End of Month View: March 2012

The "End of Month View" meme is hosted by Helen, from The Patient Gardener's Weblog. You'll find lots of inspirational gardeners there, reviewing and improving their plots. 

This will probably be my last End of Month View before our first frost, which usually arrives sometime in April. So it's a good time to mark the end of the active growing season and assess the progress in the areas I've been focusing on. I'm going to show a direct comparison by pairing an image from early last Spring with a current one of the same area.

Potted Garden

I am happy with the progress here, although it hasn't been as floriferous as I planned. Maybe next season. There has been a further bit of progress just today. I pushed the dirty gravel to the sides to see how the pots would look without it, and I think it's an improvement. The gravel looks good when it's clean, but cleaning it is a huge job, and it just never seems to get done. I don't mind the bare concrete look and it will certainly be less work to keep it looking neat. I'll live with it for a while anyway and then decide. I might colour the concrete or just age it a bit.

One pot I've been really thrilled with is the Lemongrass one. The shape of the grass and the shape of the pot look great together. I'll have to cut the Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) right back once the frosts start, and dry the leaves for winter teas, but the pot should still look good, I think, until growth starts again in Spring.

Honeysuckle Bed

Okay, quite a bit of difference here! I've been delighted with almost everything in this bed. The Celosia seedlings never amounted to much, but the other plants have covered them anyway, and almost all the ground is blanketed by colour. There are a few combinations I especially like.

Calibranchoa 'Coral Chimes' with Sedum purpurea



Salvia 'Wendy's Wish' with Sedum 'Gold Mound'



Sedum 'Gold Mound' with Calibranchoa 'Coral Chimes'

 I'm not sure how any of these four plants are going to do over Winter, as they're all a bit borderline for this climate, but they are brilliant and I definitely want them again in this bed next Spring.

The bed itself is fitting in well to the front garden as a whole and I consider it a successful experiment.

Experimental Group
Speaking of experiments... I don't have a comparison photo for this area, as it was only established in January, but all the plants are growing well, although the feature plants aren't large enough to look like a group yet. You can just see them in the front of the photograph above, although only the rose is obvious.

Here they are separately.



Abelia grandiflora 'Confetti'



Stachys lanata 'Big Ears'





Rosa 'Purple Rain'

Teucrium fruticans 'Silver 'n' Sapphires'

The Steps

I haven't done anything about hiding the steps yet, but the garden has taken matters into its own hands (leaves?) and grown a screen of Salvia guaranitica which is covering a good portion of them.

Pretty as it is, this plant is a complete thug and I thought it had all been dug out of the front garden. But no, it had just migrated. Admittedly, it is doing a good job here right now, but I know it won't stay contained and anyway, it will die right down in Winter, leaving the steps bare again. So it's going to be replaced by that evergreen Ceanothus that I had planned for this spot, and  which I have  now obtained.

However, unplanned or not, the intense blue provided by the Salvia gives a real lift to the whole front garden at the moment, and I want to repeat this look next Summer and Autumn. So I'll be looking for a better behaved blue Salvia and adding a few groups of it next Spring. Hopefully, I'll find one as gorgeous as the guaranitica.

Hooray, Another List!

I've already mentioned that I'm a listmaker. It's not just that lists are useful, I also enjoy the process. It is with glee that I take up the pens, ruler and coloured markers, or the keyboard and monitor, as the case may be.  I gloat lovingly over the finished product. So when I decided this week that I needed (okay, could justify) one more list, I felt nothing but pleasure. And so far, I've been enjoying it enormously. So what is this new list?

It's one I could have used a long time ago, and I don't know why I didn't think of it before. It's simply a reference list of every plant in every garden bed: common name, botanical name, number of plants and the dates they were planted. It will make blogging about the garden so much easier. Imagine if I wanted to blog about this part of the garden. There are quite a few plants here.

I know the names: Lavender, Salvia, Sedum, etc. But which Lavender? Which Sedum?  Which Salvia? I can't reliably remember all the botanical names and cultivars. Those I can remember, I may not be sure I can spell. Yet, this is the sort of information I find really helpful in the blogs I read, so I want to include it in my blog posts, too.

I have these details, but not in a very convenient form. They're in the book where I keep the labels of every plant I buy, or written notes if the plant was propagated rather than bought.

This book is in chronological order, so the only way to find a particular plant is to leaf through it until I see the picture or find the name. As the book goes back to 2004, this can take a while. And then, often the plant label doesn't have the whole botanical name, so I have to turn to the internet or a reference book. This takes time and is frankly irritating, especially when the books slide off my small computer desk and crash to the floor. So I am transferring all the information to a list, or rather a group of lists, with one table for each garden area.

