summer pruning

Now that the memory of 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' in full bloom has faded, I am pruning it hard where it has spilled out over the steps between the top and bottom lawns, and lopping back the new growths that keep trying to engulf the potted Hamamelis and my secretary bird made out of recycled oil drums.  The problem with the steps was partly of my own making, as I tried to twiddle the long stems that were heading in the wrong direction around and back into the tree.  The resulting loops of growth kept sliding inexorably out of the tree and across what is supposed to be a key access route to the lower part of the garden.

Other people's rambling roses seem far more obliging about climbing trees than mine.  This year the top-most branches of 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' got further up the wild gean than ever before, which is one reason why I thought it could afford to lose some wood at the bottom, and needed to be directed to apply its future energies up top where they were wanted.  However, I wouldn't say it liked being in the tree.  Climbing is only an adaptation to allow plants to reach the light, and 'Paul's Himalayan Musk' seems to have worked out that conditions are relatively dark in the tree, while there is light to be had in abundance if it heads out across the lawn.

A Mahonia japonica which was supposed to be growing in the light shade of the southernmost canopy of the gean has developed an anxious forward craning habit, as the lower branches of the cherry flopped down upon it, weighed down by the mass of the rose.  Reducing the rose and redeploying a couple of forked rhododendron branches that were meant to be propping the cherry limbs up has opened things up considerably.  The Mahonia is quite nice and bushy, just extremely lax, and a couple of discreetly placed stakes would probably make it look a lot tidier.  It flowers in mid to late winter, after the x media hybrids have finished, in a pale shade of lemon and with a most delicious scent.  I am with Graham Stuart Thomas when he said that out of the two, God's was the finer plant.  The year before last there were virtually no flowers because a deer of some sort ate nearly all the buds.  That was disappointing.

Before the rose grew so enormous, and the cherry grew a fair bit more as well, I optimistically tried to shoehorn a yellow flowered magnolia into this corner.  It is still alive, but whether it will ever come to anything is another matter.

While I was on a roll with the pruning saw, I took two low branches out of one of the trio of river birches in the bottom lawn, and the scene looked instantly better.  The shaggy bark of Betula nigra is its most appealing feature, and clearing this one's trunk to above head height showed if off to its full advantage, while the whole area immediately felt less cluttered.  Still enclosed by trees, but critically more open.  One of the reasons why I wanted the steps to be clear of rose stems is that they lead down to the birches, which with the gean create a shady area.  Part of the intended garden viewing experience is that you should pass from full sunlight to shade and back again, as you walk through that corner of the garden.  Just looking at the birch bark and buddha statue from a distance isn't enough.  I want you to be there.

I digress.  I have a thing about garden circulation, just as others might about edges.  I was so pleased with the result of pruning the birches that I did the same thing with the low side branches of Zelkova carpinifolia that were growing out over the lawn at just the right height to smack the Systems Administrator in the face when seated on the lawn tractor.

At the other end of the scale I potted up the tiny plant I bought at the Tendring Show, along with the tiny, tiny jug.  It is a Rhodohypoxis baurii, which set me back the princely sum of £1.25, pretty good for a nice alpine in a 9cm pot.  It is a jolly little bulb from South Africa, with bright cherry red flowers.  I had some before, but left the pot out on the patio over the winter, which killed them stone dead.  That taught me a lesson, and this specimen will be coming into the greenhouse in the autumn, when I bring in the Lewisia and the pots of red leaved sedum.

Addendum  The mystery of the non-reconciling show sales was solved, once I'd spoken to my beekeeping friend.  His thirty six pots of honey for sale at the start of the show, less one as a taster, had transmuted into thirty six plus thirty five pots by evening when the closing stock was counted and the number of jars sold calculated.  Thus he had actually sold sixteen pots and not fifty two.  It took me a long time yesterday evening to work that one out.