Elwin

can make for photo opportunities. The temperatures have been down to -3 C early morning for the last few days and it is just mid November. I really hate being cold but I quite like macro photography so the frosty mornings always look like a great opportunity to take some macro shots of ice crystals. Not only do I shake with the cold, but I have found there is a lot of camera shake just pressing the shutter button so I have been trying out using my mobile phone as a remote control (my mirrorless Sony alpha 5100 doesn’t have a space for one). It works ok but isn’t that great, and I also find that I just can’t get into the best position to take the shot I want. I did however get a couple of good shots of frosty crystals. Need more practise.

Heath and his friend Cobis (sp?) very kindly came round to move the rhododendron for us the other day. It is now in the right hand, back corner (where the Chamaecyparis used to be) and it looks much better already and really fills that corner. They also planted the new Enkianthus campanulatus to the left of it. The Pieris japonica Forest flame, to the right, will get a good prune once it has flowered in the spring, as it has gone into a weird shape and is very top heavy. It has loads of flower buds just now so I would like to enjoy the flowers first if these frosts don’t damage them. I now have a lot of planting space at the front of that border, so I need to think about how I am going to fill it up. That area gets some sun in the morning but is in deep shade by the golf course trees by noon. The tree canopy also means is can get a bit dry there in the summer. In winter once the leaves have fallen the area enjoys more rain.

Next on the ‘to do’ list is to sort out the congested areas by the pond, so, Rosie from Watergems is coming round to see exactly what needs to be done.

Frosty Leptinella squalida Platt’s black

Frosty Saxifraga umbrosa

Frost crystals close up

Rhododendron moved

It’s raining again…

05/11/2019slugs, wildlifeJackie Elwin

so I have been indoors pottering about in the conservatory and tending to my house plants rather than braving the cold and very soggy garden. I managed to over-water one of my peace lilies so I separated the plants, dried them off, and have replanted so hopefully I have saved at least one of them. I have cut back the straggly looking mint, and have taken the yellowing leaves from the parsley plants. The greenfly are still around so I check my plants almost daily to make sure I keep on top of any potential infestation. Now I don’t normally move my cactus plants (for fear of dropping them on my lap!) but I wanted to make sure I hadn’t over-watered them too. I am glad I did as nestled at the base of one, was a clump of slug eggs. I have been trying to take better, or at least more interesting photographs lately, and am using an app (AYWMC) to help me with this. The exercise this week is to use an editing program and play about with the different editing tools so I used the slug eggs for my exercise. It was fun but I may have overdone the editing. They were in a string but by the time I had faffed around with placing them at different angles and with different lighting and backing, some of the strings broke. I found a separate egg that had an embryo showing through the transparent casing.

a string of slug eggs

slug egg with embryo

A few days without rain… yeah!

20/09/2019butterfly, wildlifeJackie Elwin

We had a lovely day day of sunshine yesterday and today is warm and sunny too. Sadly that won’t last but at least it has been nice weather to do some gardening in. I have been ripping out a few old rather scraggy looking ferns that were just filling some space until I got some new plants. So some lovely new ferns have now been planted out, some of them have coppery tones, some are small spreading ones, one is silvery coloured and one is for a hole in the wall. Can’t wait to see how they come on next year. I really wanted to tackle the viburnum bodnantense dawn as some of the older stem/trunks are very gnarled and really aught to come out but I will have to be patient and do that late winter/early summer after it has had it’s main flowering season.
I finally managed to get a quick snap on my phone camera of the Speckled wood butterfly. Wow are they flighty! I have spotted quite a few speckled woods this year and as far as I know they have green caterpillars. I also spotted a Grey dagger moth caterpillar (just molting it’s skin I think). It brings back childhood memories of when I used to sit beneath our very small tree in our back garden, with my collection of these these bright caterpillar on my face! I know it was a strange thing to do, but at least I put them all back where I found them.

Pararge aegeria (speckled wood butterfly)

Acronicta psi (Grey dagger moth) caterpillar

More of the same…

02/09/2019UncategorizedJackie Elwin

sunshine and showers. For the last couple of months it has been showery weather, but you never know if you are going to get a quick sprinkle of a shower, or a heavy ninja shower. Some parts of the garden are moist, whereas the areas under the tree canopies are so dry they are cracking up. I am going to have to get the hose out even in the rain! Lots of plants going over now but some are hanging on.

It was the Duddingston Kirk Garden Club Annual Flower Show at the weekend and it was a great day. Jolly hard work but worth it all in the end. Back in April I photographed my streptocarpus and button fern plants and some snails. I entered those at the show and woohoo…the streptocarpus won 1st prize in that class, and the button fern won 1st class in the foliage pot. My pot of leaf celery won the pot of herbs class, and the snail photo got me 2nd prize in the photography class. I also got a prize for my handicraft but did not do very well on my vases of perennials, vase of foliage, and single rose. It was nice to see the riot of colour of all the entries for the floral art and vases of flowers.

