A for another beginning

 

Well I’ve not done a lot of garden blogging this year, but I have been busy in the garden! So where to start? Well I’m thinking to start at the beginning and see where I get to!

A is for Aeonium! Due to being ill at the end of last year, I lost the energy for the garden and failed to notice that my much loved Aeoninum hadn’t been brought under cover. As a result it was suffering so much every leaf had fallen off, probably due to the wet as we rarely get a frost. I covered it up far too late and hoped for the best.

Recovering

Plants are amazingly resilient. All the missing leaf rosettes returned and a hasty cutting also took magnificently soon with growth soon almost as big as the original, apparently loving being in a small hanging bucket!

I’ll be taking better care of them this Winter and have already moved some under cover where they’ll only get rained on if it’s blowing at a Northern 45% angle!

The most amazing ones I’ve seen were in Cornwall flowering on the edge of cliffs, but I think the weather must be tropical there!

A is also for Agapanthus which didn’t do all that well again this year, though I noticed the same in a lot of gardens we visited. Last year there were two blue flowers, this year only one, but the white one flowered. I’m debating taking them out of the raised bed and attempting in a pot as I heard they may prefer their roots being restricted a bit. And there is never enough room in that raised bed for all the sun-loving plants!

An old favourite Alchemilla Mollis or Ladies Mantle, always a stalwart in the shady spots, those big leaves covered in beads of water after rain! These beads were considered by Alchemists to be the purest form of water and used it in their attempts to turn base metal into gold (hence Alchemilla!)

“The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.”
― William H. Gass, A Temple of Texts

 

Gulls

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the herring gulls. Beautiful big birds, their immaculate white and grey feathers are a sharp contrast to the filthy rubbish they feed on. There are growing populations in urban areas, especially near rubbish tips etc, but the populations by the coast are actually declining. Living in Brighton for some years, it was tricky trying to get your rubbish bags outside and collected before the contents were strewn up and down the street by a gang of these scavengers. It’s usually herring gulls too, that dive bomb anyone unfortunate enough to live near a herring gull nest, and help themselves to fish and chips on the pier, while they are still being eaten by some unsuspecting tourist. And they seem incapable of keeping any food source to themselves. Where one arrives, it announces the food with raucous calls, which bring more gulls from every direction to descend!

Luckily we haven’t yet had gulls nest on our flat roof, though the juveniles are frequently deposited there and screech for the parents to bring food. They seem to like the skylight and can be found pecking rain drops off. It’s a little disconcerting having one stare down at you while you are in the bath..

The black headed gulls are a bit smaller, and a bit more tidy. I used to watch flocks of them moving around on the tidal river in Shoreham from my office window.

However they are not averse to a bit of scrounging and harassment too!

Dancing with the Daffodils

It’s probably the first verse of the Wordsworth poem that most people know best (I wandered lonely etc etc..), but recently it’s been the last verse that’s been in my head.

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.

My Dad was always a keen gardener, but the last couple of years the dementia kind of made him forget what to do, and have little interest in anything.. This year his daffodils and other bulbs have popped up as usual, but he hasn’t been there to see them.

He’s had a rough couple of months really. First he was in a care home where he declined physically and mentally, then he got flu twice, and then pressure sores. The for weeks he was in hospital where he was admitted with a chest infection, and then ended up on a ward isolated with a vomiting bug, then had pneumonia. Lying there in that hospital bed watching the clock go around must be so boring, but he just seemed to sleep mostly and forget that there was any other place to be. We were struggling to find a nursing home bed for him, struggling more to get social services to do anything they were supposed to, but finally this week he was offered a nursing home place, a nice small place only 20 minutes away from my mum. And today he moved there.

It’s hard to know quite what is going on in his head, but I really hope he can close his eyes, and still see his daffodils, to still remember and see the good things in his life gone by. His dancing days may be over, but he can still dream.

His new room is lovely, sunny with double doors going out to the garden, so maybe we can bring some of his pots and plants by the door, and give him a reason to get out of bed, watch the seasons, get outside and to smell the flowers.

The photos are some of the many daffodils that have popped up in my garden. The bulbs were a birthday present from mum and dad in October, so thanks for that! A glorious display of new life and a new season, Spring really is here.

Scarlet Tide

And far and wide, in a scarlet tide,
The poppy’s bonfire spread.

Bayard Taylor

I love poppies. Sometimes over the downs we get vast fields of them, a blazing scarlet carpet from the distance and an incredibly fragile and vivid bloom close up.

