Wandering around the garden today I think I was rather harsh yesterday about the paucity of flowers. It so happens there aren't many in view from the conservatory, where we were sitting yesterday afternoon, and I was working on the ditch bed which does look rather quiet now the primroses have gone over, so perhaps that coloured my overall impression, just as the public perception of the risks of air travel rises in the immediate aftermath of a plane crash.
I left the Clematis montana under the veranda out of yesterday's reckoning. I don't know the variety, since it was already here when we came. That makes it over twenty years old, and it is a good doer, whatever it is, smothered in pink flowers as of now. They are very vigorous climbers, not for a small space, and there have been periods when this one has billowed far further out from the house than I would like, but it seems reasonably under control at the moment. It is busily flowering on its old wood while sending out long, hopeful shoots, and I shall go round sometime soon and cut those back to the general outline of the rest of the plant. It is not scented, but hey, nobody's perfect. The 'Broughton Star' I planted to go up a holly tree at the edge of the wood is not out yet.
The Judas tree, Cercis siliquastrum, is also full out, bare pink branches lavishly studded with dark pink pea like flowers. This has been a slow grower with me. It did not get off to the best start, arriving as a little plant from the Bluebell nursery with a please look after this bear sort of note attached saying it was so small, could I hold off planting it outside until June? I did, and it soon became even smaller as rabbits ate half of it. Since then it has gradually bulked out so that it is now a reasonably respectable shrub, but it's still a long way off being a multi-stemmed tree like I see in other people's gardens. There is a named variety available called 'Bodnant' with bigger flowers, and I sometimes wonder if I should have gone for that, but it's too late now.
The bearded iris are opening. I love the flowers, but they make such tedious and tatty plants, forever wanting to be lifted and divided and not able to fight their corner when other things flop over the rhizomes or seed into the patch, that I'm not entirely convinced by them, but I couldn't resist a Peter Beales special offer a couple of years ago of bare root plants from the wholesale firm Howard's Nurseries. I potted quite a few Howard iris in my years working at the plant centre, and the thought of getting them at something close to the wholesale price was irresistible. They mostly look lovely now they're out, except that I have managed to get a pale lemon yellow one too close to the salmon pink Chaenomeles that I've already moved because it was too close to a shell pink crab apple. The ornamental quince certainly isn't moving again, so the iris will have to shift once it's finished flowering, though I'm not sure where to. One advantage of buying iris in full bloom and planting them then is that you can see what their neighbours are going to be and avoid such unfortunate combinations.
The alpines are out. I have a few in pots, and some planted last year as ground cover for the model railway. I didn't try to label them individually to avoid the hamster's graveyard effect, so it requires some detective work with my planting lists to try and work out what everything is. It would be a good idea to identify the mystery items in the gravel that are doing well, then I could order some more. I was amazed the other evening when I was looking at the list to see that the gentian in the pot on the terrace is in its eighth season. It is Gentiana verna angulosa, or should be, and has flowered faithfully every year, forming a very gradually spreading little patch of blue. I would have bothered to get it ericaceous compost if that was what the label said it wanted, and since then it has had nothing except possibly a tiny sprinkling of fish blood and bone or splash of liquid seaweed manure, standing outside in its pot through every winter and being watered with ordinary tap water. I always imagined gentians would be miffy, an impression that was reinforced when a Gentiana sino-ornata purchased a couple of years later went mouldy and died very quickly, but I was so buoyed up when I realised quite how well G. verna had done that I have ordered an autumn flowering one to go in a pot currently holding some not very inspiring houseleeks, that can go out in the gravel.
Erysimum 'Bowles Mauve' is flowering madly. It is a sterile perennial wallflower, longer lived than some of the other shrubby wallflowers but still not lasting many years. I think they flower themselves to death, having such a long season. It is a cheerful shade of mid purple, and the bees love it. I have a few cuttings on the go, and must take some more. I could do some sedum cuttings while I'm at it, since a nice trailing form called 'Ruby Glow' that I had for a late summer pot before ripping the contents apart and experimentally setting them out in the gravel has survived the experience and is making a good bushy plant, so I should like some more. Since discovering quite how ridiculously easy sedums are to propagate I can't see why you would ever buy more than one of any variety. I have just sent off for a low growing form with pale pink flowers for the railway, and I intend to give it a haircut before planting it out and multiply it.
No comments:
Post a Comment