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Damp October day

10/29/2014

Pumpkins attempting an escape over the wall into the grounds of the chateau ...

I had high hopes of strimming down in the Hornbeam Gardens today, in order to bring them back to the order that I enjoyed for a week or so in August (see below). We've had the most gloriously dry, hot weather all through October. (Officially a record over the last 15 years; must be true, because I saw it on the news tonight!) It was not to be: throughout the day the air was heavy with moisture, and the tables and chairs on our balcony never had a whiff of sun to dry them off. Apparently on Saturday, when November 1 and All Saints Day hits us once again, our Indian summer will be officially over.

Sad. I've always had a great dread of November. It seems to me the most frightening month of the year. One ray of November hope since I moved to France has been the realisation that St Catherine's feast day is the 25th and anything woody planted then will (it is promised) be bound to root well. (Pity I've never 'taken root', since that seems to be the responsibility of my patron saint!)

Still, the grass/weed regrowth has not been too bad down below, and I have managed to include two or three hours of strimming over the last week. This year grass maintenance has been a struggle in the lower garden. The petrol mower that I bought to keep everything cut back after strimming definitely didn't enjoy being out under its neat little tarpaulin all winter and we're thinking it's a write-off.

I'm wondering about replacing it with a good quality Flymo - electric, because the petrol versions are heavier and I'm worried about carrying it down the steps from the shed whenever I mow. Still, we've got through yet another season of gradually beating back the bush and it can only get better. (Can't it?) The hours I've spent researching the best way to manage rough grass and slopes would make your eyes glaze over ... they certainly have mine. Any suggestions for a favourite mower that might manage our conditions?

The Hornbeam Gardens looking really, really clean after Nick strimmed them. This is the next area of the garden where I'll be getting my spade out this winter, with plans for a cut flower garden above and a shrub/bulb wilderness below. Eirig the dead cat's Magnolia soulangeana did have to be replaced, but is thankfully growing on strongly now.

The prospective orchard lies on the other side of the hornbeam hedge. This winter I'm planting young fruit trees to train as espaliers along the line that runs this side of the two little walnut trees in their circles. I think it will be both decorative and allow us to fit in more cultivars.

My much vaunted willow woodland is struggling a bit. The willows themselves are doing just fine (and will be cut back for the first time in spring 2016), but it's proving difficult to keep the weed growth down. That's the price you pay when you have a largish garden and you just want to bash on and put plants in the ground!
If I was younger, I'd be tempted to take it more slowly, but I'd like to enjoy and make things from my willows for a few years anyway.
I think the only (temporary) solution is probably landscaping fabric and slow weed removal before planting good ground cover species.

Any bright ideas, dear reader?

Rose 'Gertrude Jekyll'. I'm very excited about this. She nearly died on me, but last autumn she thrust a strong new shoot up and this year it's the same story. If it were left to my terrible memory, I would not really be in a position to say definitively that this is, indeed, Ms Jekyll and not a sucker impersonating her. But I've started to keep a garden journal: it's created as a different Excel document for each month of the year, with a separate sheet for each day. This means that I can refer back to the previous year's entry as I update daily. On 27 October I was fairly pleased to read that in October 2013 I'd had the same fears - but she flowered well in the summer. Now I can be sure that this incredibly thorny shoot really is my lady, and not just an imposter. Thank goodness for a journaling habit ...

Rose 'William Shakespeare' (planted in late summer) is growing on vigorously, although he is tending to mirror 'Munstead Wood' a little, as per the comments I read about him before purchase ...

I'm so glad I cut those Leucanthemum x superbum back so many times this summer. It's becoming cold and damp and all my plants are beginning to huddle miserably in on themselves. Shasta daisies and Linaria 'Canon Went' still look chirpy ...

Posting this evening is my attempt to 'regularise' myself (see last week's post). Hopefully you'll drop by again on a Wednesday evening to see what we've been up to at Garden Dreaming.

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Got to get 'regular'!

