How not to create a perfect garden.
Monday 12th May 2014.
If you have read the previous two posts you will know that this is not a "how to create a perfect garden like mine" blog. I cannot understand people who write self-help books. How can anyone be so arrogant that they think they are qualified to tell everyone else how to live their lives? Maybe I am wrong. Perhaps they not arrogant . . . just greedy and the books are a cynical way of ripping off the gullible.
Anyway, back to my "how not to create a perfect garden" blog. I do have some advice - about what not to do.
1. Don't waste valuable gardening time trying to photograph wood pigeons with a nest in a neighbouring garden.
The parent birds kept landing near the top of the dense conifer in the centre of the photo and disappearing into the heart of the tree - obviously feeding babies.
I kept grabbing my camera but never managed to focus and press the shutter in time. I tried leaning out of the window with the camera, ready focused and pointed at the right spot, until my arms ached but the birds never appeared until I had given up. I haven't seen them for a couple of days now so the babies must have left the nest already.
2. Don't waste even more valuable gardening time searching for wellies that are not lost.
There used to be three pairs of wellies that lived in the conservatory, two pairs of mine and one of Tim's. On Friday there were only two pairs. We assumed (wrongly) that the green pair belonged to Tim and my green ones had been mislaid. I spent hours searching for the missing wellies before the penny dropped and I realised that both pairs were mine. I vaguely remembered Tim complaining last autumn that his wellies leaked. We decided that he must have put them out with the rubbish, intending to buy a new pair, and then forgotten. Of course, the day after we stopped looking for them he found his wellies in the boot of the blue Golf.
3. Don't get side-tracked by clearing a path around a fallen tree in a neighbouring plantation.
A huge dead sycamore, on the boundary between the plantation and our neighbour's garden, fell during the winter gales and blocked our favourite path up to the track to the top of Skyhill. It fell across the bed of a little stream which is dry for most of the year but can come gushing down after a heavy rainfall in winter. Tim likes to keep the stream clear of fallen branches and leaves because it became blocked once in the past and the water was diverted down our bank behind the summerhouse.
In March some men from the forestry department came to work on the tree. They sliced up two of the main trunks and all the smaller branches and most of the ivy but must have decided that it would be impossible to cut up the last trunk without dropping the huge stump into the stream. So our path was still blocked.
We couldn't get under or over the remaining trunk so I spent a whole afternoon moving all the debris which was piled up around the end of the trunk and cleared a path so that we could walk up that way again.
I haven't trimmed the side of the hedge by the road yet, but I did manage to complete my "Project number 2". The dog path is no more.
When I removed the paving slabs, I felt some slightly absurd pangs of guilt about destroying a memory of our dearly departed little Schipperke family but comforted myself by thoughts that the whole garden is full of memories.
For instance, there is the kniphofia (red hot poker) that I bought as a joke Mothers Day present for Alice from her sons. Tim's sister had sent us a beautiful calendar with photos of South African flowers and one month featured a picture of kniphofia with a caption explaining that they were often planted around the traditional homes in Lesotho because the local people thought they would protect their houses from lightning. Alice was terrified of thunderstorms. She tried to dig a hole in the carpet under a chair in our bedroom in a vain attempt to hide whenever there was even the slightest rumble of thunder. Unfortunately her fears didn't diminish after we bought the plant.
So far this year the plant has only managed to produce that one flower. I had a close look because I remembered seeing a second flower shoot. It was lying on the ground - probably chewed off by a slug. There were other stems that looked as though they had suffered the same fate. I don't think our damp, slug-infested garden is suitable for these heat loving African plants.
Maybe I should just grow weeds. I was weeding out most of the Herb-Robert (Geranium robertianum) until I noticed its name on the RHS perfect for pollinators wildflower list. Now it has been given a reprieve. The tiny pink flowers are pretty but the leaves have an unpleasant odour when crushed. In some areas it is called Stinking Bob.
A relative of Herb-Robert is the perennial geranium "Johnson's Blue". I bought a plant a few years ago mainly because it looked rather like a more colourful version of the wild meadow crane's-bill. It flowers in summer but the first bud has just opened.
