useful plants

I finally got round to planting one of the Geranium 'Rozanne' I bought from the Chatto gardens about a month ago.  I tried three in the further rose bed last year, not sure if they would cope with being smothered by Camassia foliage in the first part of the summer.  After a slow start this year all three emerged, looking healthy enough, and when by the first week of October they were still flowering doggedly away I decided to add some more.  The original trio in the ground are still covered in flowers, though once we get a frost that may be the end of it.

'Rozanne' achieved the top slot at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2013, being acclaimed their Plant of the Centenary, the best garden plant of the past hundred years.  Seeing how determinedly they have been flowering in our garden, tucked down between the roses in half shade and horrible clay soil, and with the Camassia leaves to contend with when they first start back into growth, I have nothing but respect for them.  Respect is about all I do have.  I am planting more because they are so useful, and I would rather look at them than the bare Strulch for the second half of the year, but I can't say I love them, which is a perverse reaction to the best garden plant of the past hundred years and very ungrateful of me.  It's just that their big, deep violet, white centred flowers lack the haunting delicacy of many of the more fleeting geraniums.  There is something self-satisfied about them.

As I planted I also hoicked out the odd weed, and chopped down the browning, tatty leaves of the peonies, the blackened stems of the remaining clumps of Baptisia, and the still-brilliant green leaves of the late flowering Aconitum.  I felt rather mean removing the latter, but reminded myself that there would be frosts soon enough and it would die anyway.  Aconitum is in theory very poisonous in all its parts, and it is better to avoid contact with your bare skin, but I always wear gloves for wholesale chopping down anyway.  I might take them off for particularly delicate deadheading, but not for grasping handfuls of stems.

I moved around the borders a bit to try and get a nice mixed bucket of stems and leaves.  There are still bags and bags of shredded Eleagnus leaves to be added to the compost heaps, and to speed the rate of composting I am putting a layer of other, softer material in between each bagful of shreddings.  The old stems of Baptisia are so thick and woody that I tried to mix them in with other things rather than end up with a whole layer of nothing but Baptisia in the compost.  It seems rather back-to-front, cart-before-the-horse gardening to let your day's work be dictated by the needs of the compost heap, but compost is important.

The dahlias have nearly finished.  I have been easing on watering the potted ones so that I don't end up putting them into the greenhouse with sodden compost, which might rot the tubers, but even the plants growing in the ground in the dahlia bed are winding down.  The first frost will blacken them, and then I will have some nice buckets of dahlia stems to mix up with the Eleagnus leaves.

Addendum The holiday insurance paid up in full for the week's rent on the cancelled flat but did not refund the holiday cottage site booking fee, which seemed mildly odd when the insurance was bought via the booking site.  Ah well, try again next year.  I fancy Cornwall in the spring.