10/21/2014

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Sometimes it takes an outsider to come into your garden and tell you that something has worked, doesn't it? On this occasion it was a friend, who cares little or nothing about gardening. But my Artemesia 'Powis Castle' in the Mirror Garden seemed to take his breath away. It was a surprise, because at the time I was only having a little rant about the concrete slabs the artemesia are disguising. His reaction made me look more carefully and, yes, they are beautiful. I was back in the morning with a camera and a plastic bag for some cuttings. A bit late, in October, but given that my plants are likely to perish if the temperature drops below -10 degrees centigrade, his admiration was a timely kick ...
Not grabbing my admiration in quite the same way, now that I know more about its annoying little 'habits', is the statuesque seed head of Verbascum thapsus just in front of the mirror. I don't know if you read my post about the lack of rain for the months of April, May, June? Our lawn virtually vanished up here in the Mirror Garden. But the verbascum is living up to its aggressive reputation ... see below if you want proof! The photo to the left is the 'lawn' in June. Nice and green again by August, isn't it?

All that lovely green is in fact the prolific progeny (say that when ... ) of my big woolly friend. Somebody (me), made a terrible mistake in not getting the sprinkler out back in June. Now I know why sometimes it's a good idea to water your lawn. And probably time for me to try Scott's 'weed & feed' Lawn Builder for the first time. (Not an advert folks, just a tip!)My mother speaks very highly of it, and it will be the first time I've resorted to chemical treatments on my own lawn. But it's that or getting down on my muddy hands and knees in November.

In fact this post is a belated attempt to 'join in' with the Foliage Follow-up hosted on the 16th of each month by Pam Pennick at Digging. I've never been much good at 'joining in' - a blessing or a curse, depending on your point of view? But do have a look at Pam's blog - it's totally fascinating. And, unlike me, she does actually seem to get out sometimes.
Back to the home turf. Above is a picture of the artemesia back in April when it was tender, teeny shoots from brown sticks that made no effort to disguise the ugly concrete. Below, in all its October glory. It seems to be sheltering the little plaster eggs like a mother hen, doesn't it?

Below madly healthy Thymus vulgaris, Helleborus x sternii (ex 'Boughton Beauty) and Euphorbia myrsinites (again!).
Why I love them: they look just as good in December as they do in April, August or October. But the garden would be boring if it was filled with things that never change.

Melianthus major hasn't done splendidly in the blue pots - but the plants were new to the garden this year. I dug them up this week to overwinter inside and I discovered a lot of European chafer grubs in the pots, nibbling on their roots - this would explain why the plants were so hesitant this season. In spite of the fact that they didn't really supply the grand foliage effect I was hoping for (à la Hidcote), I'm going to keep on trying to make them happy in my pots.

The weather's been miserable this week (except for the weekend, when I was committed elsewhere). I've been busily bringing in my tender plants to our sunroom. Since I haven't got a greenhouse, the sunroom has to work for the plants during the winter, as well as doubling as a rather basic guest room in summer.
Isn't it funny how you can 'know' something for years before really taking it on board as a reality? This year I noticed that although the weather has been warm in October (well above 10 degrees centigrade most nights) it has been much too wet for the poor pelargoniums in the window boxes on the street and on the balcony. The task of rescuing them all for next year has begun - and the sunroom is starting to fill up.

Much, much later (he's looking rather pleased with himself, although he didn't lift a paw!) The hardy things that are in pots will fill up the rest of the available sunroom space later on - just to stop them freezing and being killed if we have a hard winter.
Now - what I think I need is a blogger's version of syrup of fig, just to keep me regular. Actually comments work just as well! So - how do you manage over winter if you haven't got a greenhouse?

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Thanks for the summer!

10/11/2014

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My first season in this garden was the summer of 2012. It was a summer of misery as I watched some of my new plantings being destroyed by voles, forcing me to the annoying option of planting things in wire baskets. The second summer, 2013, it was box blight and chafer grubs that had me weeping on my way up the garden path.

But this year, I'm pleased to say, I finally feel that my little plot is beginning to look like a garden. Let's just hope I don't now have to move on again, as I've had to do so often in the past. (FYI - the wire baskets are almost a distant memory!)

Things are not looking very well-kempt at the moment, but who cares? With the hot autumn sun we've had, and so many colours to delight, I'm back doing early morning patrols in my dressing gown, just as I was in spring. Above are the blue flowers of Lycianthes rantonetii on our supper terrace, complimented by the colouring leaves of a rather ordinary hydrangea. Before we moved the last time, we were living in a small town in Alsace; bedding displays in French towns are generally wonderful. I made a series of early morning raids, armed with plastic bags, - et voila, blue flowers where you want them! I don't really like hydrangeas much, and so I was surprised to get so much pleasure from them in pots. These common pink mopheads were scorching to death on our hot slope and came to live here almost accidentally. Perhaps their finest hour?