I also bought a packet of Star-of-Bethlehem bulbs (Ornithogalum umbellatum) ages ago and planted them under the beech tree near the house. Only one survived and I didn't see it last year so I was delighted when I found it yesterday. I was trying to get in a good position to photograph a white bluebell and nearly trod on the little plant.
I have been trying to get a good photo of the pignut flowers (Conopodium majus). They are the daintiest of the white umbellifers and in my opinion the prettiest. This is my best effort so far.
I was reading about the common names of the aquilegea vulgaris while preparing the last post on the blog and found out the significance of the name columbine (columba = dove). The spurs above the drooping petals are said to look rather like five doves sitting around a feeder.
The clematis montana rubens is looking good still - above a bed filled with a froth of London Pride mixed with oriental poppy buds waiting to burst open.
The first bud to show colour.
The earlier azaleas and rhododendrons are providing a lot of colour. I don't know their names. Some were here when we bought the property and this one was an impulse item when we were filling the car with petrol years ago. We just refer to it as the "Laxey Garage rhododendron". The buds are pink but turn cream when the flowers open.
And finally, you can't overlook this little azalea. If there was an award for brightness it would win.
Projects and wallabies.
Tuesday 6th May, 2014
I love this time of year. Every sunny evening, when the sun is sinking and the glen is already in the shadow of Skyhill, the gorse on far side of the glen below the mountain road lights up like a golden rim on a bowl.
I am taking advantage of our enforced holiday from hiking to get down to a few projects in the garden. The first was to lower the height of the hedge down by the road. It is a mixed hedge, mainly beech, holly and forsythia, that we inherited with the property. The original owner of our garden was obsessed with privacy and wasn't satisfied with one hedge. She also planted a row of beeches, interspersed with flowering cherries inside the hedge, plus a second hedge of Leylandii (a fast growing conifer).
Over the years I have gradually tried to reduce the routine work in the garden by cutting the hedges down to more easily manageable heights and removing areas of grass which are a nuisance to mow. The holly hedge on the south-west boundary has been tamed, the Leylandii (which had been allowed to grow into tall trees) have been cut back a couple of times and the hedge is now down to about six feet - but the hedge by the road has been sneakily getting higher recently.
This is a photo from 20th April, when we had cut about a quarter of the hedge . . .
. . . and this is the end of Project number 1 - on 5th May. The side of the hedge still has to be trimmed because the new beech shoots have burst out and you can almost see them growing at this time of year.
You can almost see time passing too. Every week the garden changes. A few days ago we were still enjoying the blossom on the flowering cherries and I photographed the very first flower on the clematis by the front steps. Yesterday the last of the white cherry petal "confetti" was shrivelling on the front lawn but the sweet scent of the clematis is adding yet another dimension to the beauty of our "fifty shades of green" spring.
The apricot coloured azalea mollis outside the living room window is full of flowers too - and it is only two days since I photographed the first flower.
I spend a lot of time weeding - far more than is necessary because I don't like bare earth and I am a bit prejudiced about which weeds should be removed and which I want to keep. I read recently that a study had been conducted which proved that we are all more prejudiced than we like to admit (even those of us who admit that we are prejudiced) - and I can believe it.
Anyway, to get back to the garden, I have an intense and unreasonable dislike of a fairly inoffensive little weed - hairy bittercress (cardamine hirsuta). I think the reason is threefold. First hairy bittercress is very fast growing and it spreads seed from "exploding" pods. It is claimed that a large plant can produce up to 50,000 seeds. Also it is sneaky. Even if I weed out all the bigger plants at the beginning of the growing season, it produces another generation of tiny plants not more than an inch or so high - capable of hiding behind other plants but able to produce enough seed to ensure survival of the species. Every year I try to weed it out and every year it beats me.
Finally another black mark against its name. It is considered a delicacy by the invading pheasants. Unfortunately they don't eat the whole plant but just peck off the tops - effectively pruning them and making them grow even better.
Hairy bittercress.
Another related plant, the cuckoo flower (aka lady's smock or cardamine pretensis ) starts as a little rosette of leaves - almost identical to the hairy bittercress - but has a dual purpose and is encouraged to grow in the garden. It has pretty pink flowers and is one of the main larval food sources of the orange tip butterfly.