I did grow some poppies – papaver somiferum – Victoria Cross, an impressive flower with a bold white cross against the single red blooms. A percentage of the sale of seeds went to fund the Royal Hospital Chelsea which aids and supports military veterans.

They were somewhat long in the growing, and I waited and waited! Then at last they were there but the transient blooms lasted barely a day before dropping scarlet velvet petals to the earth! Beautiful, but my little garden really needs plants that pay their way for a little longer than that.

Next year I’ll look forward to spotting them in the fields, on a Summer walk on the downs instead

I never did make it to the Tower of London to see the sea of ceramic poppies. It looked wonderful though. What a fantastic way to remember to those who fell, a humbling sight.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae, 1915

Lessons learnt, number 3, raise it up!

Raised beds are the way to go, our top soil is thin, chalky and prone to salt water run off.

In a raised bed, you can add the soil/compost that you need to grow things well. It’s also easier on the back when weeding!

I’m really pleased how our big raised bed turned out. It looks great and as the shrubs grow higher it will help as a windbreak and hopefully let me grow some more tender perennials in between. It gets plenty of sunshine so there is no shortage of plants that will grow happily!

One that won’t be going in there however is a gorgeous azalea, an anniversary gift from G. That won’t cope with the chalky soil at all so I’ll need to find it an nice container, a shady spot and some acidic soil.  Beautiful!

 

 

 

Lessons learnt – number 2, protection!

The second lesson I learnt – protect the most precious plants from the wet, wind and salt in the Winter and accept that you’re likely to lose some!

I tried to take cuttings of any shrubs I was attached to, and bought a mini lean-to greenhouse to keep them protected. Quite a few have survived including herbs, pelargoniums and shrubs. I managed to propagate some of the hardy shrubs growing wild nearby too, though they are painfully slow growing so it may be some time before I have a hedge full!

I put all the succulents in the shed, and they seem to be thriving far better than they did outside. I also tried to save seeds so that I could try again with any plants that died

As it happens this Winter has not been so bad as the last, though we were hit by some savage wind storms in April/May so it may be a bit early to give a verdict..

Anyway I’ll be careful what goes outside, and will no doubt soon be running out of greenhouse and window ledge space!

 

Blackbird and a grass roof

So my blackbird was around most of the Winter, and he was easily tempted into my garden, with pickings under the bird table, and mealworms and fruit carefully hidden in the flower beds, where the hungry crows rarely dared to venture.

And towards the end of April I was pleased to see he had found himself a lady friend. I spotted him encouraging her into the garden, showing her around the best spots where the mealworms lurked, and she seemed very impressed. She got even more interested when she spotted the roof.

G had built a lean-to against the house under the balcony, and for reasons known only to him and a fellow lean-to building conspirator, the roof was covered with grass. Sort of like a Hawaiian coconut stall. Except the grass wasn’t exactly thatched down very well, looking ,well a bit on the messy side, and it’s a miracle it’s stayed on at all.

To Mrs Blackbird, the thatch was placed there entirely for her benefit, despite it being far closer to the house, than most birds ventured. So she spent a couple of weeks going backwards and forwards harvesting bits of it and building what I can only imagine was a beautiful tropical thatch nest, hidden in next doors’ hedge. Not just collecting the little bits that had blown off, oh no. Making defiant eye contact with me the other side of the glass, she kept herself busy yanking off large strands of thatch, that were really too big to fly with. Off they went into the nest in the hedge to be woven into her perfect nest

I’d really like to say this story had a happy ending. That the little baby blackbirds emerged from their tropical nest and popped down for a mealworm feast, but sadly I never did see the blackbirds with young. I think maybe a predator got to the nest, perhaps crows or jackdaws. A few weeks later I saw her again disappearing with twigs, this time into our hedge nearer the house, but again, we never did see any signs of them feeding young, or any fledglings.

Do try again this year Mrs B, there is plenty left!

 

 

Lessons learnt number 1. – Grow what grows here!

It’s a harsh environment here, but lots of plants do flourish. So I’ve spent a lot of time playing detective and peering over garden walls, and especially investigating the wild areas around, to see what plants are growing, get some in the garden and learn to love them! Unfortunately lots are wild flowers, and getting hold of the plants and seeds can be a problem.

Just look at these gorgeous sea poppy (horned poppy), growing along on the shingle beach at Tidemills!