Nicotiana mutabilis 'Marshmallow (from Thompson & Morgan) has been a really pleasant surprise. And much larger than I expected! It seems almost to have its own luminous glow in the early evening, just as the light in the sky is fading - but thank goodness it's only an annual. I planted it, with Nicotiana sylvestris, to clothe the Long Border in late season and it's smothering everything else there. Especially the roses - my favourite trick, always followed (as night is day) by a season of worry when I notice what I've done! Unfortunately I am absolutely addicted to large, large plants.

Nicotianas and asters rule ok in the Long Border! Poor old rose 'Benjamin Britten'

Probably the most exciting change in the garden has been Nick's re-siting of the steps that lead up to the Rose Walk (still a work in progress; that's my sweetie!) They were previously off-centre to the walk itself, but finally we have the beginnings of the lovely, straight formal lines that were supposed to characterise the top of the garden. The yews that will mark the edges of the new paths have taken off this summer - I've watered them a little less and they've found their feet. Let's hope winter wet doesn't drown them. Making a garden on a sharp slope is not for the faint-hearted. In our case all the required steps will be gradual additions over more years than I care to imagine.

The new position of the steps makes sense of the yew planting I did last year and better (albeit scruffy!) paths are starting to appear in the garden. Now I see where we're going ...

Behold my two shabby potential box balls in the Rose Walk (above). They live, however, and I'm beginning to understand how to manage box blight in inauspicious weather (March and September are the worst months). I've high hopes for them in the future (there are six box in all, along the length of the walk). Perhaps I'll even manage to pave the path this winter - this kind of hairy planting definitely needs some order imposed on it, in my humble opinion. (Not to mention my very wet feet in winter!)
The colour in the Rose Walk is mostly achieved at the moment with Verbena bonariensis and the grey foliage and purple-blue flowers of Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant', which has been cut back and reflowered three times in the course of the summer. The bronze fennels are also growing, and flowering, out of their third haircut - seems to be a good way to manage them. I've hopes for the purples and reds of penstemons in future autumns, but at the moment the work of tender perennials is proving to much for me. Give me a couple of years.

Does anyone else own a garden that used to be well known locally? Sometimes I rue the day I fell for a sculptor's garden. It's an awful lot to live up to and depressing when people dismiss my work, saying, oh well, of course ... But the up side is that he's opened my eyes to the value of sculptural pieces in the garden. Sad that they are usually so expensive. The solution for us is that I'll be scanning antique and junk shops to find bits and pieces that might work - I even imagine creating my own work out of scrap metal. Above is a rather nice little chimney pot that I found in the attic. At least it's something - and I love the colour against the box balls.

I usually dismiss other people's ramblings about unseasonable flowers; every year is different, after all. But we actually had some irises flowering in August (admittedly, they were transplants last autumn). Here is a self-sown Salvia sclarea flowering much later than usual. It's sad that the salvia will have to be banished from the Rose Walk for the health of the roses. But other kinds(especially nemorosa types like 'Caradonna' and 'Mainacht') work fine and could be divided later on.

We don't really have too much autumn colour yet in the garden. But finally Nick understands (I think) why I didn't want to get rid of the purple berberis that caused him such pain when the Long Border wasn't dug or planted and he was strimming the rough weed growth. Their colours, with the asters, are enough to leave me with some warming memories by the time the gloomy days of November roll around.

The Artemesia 'Powis Castle' have been amazing this year but, whoops, still haven't taken any cuttings. Probably a job for tomorrow and the heated propagator although I think it's too late. I've quite a few babies dotted around the garden, though, so perhaps it'll be sufficient to pray for a winter that doesn't go down below -10C? They are certainly adding something to the Mirror Garden where I'm trying to create a green and grey (with a dash of yellow) theme. Actually, further to the ex-sculptor owner/lover of this garden. To exorcise his friendly ghost (and get rid of the verbascum seedlings that germinated so well in the lawn after the drought), I'm seriously planning a full-scale knot garden up here.

Incidentally, I see that more than a few people have visited this site in my recent long absence. Thanks for showing an interest! I don't know who you are, but someone clearly likes to glance at 'Garden Dreaming' from time to time! Greetings from a happy gardener who finally has something to be vaguely proud of ...

4 Comments

Damp October day

Got to get 'regular'!

Thanks for the summer!

I learned to love plants many years ago when I gardened in London, but I started to learn how to garden properly when we came to this steep, south-facing slope in rainy north-east France in 2011.

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