Talking of butterflies. There have been a few in the garden already. I saw some while Jenny was with us and about a week later a couple more small white ones arrived. The first one disappeared down the throat of a male pheasant but I got close enough to identify the other. It was a green-veined white. Then yesterday, while I was taking photos up by the wild flower bank, I got my first butterfly photo of the year - another green-veined white.
I nearly forgot to mention some "you won't believe this" news. While I was cutting the hedge an electrician, who was working on a house across the road, came over and told me that he had a shock when he drove past our gate the previous day. A wallaby hopped out of our drive right in front of his van! Both wallaby and van escaped unscathed. He said that he had heard that there were wallabies up in Skyhill plantation. I knew about the red necked wallabies that escaped from the Wildlife Park over fifty years ago and have been breeding in the Curraghs but I had never heard that they had spread all the way to Glen Auldyn. I decided that it might be a good idea to keep our gate shut in future. We have been leaving it open most of the time now that we don't need to keep dogs from escaping.
Yesterday I went up through the top gate into the plantation and saw an animal ahead of me on the path outside our fence. My first thought was "that is a fat dog" . . . and then I realised that it was hopping. It was a male wallaby. I wonder how high they can jump. Our fence was high enough to keep Schipperkes in but I don't know whether it will keep wallabies out.
Later in the afternoon, I heard some hysterical barking in the plantation. It sounded like Penny, the Jack Russell from the riding school. I wonder whether she had met the wallaby.
When I went out to photograph the hedge yesterday, I noticed that the wild garlic is flowering at the side of the road.
We have a few more "sort of wild" flowers opening in the garden. There are an assortment of columbines or "granny's bonnets" (aquilegia vulgaris) which have been coming up from seed since I bought a packet of aquilegia seed about twenty years ago. They are completely different from the large-flowered parents and must have reverted to something like the original wild varieties. All the flowers are small and the colours vary from dark purple/maroon through various shades to pink. Some are double with a white centre.
The first one is closest to the original wild form.
Another plant which may or may not be wild is the bugle which is an old resident in the garden - possible planted by an earlier owner. We probably have too much but it is a good ground cover and the bees love it.
The crabapple is flowering too.
This is one of those perfect spring mornings - sparkling sunshine after overnight rain. I am going to mow the grass after posting this on the blog. It is too good a day to spend indoors.
After mowing I will think about starting the next garden project. Project number 2 on the list is removing the old dog path. We laid pavers across the back lawn in an attempt to keep mud out of the kitchen. The Schipperkes used to bolt out through the dog flap in the kitchen door whenever there were rumours of riding school dogs up in the plantation. They would tear up across the back lawn, though the daffodil bed under the hawthorns and up the bank above the stream.
Then they would spend hours under this old holly, barking and waiting for the other dogs to return so that they could run up and down inside the fence screaming abuse at their mortal enemies.
Eventually, they would return to the house along the same route. They wore a path through the grass and came in with muddy paws. The rough pavers cut down on the mud and had the added benefit of wearing down the dogs' claws so that I didn't need to clip them - except for Alexander who either had harder nails or was lazier than his brothers and didn't run up and down the path so often.
Now the path is no longer used. I want to lift the pavers to use in another part of the garden and dig out squares of unwanted lawn to replace the grass.
Garden thoughts
Sunday 27th April 2014
We went for a drive yesterday - mainly to give the blue Golf some exercise because it has been sitting in the garage since Jenny left. I took my camera but we didn't stop en route - so I started snapping as soon as we got home. I have been taking a few photos in the garden recently because I don't want to go "cold turkey" in case I get some sort of obscure photographic withdrawal symptoms.
The view from the gate. The flowering cherries are still looking pretty but they are nearly past their best.
Our flowering cherries are the third of the annual major events in the garden. The first is the appearance of the snowdrops which herald the end of winter. They are followed closely by the daffodils - harbingers of spring - and then the pink and white blossom on the flowering cherries coincides with the new leaves on the deciduous trees. The fourth "event" will be the flowering of the huge, messy, bright scarlet oriental poppies in early summer.
Between these memorable explosions of colour there are many smaller pleasures. Before I walked up the drive, I paused to take some close-up photos of a sprig of honesty and a Welsh poppy.
