Hellebores for early spring colour.

07/03/2020flowers, plantsJackie Elwin

Finally a bit of warm sunshine – warm enough for me to get a spot of gardening done and tidying up of the patio. February was such a wet month, the ground has not been able to dry off for months now. The patio is full of plants at the moment: some of which need to be planted in the back garden, while others are in little pots to be sold in May at the Duddingston Kirk Garden Club.
I have been waiting for my six double Hellebores to flower before I plant them as I couldn’t see any labels on them when they arrived from the nursery last year. They were only small plants and so were nice and cheap. Three have now flowered and have been planted, but three are still to flower. I do love Hellebores as they give great colour at this time of year and they clump up well. I had a couple of old large clumps that needed a bit of rejuvenation so I split the old large white clump so that I could have some in the stumpery as well as in the main bed. They didn’t mind at all being split and moved.

Helleborus niger white

I split the purple clump to have some at the back of the garden, raised bed and also the main bed. This one is in the raised bed which is much drier and shadier than the main bed so it doesn’t put on as good a show.

Helleborus niger purple

The one in the main bed is also in the shade, but it gets more rain than the raised bed, and the soil is more moisture retentive too. It loves it there.

Helleborus niger purple

Of the six Hellebores that I bought last year, the Helleborus Double Ellen white spotted is doing ok (a little bedraggled but ok) and was not on the list – it may have been substituted instead of the double white but I won’t know until the others have flowered.


Helleborus Double Ellen white spotted

This next photo may be the Double form of Picotee but is is not in great shape so is pretty hard to tell.

(Just after I took the photo my new dog had a mad run around the garden and took both flower heads off! Grrrrrrrr!)

Helleborus Double Ellen Picotee?

The Double purple one is looking good and I can’t wait for them to clump up and put on a good display in the coming years.

Helleborus Double Ellen purple

The Helleborus argutifolius is situated in the stumpery and is just starting to flower now. Their flowers last such a long time and are a quite bright, pale green that show up well against their very dark green foliage.

Helleborus argutifolius

Now I mentioned a new dog, well, he is a force to be reckoned with in the garden. He has already charged into my lovely Acer palmatum Dissectum atropurpureum and broken off a very large branch. He has trampled a few tulips (not in flower yet). He has ripped out a Verbena bonariensis, and has chewed on a few shrubs and just loves to leap about in my favourite fern! Argh! He is six years old (from the dog home) and still requires a bit of training so here’s hoping he will calm down a bit in the garden eventually. I have already removed my beautiful dark red rose (‘Erotica’) as it had extremely big lethal jaggy prickles and I didn’t want the dog to get hurt. The good news is that my good pals (neighbours) now have it in a position to deter opportunistic crooks.

There are a few bulbs in flower in the garden, like the purple crocus, but still waiting for the Narcissi and tulips. The conservatory is looking colourful just now with the reds of the cyclamen, yellow Narcissus Tete-a-Tete, purple Oxalis, green Selaginella Kraussiana and Soleirolia Soleirolli (mind your own business plant) and various Sempervivums, cacti and ferns. The greenfly are around already so I have to regularly check my plants to just keep the blighters from getting out of control.

Conservatory colour

There is still no sign of frog spawn yet although the heron has been spotted on the garage roof again, and Harry did find a frog in the front garden. The first spawn in 2018, was on 20th March, then in 2019, it was 27th February. Wonder when it will be this year? The pond is very overgrown at one side and really needs dug out and replanted. That will be the next big job.

My tips on cleaning houseplants.

07/02/2020cleaning, house plantsJackie Elwin

House-plants collect just as much dust and debris as your furniture, shelves and ornaments do. This dust can not only affect the appearance, making them dull and lifeless, but can also prevent the plants from respiring by clogging up the stoma. (Respiration facilitates gaseous exchange via stoma which are small pores in the leaves). This dust can also prevent sunlight falling on the leaves which can reduce the photosynthesis by reducing the light levels.
Some plants with large, flattish leaves can be easily sponged with clean tepid water one leaf at a time, but I prefer to stick a few plants together in the bath and give them a tepid shower. It is best to do this in the morning so they have time to dry off before the cooler night. Make sure to drain them well – you could even put a rack underneath them while they are in the bath so they don’t get water-logged. Or you could hold them at an angle while using the shower head over, and under, the leaves. While the plants are draining you can check the decorative pots or saucers for any damage and give them a clean too. Before replacing your plants back in their decorative pots, check the plant for any signs of pests or disease, and remove any tatty looking foliage or dead material. Check if the roots are showing out through the bottom of the pot as this may be a sign that they need re-potting or dividing. Give them a gentle shake to get remaining water droplets off, and be careful of positioning your plants just in case any droplets could fall onto a wooden surface, or worse – an electrical appliance. Water and electricity don’t mix!
You can buy products that contain wax or oils to polish some leaves to give a high shine. You would just use a soft cloth or cotton wool to apply, or it may be sprayed if it is an aerosol, but, I would suggest that this could actually clog up the pores that you have just cleaned. I have also heard of people using milk or oil (such as olive oil or coconut oil) to shine leaves. In nature, usually only the young leaves look glossy and they tend to get duller as they age, so in my opinion, if the whole plant looks shiny then it doesn’t look natural. I would avoid putting any product on the leaves.

plants in the bath having a shower

Some plants shouldn’t be showered, such as, some succulents or cacti, or those that have hairy leaves. I clean them using an old, soft watercolour brush or a clean blusher brush. These soft brushes can remove the dust easily. To get some bits of debris from very hairy cacti, I use my tweezers. The cacti hairs tend to act like nets and collect all sorts of seeds blown in from the garden or discarded fragments of a spider’s feast such as wings and heads. My conservatory is home to many spiders so I am constantly picking bits out from my cacti. I have even found slug eggs at the base of a cactus plant during a routine clean and inspection. If you clean your plants regularly then you prevent any infestation of pests or disease occurring and your plants will stay looking their best.

cacti debris can be removed using tweezers

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).