I'm using Excel spreadsheets which means I can easily add or subtract plants to keep the lists current. I have completed the table for one garden bed so far. The picture below shows part of this bed.

Glancing lightheartedly at my list, I find that the plants shown in this picture are:

• Blue Agapanthus (Agapanthus orientalis)
• Dwarf Blue Agapanthus (Agapanthus orientalis 'Peter Pan')
• Pink Buddleia (Buddleia davidii ‘Pink Delight’)
• Catmint (Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant')
• Argyle Apple (Eucalyptus cinerea)
• Pink Gaura (Gaura lindheimeri 'Passionate Pink')
• Red Autumn Sage (Salvia gregii 'Flame')

And then I am able to trip merrily on my blogging way.

The list will also be very useful when I'm adding new plants to garden beds. The Euphorbia below was planted as an experiment. Some Euphorbias don't grow well in my conditions, so I only planted one. It's looking really happy, so I'll definitely want to make this a whole group next spring. But what was it called, again? Oh yes, my friendly list informs me, it's Euphorbia amygdaloides 'Craigieburn'.

And how about that new Penstemon that looks so good with the old Wormwood (Artemisia arborescens) ?

Of course, it's Penstemon x gloxinioides 'Raspberry Flair'. Must get a few more of those.

This is going to be one of the great lists, I can just tell.

......................

In other exciting news this week, Jane, from Tidy Gardens by Jane, has nominated me for a 'Very Inspiring Blogger' award. Jane is one of my favourite bloggers. She is a professional gardener who writes about all kinds of garden-related things in a relaxed, often very funny, style that always brightens my day. Thanks, Jane!

I'll think about who I'd like to pass a nomination to and write about it in another post soon.

A Perfect Couple

I can see it from two windows, the front porch, the driveway, anywhere in the front garden and the street. And every time I see it, sheer delight is stopping me in my tracks. It's the combination of the Mr Lincoln rose, grown from 30 cm to over 2 metres this season and now topped with a bouquet of  the most intense crimson flowers, with the old common Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica Chinensis) that has been trying to swallow its small green metal arch every summer for the past ten years.

The rose is lovely;

the Honeysuckle is pretty;

 together they are a knockout.

And not only to the eye - both are perfumed.  The rose works the day shift and the honeysuckle takes over at sunset.

It wasn't an arranged marriage; both were planted in the days when I just bought plants I liked and put them where I had garden space. Actually, that still sometimes happens. :)

Then for years they were separated by a Hazelnut tree. The rose grew up through the tree to try to get some light and usually produced two or three huge flowers at about three metres from the ground. In the winter picture below, you can't even see the poor rose.

The honeysuckle, behind this tree, could only be seen from the porch and inside the arch itself. Now that the tree is gone, both plants have had the chance to shine. And it is my pure good fortune that they make such a perfect couple.

A Glass Act

A week ago, I was inspired by Nan Ondra's beautiful post A Touch of Glass. I don't think you could read this article and not be inspired.
I have never really included many ornaments in the garden, preferring plants most of the time. I have no gnomes, fairies, toadstools or even statues. I do have a couple of stone frogs I am fond of, given to me by my family.  And I have some small blue ceramic birds that hang from strings in one of my trees. But that's always been it. 

Oh, except for this guy.

I adored him, but he was broken to pieces in a wild storm last year, so now it's just the frogs and the bluebirds. 

Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against decoration in the garden, and I really enjoy seeing gardens where it is well done, but I just never felt I had that kind of garden. I have hardly any "hard landscaping", no trimmed hedges, just lawn, trees and gardens. I didn't think garden ornaments would really fit in. But I had never thought about glass.

As Nan so  cleverly shows, glass works brilliantly with plants, because it is all about light.  Like leaves, coloured glass reflects light that is in front and glows translucently when the light is behind. Leaves and glass together are a stunning combination. I had to try. And just for fun I decided to make it a challenge: I would only use second-hand glass. I would re-use objects that had previously led a practical, productive life and were now languishing on charity shop shelves, waiting to do something creative in their retirement. Here is my first find.  It cost $2.

It has a square profile, and it was once a water bottle, the kind they put on your table in cafes, with a plastic seal attached to the top with springy wire. I took the wire off and decided I liked it in all its orange glory.

Charlie liked it too, a bit of a worry as we often give him empty plastic bottles to chew and play with. Hopefully he will see this as art and not a dog toy.

Now, where to put it? My first thought was that because it is orange (very) it would be best in the Sunset Border, so I tried it in a few spots.