Years ago I pinched a few honesty seeds from a clump growing amongst long grass and weeds outside a hedge further down the glen. Now it self-sows in various parts of the garden. It is listed in my book Wild Flowers of Britain and Northern Europe and apparently originated in south east Europe - so it isn't a real native wild flower. It would be more accurate to describe it as a "garden escape". The latin name is Lunaria Annua. The Lunaria bit is easy to understand because the papery seed pods are circular and pale - like the full moon. But I am not sure about "annua" because it is a biennial.
A solitary honesty plant which appeared unexpectedly in a patch of snowdrops in the back garden.
I love Welsh poppies. The flowers look fragile - but they are tough little plants and are trying to take over the whole garden. The name is interesting. I have read that they were never exclusively Welsh but were first identified in Wales and were classified by Linnaeus as Papaver cambricum (literally Welsh Poppy). Later some pedants renamed them Meconopsis cambrica. I believe Meconopis means "looking like a poppy" in Greek.
A group of "looking like poppies" growing under the white Buddleia in the back garden.
As you have probably noticed, this garden is not a conventional, tidy, well-ordered and planned garden. I would like to achieve a living garden full of buzzing bees, singing birds and beautiful butterflies . . . and if a plant that I like takes the trouble to come up from seed and grows vigorously I just leave it where it decided to grow. Plants usually seem to pick places where they thrive. I like useful plants which provide food for birds or pollen or nectar for insects - not the flashy, brightly coloured, sterile bedding plants on sale outside the supermarket. Those gaudy flowers remind me of the current media plague of useless celebrities who believe that their appearance is of paramount interest and importance to all and sundry.
I used to be rather prejudiced against Pieris, smallish shrubs with ridiculously colourful new leaves. Real show-offs! Tim liked them so I was pleased when our neighbour told me that she had seen butterflies enjoying the nectar on the little white flowers on their shrub. Our plant adds a splash of colour but I haven't seen a butterfly on the flowers yet . Perhaps I should have planted it in a sunnier position.
Nearby, hidden behind a Hypericum Hidcote, is a clump of daffs that flower later than all the others. They are almost going over now but are still quite pretty. I remember our old neighbour, Barry, saying that his wife thought early varieties were more special than the late ones because they have novelty value . . . but I rather like these and must remember to move them to a better position.
My favourite patch of the garden is the wild flower bank near the top of the back garden. I weeded out the grass and just let the weeds and ferns take over. Now it is home to a wide variety of wild flowers. I planted a few native bluebell bulbs on the bank under the old willow (now deceased) and the first flowers have opened unusually early this year.
I am sure it is illegal to dig up bulbs but I picked up the original bulbs in Brookdale plantation years ago. The damp ground had been churned up by horses' hooves and a few bulbs were lying exposed on the surface of the track so I rationalised that I was rescuing them. They seem to be happy living here.
We also have the generally despised Spanish bluebells. The Spanish variety were here - in the front garden - when we bought the property. They are similar to the British bluebells but the stems are straighter with the flowers arranged around the stem instead of on one side. The colour is a paler shade of blue, and they have very little scent. The two species tend to hybridise which is a concern. But there are so many Spanish bluebells in nearby gardens that there is little point in trying to eradicate them from our garden.
I also saw the first buttercups yesterday! They are bulbous buttercups (Ranunculus bulbosus).
And while I was prowling around I found some other minor gems.
Delicate wood sorrel that has moved into the garden from the plantation above us.
Tiny yellow pimpernel. The flowers are only about half an inch in diameter.
A late lesser celandine next to the "dog path" under the hawthorn.
Some dog violets growing in the raspberry bed.
A drift of stitchwort that I forgot to weed out of the daffodil bed.
Some elegant Solomon's Seal.
And finally, the new fronds on the ferns above the ditch. There is just a trickle of water in the ditch now but there can be quite a torrent in winter.
The Curraghs Wildlife Park
Monday 14th April, 2014.
No long hikes yet but another pleasure instead . . . a visit from my sister.
