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Lyn and Malcolms Garden Blog
June 2011
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June 29th
We missed the heavy downpours of rain that other areas
have had, thankfully.
I am a bit quiet on here at the moment as we are very busy preparing for the
garden tour visits, and also a German TV company who are coming to film here.
More about that later.
Today I spent 6 hours baking cake, biscuits and quiche. Then out in the garden
watering and dead heading.
June 26th
Warm it was today 26.5c in the shade, just hoping we don't
get the torrential downpours forecast for tomorrow night.
We had a similar situation in 2005 the night before the judges arrived for the
Daily Mail National Garden Competition. We were up very early that morning,
trying to pick the plants up that had been beaten to the ground.
Tables and chairs with boxes of cups and saucers and all manner of other items
are stacked beside me in my 'Office'.
All have been bought down from our roof space ready for the private visits to
the garden of the two Garden Tours next Friday and Monday.
Part of Lyn's front garden from the from the gate.
Part of Lyn's front garden
June 25th
The sun did come out from the clouds late this afternoon,
a glimpse of the heat wave, which is forecast for the next few days.
Papaver commutatum
'Ladybird'
Salvia microphylla 'Hot Lips'
Viola 'Rebecca'
Roscoea
'Monique'
Iris 'Kimboshi'
June 22nd
We have had garden coach tours from France, Belgium and of
course UK in previous years, this year we have a tour from Sweden and from Leeds
UK, both found us on the internet.
The garden is starting to colour up now with the summer flowering plants, the
warmer weather forecast for Sunday and into early next week will see more
flowers opening.
Looking through the arch above the well feature in
Lyn's front garden.
June 20th
I am getting a bit fed up with the weather now, will it
ever improve this "summer".
I was out for quite a bit of the day doing "Paid" work, got back
around 4pm, it was raining. So the rest of the day was spent indoors.
Looking back on our Picture Blog, I see that the same time last year it was blue
sky and warm at 23c. We could do with some of that, and I wouldn't mind I would
be out in the garden watering the plants either.
The Musa Basjoo (Bananas) look the saddest I have ever seen them during any
summer. The leaves are shattered with the strong winds we have had, and the new
leaves are taking ages to grow because it is too cold.
June 18th
Like a lot of parts of the country, we have had heavy rain
and showers for the last three days, and not very warm either. Flaming June has
not happened so far. I have been potting up a few of the late plants we grew
from seed, and dead heading Lyns front garden. Dead heading can help the plants
produce more flowers, and in this weather it helps reduce the weight of the
flowers that can cause the stems to collapse under the weight of the wet flowers.
Hopefully the weather will improve by the end of this month, as July 1st starts
our garden openings with private visits.
A few pictures taken between the showers today.
Delphinium 'Carol Fishenden'
Hemerocallis 'Corky'
Campanula persicifolia 'Blue
Bloomers'
Campanula lactiflora 'Pritchards Variety'
June 14th
One of the biggest jobs before our open days, is sorting
out the plant stall. We started this morning taking most of the plants off the
benches and sorting and cleaning them. They have been replaced back onto and
under the plant stall complete with price labels. We only finished about half of
them during the morning, so still have the job to finish, it is not a small
plant stall, I guess we have around 400 to 500+ plants, and most are in 2 litre
pots. They have mostly come from divisions and cuttings from plants in our
garden or from seed.
An unusual picture from the exotic garden with
Tithonia 'Goldfinger'and Clematis texensis 'Princess Diana'. The Clematis
shouldn't really be in the exotic garden, it is a 'left over' from when the
garden used to be Lyn's, before I 'took over' her back garden. I daren't take
the clematis out !!.
The bud of what I think is probably the best lilium
we have.
A night blooming cacti I think might be Echinopsis
subdenudata. It is quite fragrant, I took the first picture at 10:15 pm this
evening in the greenhouse, then brought it indoors for Lyn to see.
June 12th
No pictures today as rain all day and 38mph gusts of wind,
maximum temperature of 12.5 during daylight hours.
I got soaked twice during the day going to the rescue of some plants being
battered to the ground. We will have to see tomorrow if there is any real
damage.
All this just 4 days after finishing a project to
divert bath/shower water to an existing water butt, in which I would fit a
submersible pump, to pump the water through a hosepipe. Just in case we get a
hosepipe ban.
June 11th
We have been missing the showers here near the south coast
for the last few days, but at about 1.20pm today we had a shower with hail
stones. Now hail and plants with large leaves don't get on well with each other,
in the past we have had banana, colocasia and brugmansia leaves shattered.
Fortunately today the hail stones were not that big, and we got away with it.
Here are some pictures taken in the exotic garden when the sun shone after the
shower.
June 10th
I have had a bit of a break on the picture blog, as
we
went away for a couple of days on a Cotswold garden tour, with the local Hardy
Plant Society, Dorset Group.
I took about 400 pictures of the five gardens we visited. Since arriving back I
have been busy making a web page of each garden. I haven't put a link to it at
the moment as I need to find the names of some of the plants I photographed. I
will let you know when the pages are finished and will post the link on this
blog.
We enjoyed all the gardens except Hidcote Manor, a National Trust Garden.
Considering it is visited by people from all over the world, at the moment it is not a
very good flagship for british gardens.
After visiting those large gardens, it was a shock to get back to our
"little patch", but a couple of days later and we have got used to it
again.
The weather is certainly not "Flaming June" but we have missed pretty
well all the rain showers, though we probably won't miss the rain and wind
forecast for Sunday.
The garden is now just getting into it's summer colour. And to make up for not
posting here for a week, here is a double dose of pictures taken today.
Centaurea dealbata
Unidentified
Abutilon
Aloe striatula
Osteospermum
Salvia microphylla 'Hot Lips'
Campanula persicifolia 'Blue
Bloomers'
Salvia patens 'Blue Angel'
Trollis europaeus
Delphinium
Anomatheca laxa ( grown from seed sown in December
2010) Penstemon 'Sour Grapes'
Bougainvillea 'Scarlet Ohara'
June 2nd
Quite hot today with a cooling breeze in the afternoon.
Cooling for us, but a combination of hot sun and wind, dries the soil very fast.
So we have to water the garden. If we get a hosepipe ban I have a plan in place
to divert the water from the shower/bath to water buts we have at the back of
our sheds. And then pump this water with a submersible pump through the hose
pipe. As long as we don't use too much soap/ detergent, I am sure it will not
hurt the plants. With something like 800 people coming to see the garden this
summer, we cannot let the garden
Lyn's front garden today, still about 3 weeks earlier than last year.
A view from ground level, roses are doing well this year. Much more colour to
come yet.
And a view of Bananas, Echium and the first Brugmansia flowers on the left of
this picture taken in the exotic garden today.