There’s loads of this lovely tamarix ramosissima (pink cascade), also known as salt cedar, growing, very close by. Tamarix is a decidious arching shrub with reddish stems, feathery pale foliage and characteristic small pink flowers. I needed more windbreak plants and managed to buy one as a shrub when furtively stolen cuttings didn’t seem take! It turned a glorious pink in the Summer. Right now it’s pale and insignificant, but I’m hoping for some growth and a return to form this year! In hot dry climates it can become an invasive species, consuming large amounts of groundwater.. But I don’t think it’s likely to become a problem here (she says as the rain batters down on the roof)..

Red valerian (centrathus ruber) also seems to be everywhere. Some friends had a mass of it, unwanted in the front garden of their new house, so I dug up quite a lot of it but the plants struggled to survive in my flower beds, which seemed a bit ironic when it seems to spread like a weed almost everywhere! However I notice that two plants have fresh green foliage on them now, so I’m hoping they’ll be blooming this year.

The other plant that is everywhere in my road, in gardens, in cracks in walls, in tiny gaps between paving stones and garages and anywhere it can find a space.. is the unfortunately named fleabane! (Erigeron). The nickname comes from the belief that the dried plants repelled fleas! Erigeron is a large genus of plants from the daisy family, similar to aster and bellis. Reluctant to go down the street digging up weeds, again I inherited an unwanted plant and carefully nurtured it, only it to see it shrink and vanish. But over Winter it woke up, and started forming a dense shallow mass of foliage, so I’m hoping the flowers will follow it along!

My next target is the lovely yellow marigold type flowers that grow wild in no-mans-land out the back, I think a dead flower head or two ended up in my seed box, so who knows..

 

 

 

 

Cosmos or chaos

 

cos·mos (noun)

1. The universe regarded as an orderly,harmonious whole.
2. An ordered, harmonious whole.
3. Harmony and order as distinct from chaos.
4. pl. cos·mos·es or cosmos Any of various mostly Mexican herbs of the genus Cosmos in the composite family, having radiate flower heads of variously coloured flowers and opposite pinnate leaves, especially C. bipinnatus and C. sulphureus, widely cultivated as garden annuals.

Well there wasn’t much orderly about my cosmos.

At first they behaved themselves. They germinated nicely on the windowsill, then went into the mini greenhouse. Then I planted several in two places in the raised bed. I protected both with a small plastic cloche and at first they grew about the same.

It never fails to amaze me how different a plant can grow under different conditions! Both in full sun, both in the same soil (mostly lovely rich topsoil courtesy of Raystede animal shelter where our builder had also been working).

The ones at the end of the bed grew beautifully and blossomed as expected, the white blooms making a pleasing view swaying in the wind in front of the shed. The ones in the middle just seemed to grow. And grow and grow. No buds just foliage, thick lush fronds heading out in all directions. When they got to a metre high and wide and had completely smothered the surrounding poppies, and blocked out the light from the poor daisy bush and the sweet peas, I got a bit ruthless and hacked them right back down to half their size.

They carried on growing back relentlessly, stems as thick as a small tree! And eventually they flowered too. Towering boldly above my head, blooming extravagantly, leaning over anything in their way and grinning at me. A tidy gardener wouldn’t have been able to stand it, they’d have had to get them out, but I must admit I loved their confident exuberance. Beautiful. This year there will be more cosmos, and I’d like to try some different colours, but I’ll be more careful where I put them.

Such glorious chaos

Fabulous Fennel

One of my favourite plants. I bought a small pot, and put it in the raised bed in a sunny spot. It soon towered over everything else. I battled to keep it well staked against the winds and at one point a huge branch snapped, but seemed to recover when I taped it back together.

Fennel is a highly aromatic and tasty herb with culinary and medicinal uses and, along with the similar-tasting anise, is one of the primary ingredients of absinthe. Florence fennel is a selection with a swollen, bulb-like stem base that is used as a vegetable.

It’s a fantastic architectural plant, its yellow flowers stretching high towards the sky, inviting passing butterflies to feed. A wide range of beneficial insects feed on it such as lacewings, ladybirds, hoverflies and parasitic wasps. It was certainly busy.

Apparently you should collect the seeds to prevent it self-seeding everywhere, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that. I was delighted to spot the chiff chaffs. Several at a time, these insect eating birds, were finding plenty of food in the branches of the towering fronds. Then it was the turn of the sparrows, and the dunnocks, feasting on the fallen seeds. I left the fennel until January, at which I point I cut it all down to ground level, stripping off any remaining seeds and leaving them for the birds. Now it’s sprouting fresh green shoots from the bottom, and I’m looking forward to it coming back this year.