Annual Photos

Every year I try to remember to take eight photos in the garden in July.  They are each taken from the same position (roughly the eight points of the compass).  It is really interesting to look at them now and then and remember the steps the garden has gone through.

This year I forgot and I ended up taking the photos the third week in August instead of mid-July - better that, than not at all.  Here is the set of the east facing border as an example of what I mean by change.



Our first summer in 2007 and we had the patio in and the borders cut.  We had another small seating area in the corner and the borders were colour coded.  This was the red border.

2007

 Next year a summerhouse had replaced the seating corner

2008

 By our third year all the border had been dug up an plants moved elsewhere and we had a veggie garden

2009

 Still with our three veggie raised bed boxes

2010

 Looking even better in 2011.  Lovely rhubarb and great runner beans

2011

 Wionder what I had planted in 2012?

2012

 By 2013 I had given up doing battle with the cats and a flower border returned

2013

2014 and the roses are planted and the fence is mellowing.  I can just see the course of bricks for our conservatory which replaced the patio

2014

 By 2015 the conservatory seems like it had always been there and the border seems to be flourishing

2015

 Needless to say the next year out it all came out and new planting went in

2016

 That's still there this year..... who knows what will be there in 2018.

2017

  (26/08/17)

Cats, cats, cats!!!!

Before I start moaning about just how much I am hating cats right now I had better say that in my lifetime I have been the owner of five cats - at one time I had two at the same time......so I quite understand the 'passion' for them as pets.

Maybe my current situation is karma/payback for all the poo my cats must have deposited on other people's gardens over the years!

Whatever, my garden is a cat's toilet at the front and at the back, in the beds and on the lawn.  There isn't a single day where I am not left a little (or large!) present; some days more than one.  I am fairly sure it came about because until last winter we used to spend half a year in the States and the cats had free rein.  I am trying to believe that the quantity is reducing by degrees as they get used to the fact we are in full time residence.

I have tried just about every suggestion under the sun that is practicable, with no success whatsoever.  Indeed they were the reason for my giving up trying to grow edibles in the back garden a few years ago.

In a last desperate effort we are currently trying two of these.......

They are solar powered sonic cat (and dog) repellers.  They emit a high pitch sound which is uncomfortable for cats and dogs but humans can't hear. There is a suggestion that children might be able to hear it.  I certainly can't.  They have a 70 degree spread with a twenty foot (plus) reach.  As our front garden seems to be the worst hit we are using them out there right now. It has proved difficult on our corner plot to site them so they form a barrier across the garden.  Think we've cracked it.  They have a couple of small flickering lights which flick on when something comes within its range so it is easy to check they are still working.  We have no means of hard wiring them so they rely on recharged batteries.

 Sadly our front garden is mostly in the shade (NE facing) so the solar element doesn't work at all.  We also have a lot of foot and car passing traffic so the batteries run down very quickly.  [The photo above was taken in sunlight in the back garden]

For us this means they are a bit of a pain as we have to keep an eye on them almost daily to check they are still working and then charge the batteries when they are not - so, for us, they don't seem a good long term solution.

Amazingly we have only had one deposit since they went in so I am fairly confident they are working.  I am living in hopes that the eight cats - really! - who use our garden may get in the habit of going elsewhere - huge apologies to anyone who inherits them.

Bits of the back garden in August

August is always the 'flat' month in anyone's garden.  The high flush of summer seems to be on the wane.

the fabulous 49p passion flower

looking a little tired but there's a second flush of roses still to come

east facing border does well

love the muddle

olive, thalictrum (rue) and a glimpse of olive

as above plus clematis

nice muddle of a parahebe avalanche (white) and Erysimum (perpetual wallflower) Bowles mauve, both absolute goers flowers from early spring into late autumn

The Front Garden in July

My front garden does have something flowering in it pretty much the whole year but I do love July when the crocosmia Lucifer is doing its thing and the hanging basket is beginning to flesh itself out.

The front garden is north west facing - just about the worst for gardens - and is always pretty much in shade so I like to have all the hot colours on this side of the house.

Apologies for the grass needing cutting - pleading too much rain......

Pelargonium (geranium) making a mess by the front door

Just about getting into its stride

Crocosmia Lucifer - one of my all-time favourites

looks better in real life - mass of clematis

Hemerocallis (day lilies) and small yellow kniphofia (red hot pokers)

Lucifer to the front

this is a work in progress

coming round the corner on one side

Add caption

Flaming June

As I write this flaming June is living up to its name -  ten o'clock with bright sun, 25 degrees and rising!