Early one morning in august, I took a quick snap, with my phone camera, of a couple of foxy visitors. I always like to see them in the garden. They don’t come into the garden very often now. I haven’t been quick enough to get good photos of the butterflies, but again, I got a quick snap, with my phone camera, of a peacock butterfly as it rested on the path in front of me. All those lovely flowers and it settles on the path.

I have been trying to get to grips with my mirror-less camera so took various shots of a cactus flower as it went from bud to full flower. These flowers go over very quickly, sometimes lasting just a day, but they smell absolutely wonderful, filling the whole conservatory with scent just from one single flower. I have only ever had 2 flowers on the same cactus at one time. The hoya bella has strange little flowers that feel quite waxy and give a lovely scent, but he petals look almost furry. Previously I had a hoya bella that was quite compact and I hung it up so that I could see the flowers that dangle facing downwards. but I was given this one which is more like a triffid with only a few very long stems and not many flowers. I am not sure what to do with it really – I could wrap the long stems around a frame I guess. The cyclamen in the conservatory are starting to wake up and flower now. The big old one is much slower at waking up but I am so glad that it is still alive and well. It may be old and craggy but it flowers well.

Well it is sunny at the moment but we are getting ready for the next lot of heavy rain. Sigh!

Pot plant section at the Duddingston Kirk Garden Club Annual flower show.

Duddingston Kirk Garden Club Annual flower show

2 foxy visitors

Peacock butterfly

Clematis seed head

Cactus flower bud

Cactus flower from beneath

Cactus flower throat

Hoya bella

July, in between ninja showers…

23/07/2019flowers, plants, wildlifeJackie Elwin

it is muggy, sunny, and hot. Lots of my plants have some kind of rust or mould on them.. The meadow sweet, verbena bonariensis and a few others have powdery mildew. Some of the roses have rust and black-spot. Some huecheras have rust. I have sprayed the roses again, and have just given them their final feed so I hope they will pick up a bit. I have taken off most of the rusty leaves form plants, but the powdery mildew can be quite stubborn I am having the constant battle with the humongous slugs and have resorted to using some ‘Sluggo’ near my new delphiniums as I am sick of my new plants disappearing overnight.
Normally at this time of year I see loads of bees covering the purple lavender, veronica and agastache out in the front garden but this year there are only a few about. The agastache to the left of the mahonia is devoid of all leaves courtesy of slugs and snails, while the ones at the right side are fine. The purple loose-strife, persicaria, hedge woundwort, verbascums, geraniums, delphiniums, cat-mint and a foxgloves are still attracting bees and other pollinators.
I finally moved the old bird-bath plinth from the patio as it was falling apart and found it had been a good home for the green cellar slugs (which are good guys) so I let them find a new home behind the patio plant pots. I found a cricket on the garage wall (horrid photo taken with my phone) which was nice. We used to hear crickets when we first moved here, but haven’t seen or heard any for years now so maybe they have come back this year? All over the garden are lots of tree seeds: mainly sycamore keys and tiny silver birch seeds. They really make the place look untidy but I have finished dead-heading and weeding for today and I am off out to enjoy the sunshine before the next lot of torrential rain due tonight (along with thunder and hail so they say).

Lavender

Veronica spicata ‘Royal candles’

Persicaria affinis superbum

Sorbus hupehensis Pink pagoda berries

Delphinium cameliard

Verbascum chaxii album

Old bird-bath plinth

Green cellar slugs (Limacus maulatus)

Grove snail or brown lipped snail (Cepaea nemoralis)

Cricket?

Sycamore keys (samara)

New plants…

14/07/2019flowers, plants, stumpery, wildlifeJackie Elwin

for the widened border. I have been shopping at MacPlants again to fill in some gaps in the border. For a nice soft purple and yellow combination there is Nepets junior Walker and Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’. Along side some Cosmos Xanthos (which I had in pots on the patio). A couple of Leptinella squalida ‘Platt’s Black’ for a couple of corner areas. I had planted some Ammi visnagi but the massive slugs got them (one seedling survives). These massive slugs are such a pain and even all the wool pellets I put down are no deterrent what so ever. These slugs have destroyed half a dozen honesty, all my blue poppies, primula vialii, the ammi, knapweed and loads more besides. I do a slug patrol every morning and pick loads. They curl up into a ball to prevent being eaten, and I have found some almost the same size as a golf ball!
The milk churn was moved to a corner in the bed to make a focal point and I didn’t have a pot the correct size but ended up putting a bronze grass on a plastic saucer inside the churn, which is held up by a wooded support underneath. It looks great just now.
We moved the bench that was sitting under the tree canopy (overhanging from the golf course), which was collecting loads of bird droppings so was rather dangerous for anyone sitting there. It is still in the stumpery area but under clear skies so much nicer for resting on.
There is still more planting to be done, and moving plants about – which probably shouldn’t really be done just now but some are now in the wrong place. They used to edge the border but now that the borders are wider they need to be moved to the new edge.