In front of Euonymus fortunei 'Emerald Gaiety', it looked like someone had left a beer bottle in the garden after a party. Not really what I was going for.

(Note to Self: check for weeds before taking photographs.)

Ah, but what if it was turned creatively upside down in a pot of Nandina domestica nana?  Well, that made all the difference. Now it looked like that beer-swilling party-goer had used my pot as a rubbish bin.

(And how did that Lemon Balm seedling sneak in? See Note to Self above.)

So maybe it should go in a different garden altogether? I thought it might contrast nicely with the blue/violet flowers of Geranium 'Rozanne' at the foot of my orange Cannas. And when the Dwarf Agapanthus to the left was in flower, that would look good too.

Actually, I think this is better, but still not quite right. And it's a bit shady there, so the bottle wouldn't catch the light very much. Onward.

The Sunset Border still seemed like the natural place, so I stood and looked at it for a while, and the idea came to me that maybe the bottle just needed to be a bit more hidden, as though it had grown in place like the plants. So I combined it with the Euonymus again, but this time further back, so that it made a picture with the Cotinus coggygria 'Velvet Cloak' behind it too.

I think this is much better. Here it is in the larger context of the border around it.

This is with the morning sun shining directly in front of the garden. I'll be interested to see how it looks with the afternoon sun behind, as that's when this garden is designed to be at its best (The Little Garden that Shone). It's clouding over again, so that may not be this afternoon. But until then, I think I'm happy with this placement, at least as a first attempt to include glass in the garden. Like many of my plants, it will be probably be moved several times, but at least it has no roots!

So I'm on my way and on the lookout for a second piece. It's a simple start, but hopefully one day my garden will be a real Glass Act.

End of Month View: February 2012

The "End of Month View" meme is hosted by Helen, from The Patient Gardener's Weblog. You'll find lots of inspirational gardeners there, reviewing and improving their plots. 

I'm also linking this post to the Garden Lessons Learned meme hosted by Beth at  Plant Postings.


So, Summer is over. A few months ago, I certainly didn't expect my February End-of-Month-View post would look like this. I expected everything would look dry and a bit tired after months of hot weather and little rain. Instead, everything is lush and growing and wet.

So what have I learned this Summer? When it comes to weather, I shouldn't assume anything. And also, although things may not turn out as I planned, there will be some nice surprises to make up for the disappointments.

I've only focused on a few areas, and days of heavy rain has meant I had to dash out between downpours to get photographs, so I don't have many to show.


Potted Garden
I can't believe how few flowers I've had from these pots this summer.  Finally the Oleander is showing some buds.

Nothing else is flowering here, and next spring I'm going to add a few pots of reliable annuals.  One thing I've been really happy with is the group of Coleus plants in the garden behind the group of pots. They have been brilliant, adding some much-needed colour. Conditions here are usually too dry for Coleus to thrive, so their healthy growth has been one of the compensations of this dull, wet Summer.

The yellow daisy in the pot in front of them has hardly flowered, but I did cut it back very hard to rejuvenate it in early spring, so I'll give it another chance next summer. And it does have nice foliage.

Honeysuckle Bed

From the driveway, this bed is dominated by the two plants of Salvia "Wendy's Wish"




and it is a marvellous bloomer, with colourful bracts staying on the plant long after the petals have fallen.



But I'm also really happy with this whole bed, considering this has been its first season. The Convolvulus is on the way to covering the stump, the Gaura seedlings are flowering well and the Artemisia "Valerie Finnis" is looking great despite all the rain.  I was afraid it might rot in this heavy soil, but so far it's just growing away happily.

The sturdy rose legs you can see in the above photo belong to the rose that I think is "Mr Lincoln" and it has been wonderful.  It's on its third flowering and the rain isn't bothering the blooms at all, although it does have blackspot lower down. I love its flowers whether they're half open

or fully open.

Looking down through the front window of my kitchen, I'm pretty happy with this bed on the whole, although pink does dominate more than I originally intended. I have some thoughts on making this area even better next summer, but I need to think them through a bit more. The lush green growth to the left of this photo is also due to the amount of rain we've had, and I like it a lot.




Experimental Group

This doesn't look very different to last month, except the groundcovers have filled out quite a bit, also thanks to the rain. I normally would only see this kind of  quick growth in Spring.

I wanted to get photos of each of the new plants, because you can't really see them in this shot, but the rain came down and hasn't stopped, so it will have to wait until next month. The "Purple Rain" ground cover rose flowered and has new buds again, so I think it's settling in well. I took this picture two weeks ago.

Hopefully, next month's EOMV will be sunnier and drier! But, as I've learned, you never can tell.