I did my morning stroll round the garden with my tea to check what new 'faces' have appeared in the border - as I was armed with a camera I thought I'd share...

this is the centre of a clematis which drops its outer sepals after a while and leaves these lovely centres for ages - might be Viennetta 

blush noisette from Peter Beales years ago - it is lovely doesn't get too tall, covered in flowers all summer and smells glorious

lovely little white shrub - if anyone can identify it for me I would be very grateful

Fleabane (Eirgeron) - unassuming but one of my favourites

my three most used herbs just outside my door

Garden full of poppies right now this one is 'Mrs Perry'

love little geraniums this one is 'Elke' makes great ground cover

'James Galway', a David Austen rose

Poppy in among the roses, 'Prinzessin Victoria Louise'

another clematis, sorry not sure what it is

this is the double form of the one above - get both type of flowers on the same plant

Tea plate size flowers on this clematis, 'Warsaw Nike'

'Bowles Mauve', perennial wallflower - flowers all year

I won two of these in a competition four year ago - finally come into its own, 'Elfe'

Putting the garden to bed.

We've had some nice sunny days this week so I had no excuse but to get out in the garden and 'put it to bed'.

My other half removed the timers for the watering system and turned off the taps that feed the outside taps.  If you have any outside tap that doesn't fully drain (neither of mine do) they should really be wrapped in something like bubble wrap to keep the worst of the freeze out.  It can freeze further back than the tap if you have any water trapped in a pipe and that can expand and crack the pipe and next year you'll have a leak.  Often they are in the very worst of places and a fiddle to replace/repair.

Cut down dead and dying herbaceous plants.  That said, I leave ones that will look good in the frost and snow and those that may feed the birds or make a winter home for good bugs and critters.  Basically I hack down the ones that will fall over and become straggly messes.

I threw away my hanging basket and two chimney pot fillers that have done their thing and I will be off to somewhere like Park Farm to find their replacements for the winter.

Climbing roses can take a small hack back to stop them flailing around in any high winds.  I do the major trim in Spring.  As we are 'in the North' I don't want to risk too much die back from any frost if we get a bad winter.  To be truthful I never managed to get this job done in my time in the garden this time, but I will be doing it soon.

I shaped up a couple of olive trees that came out of their pots and went into the border this year.  They had put on a lot of growth and I want to keep them almost like topiary balls.  So, obeying the maxim 'cut for shape in the autumn and for growth in the Spring' I gave them a trim.

Most of all I was out there to plant a heap of bulbs.  B & Q have a pretty good deal on some nice quality bulbs right now so I picked some up on a paint buying trip.

If you do the maths you might figure out that three of each variety meant  planting 126 bulbs - doesn't sound much but it was enough for me.  I remembered the days I would go out with fair size sackfuls of daffodils to plant..... not any more.

These really are tulips from Amsterdam brought back from a friend's trip there.  They have gone in a pot rather than the ground as I don't do very well with tulips here - too wet for them really.

As for the planting - this blog is more about sharing what I've got away with for donkeys' years when gardening, rather than the perfect way to do things.

Ideally (most) bulbs like free draining soil, so you can add sharp sand or grit to the hole plus a little bone meal.  The hole should be twice the depth of the bulb.  In reality I make the deepest slit I can make with my trowel, wiggle it a bit, push the bulb in (right way up) pull the trowel out and close the slit - job done.  It works well enough for me.

So, I need to spend one more day out there, before winter sets in, to hack off some climbing rose stems, check the borders, sprinkle slug pellets absolutely everywhere.  I do mean everywhere - they love lurking in nooks and crannies especially over winter; they need to be lured out in hopes of killing a bunch of them.  Less to breed in the spring.  Reminder: only scatter the amount recommended; more is not better, it actually puts them off because the smell is too much for them.  This is a bait after all, so they hunt the bits of food (aka slug pellet) lying around and Goodnight Vienna.

At this time of year people with beautiful lawns aerate them and brush in sand and bone-meal to help the drainage and to strengthen root growth - do NOT feed at this time of year - you'll get soft sappy top growth and basically it will weaken the grass.  I skip a couple of these steps but I do scatter some bone meal over the lawn to boost the root growth.

On that cheerful note of snail death and crushed bones - bye for now - time to hunker down and dream of cocoa days ahead.

Short back and sides

I showed you some photos of my lovely fluffy border a couple of days ago - all four of them were something like that at that time.  Eventually they start to 'go over' and look untidy and some plants bully out the others so this is a good time to give it a judicious chop.

letting the corner breath again

Two corners have eight feet high thalictrum in them which is fabulous when it is in full flood but they had finished flowering and even though they have pretty seed heads they always swamp out other things around them so it was time for them to go.

neat and tidy again

all these plants only went in a couple of months ago so there is some growing to do yet but it is promising

I cut back all the thalictrum (meadow-rue), oriental poppies, granny bonnets and dead-headed the roses by cutting them back quite a few inches.  I then lightly fed the garden with some 7:7:7 national Growmore.  These are granules and easy to chuck a handful here and there a couple of times in the growing season - once in late Spring and once in late summer.

If you are lucky with this chop and feed and weather permitting we often get a second flush of most things.

I also did my usual mid month slug pelleting - a bit late I know but I wasn't here to do it on time.  I tied in some bits and bobs and basically did a close inspection of this and that to check all is well.  This hour or so is time well spent if you can give yourself up to it round about this time of year.