Coreopsis verticillata ‘Moonbeam’, Nepeta Junior Walker

Cosmos bipinnatus Xanthos

huge slug curled into a ball

huge slugs

slug on the wool pellets

Carex commons bronze in milk churn

Carex commons bronze (diff view)

bench in the stumpery

Woohoo… Fab new path…

05/07/2019new slabsJackie Elwin

means easier access, wider borders, more plants, and less messy wheels when I do come in from the garden. Easier on the shoulders and arthritic hands too.

The lovely landscapers from Gardens by Water Gems did a terrific job of the paving around the main garden. I was having a lot of trouble pushing my wheelchair over the thick, usually soggy, grass, which was very uneven with dips and bumps all over the place. The existing paving had only been put on sand and had subsequently sunk over the years. When stretching sideways to weed or dead-head, I was in danger of tipping out of my chair. Many thanks to Michael, Heath and Karolina for their jolly hard work in getting it level, pointed and very neat. They had to work with old slabs and new slabs, partly in the scorching heat along with a few ninja showers, and managed to make it all work out. Come the autumn we will be following Heath’s advice about re-locating the Rhododendron in to the corner, and planting an Enkianthus where the Rhododendron was, and chop the top off the Pieris and see if we can make it bush out a bit. Now that I have wider borders I can move the Irises a little closer to the slabs. They flowered last year in June but so far I don’t see any flowering stems on them this year. I have a few plants that have been sitting waiting in pots on the patio that can fill in a few gaps, but I can’t wait to get to my favourite nurseries to buy some new ones too. The slabs just now make the garden much brighter and somehow more open. Most of the planting in the borders are bulbs and perennials which will die down during the winter but at least we will still have the green ivy up the walls and a few evergreen shrubs and ferns to enjoy. I do need to find something nicer for the milk churn. The pigeons keep landing on the grass and squashing it. Possibly a variegated ivy to tumble down the sides for all year round, or I could plant it up with different plants each season? I will now bore you with lots of photos of slabs!

This area is behind the raised bed and the grass was particularly bad here due to the overhanging trees casting a lot of shade. It only gets a bit of sunshine in the mornings in summer. There was a dip (almost a step) going from the slabs down to the grass. The shrubs are overhanging the single line of paving on the left. The new slabbing is all level and brightens the whole area. The shrubs now have more room to grow and I have access to the back of the raised bed too.

Behind raised bed before

Behind raised bed after

Between the arch is exactly the same distance but with the new paving looks so much wider. The plants at the edge of the raised probably make a difference too.

Between arch before

Between arch after

View from the arch is an uneven lawn with a narrow border on the left. I could only get my left hand wheel on the single path while the right hand ones had to cope with the thick, often soggy grass. There was a lot of moss in the lawn. Harry just could not get his head around a garden with no grass what-so-ever so I had to compromise and keep a tiny bit of grass. (Glorified dog toilet basically). I was hoping for a massive area for new planting. Hey ho.

View from arch before

View from arch after

From where the Rowan is: this was quite uneven although you can’t really see it. The Hebe now has more room to spread a little more, and I am sure I can squeeze in a few more plants.

From Rowan before

From Rowan after

Some of the biggest differences in levels was in this area and up to the left beside the patio. Now it is all level and much easier to get round. I can weed that area more easily, and again a wider area for some of the bigger plants to spread I need to have a good think of what to do with the area under the bird feeder. The pigeons just flatten everything and have made a little path to get to the fallen seeds.

In front of pond before

In front of pond after

It is amazing the difference this path has made to this area. I need to sort out the Heucheras and maybe move the Hellebore more to the front (it is getting too much overhang from the Tree heath. I love how it looks now. There was a huge dip here that always caught me out and gave me a fright.

Side of ramp before

Side of ramp after

This area here was where I had to go from existing big slabs down onto the grassy area and although the picture doesn’t show it that well, it was almost a step down with a dip one side and a bump the other side. Not very easy to negotiate back onto the slabs, with either tools or hose in one hand and maybe plants or a trug on my knees. Now there is a very slight, gentle, easy to negotiate slope. Nice big flat turning area too.

Between beds before

Between beds after

Now I know it looks like a huge expanse of slabs now compared to before, but it will soon be softened by some new planting. I find it hard to imaging just now what it is all going to look like in wither when the perennials die back for their winter sleep. The bright newness of the slabs will mute over time to a softer hue. The evergreens will then be the focal points along with the naked tree of the golf course behind.

View from patio before

View from patio after

Cardesque Garden

Gardening from an ageing, paraplegic perspective.