We spent most of her visit relaxing and talking but we drove out to Rue Point one afternoon hoping to see terns. No luck - there were only a few small birds. We saw one little male stonechat bouncing around on some driftwood on the beach and heard a lot of chattering coming from the direction of a patch of long grass and gorse. Tim thought it sounded like skylarks. We couldn't see any birds overhead but skylarks are ground nesting birds and spend most of their time at ground level so he was probably right.
We also strolled up and down the glen roads a few times and saw that the cuckoo flowers (lady's smock) were flowering on the banks of the little river in Fern Glen. I have some in the garden but mine are not flowering yet. They are useful as well as being pretty as they are one of the food sources for the larvae of the orange tip butterflies.
Mentioning butterflies reminds me that I have seen a few around already. One small white butterfly flew across the back garden last week - too fast to get an accurate identification but I would guess that it was a female orange tip. Then a day or two later I saw a tatty peacock butterfly settled on a primrose on the wild flower bank. The same one (probably) was back the next day.
I didn't take many photos except on Monday morning when we visited the Curraghs Wildlife Park. It was a pleasant sunny morning and I suggested a visit to the Curraghs nature reserve to see whether the bog beans were showing any signs of flowering. Tim had a better idea . . . that we should visit the wildlife park instead of the nature reserve because the paths are much wider and the walking easier. It is a bit early in the year for bog bean flowers but the marsh marigolds in our garden are already covered with blossom and we even have some early flowers on the bluebells. Perhaps everything is going to flower early after the mild winter
I have mixed feelings about zoos and wildlife parks. It can be amusing to see the animals but there is always the underlying feeling that they are being exploited and should be in their natural habitats. On the other hand, with their natural habitats being destroyed so fast by "civilisation", there may be benefits from captive breeding. At the entrance we were given a list of events. Feeding time for the penguins at eleven o'clock sounded worth watching.
We had some time to kill before eleven and wandered past the owl cages and through the bat house and the lemur enclosures. Photography wasn't easy. Either the camera wanted to focus on the netting around the cages or the sun was too glary but we saw a rather magnificent peacock and I set off in pursuit. He wouldn't spread his tail for me but led us to the meercat enclosure.
There was a lot of debate about the meercats some years ago. Nick, the previous manager of the Wildlife Park, didn't think that they qualified for inclusion. They are desert dwellers and not really appropriate for the swampy Curraghs area - and they are not endangered. But eventually the pro-meercat lobby won the day with the argument that they are "Soooo cute!" - and would attract more visitors (and money) to the park.
Apart from one little chap who was trying to escape by climbing up the wall surrounding the enclosure, they seemed to be reconciled to their life in the park. They were still taking turns to check for predators . . . .
. . . but others were meditating . . .
. . . or grooming their fur or just taking a quick nap.
We made our way back to the Humboldt penguins. It was a few minutes before eleven but they obviously knew that feeding time was imminent and were swimming around the enclosure in a state of high excitement.
I wandered off to have a quick look at the flamingoes.
When I returned it was exactly eleven and a wild heron had just arrived to share the penguins' meal. A few minutes later a couple of herring gulls flew in to join the party. The keeper said that the heron lived nearly and always arrived at the right time.
We walked through the Asian Swamp area and saw another local wild bird - a moorhen strolling across the grass.
Then we passed the Capybaras relaxing in the sunshine.
And some short clawed otters playing in their enclosure.
We were heading for the butterfly trail. I didn't expect to see any butterflies but the trail follows the north west edge of the park near the Curraghs and I wanted to check on the bog beans. There were no signs of flowers yet - but we did spot one butterfly which flew off before I could get a photo or identify it.
After that we decided that we had had enough of captive wildlife and headed home. We have had a minor wildlife invasion in the garden recently. First a very persistent male pheasant - that I managed to "relocate" after a few annoying days. Then the mallard ducks returned - begging for food outside the kitchen. And finally we saw the cutest little baby rabbit on the back lawn one evening. I tried to get a photo but it hopped up towards the top of the garden and hasn't been seen since.
The small birds are still with us. The pair of great tits have been taking bedding into the nest box outside the living room window. I think they have finished nest-building now but I don't know whether they have started laying eggs. They are definitely guarding the nest box because I saw one of them chase a rather intrusive dunnock away from the vicinity of the nest yesterday.
