Six on Saturday The first of July

Last week Jim. who is the anchor point for this weekly meme about six things in the garden, raised the topic of plants that are resilient to our  warmer and drier summers. Most of this week's post is devoted to this topic.

1.Tanacetum densum subs amani whose everyday name is 'Partridge Feathers'. so apt with its finely shaped leaves. 

Tanacetum densum subs amani 

It comes from hot dry rocky areas in southeastern Turkey and had been planted in the front garden.  As I wanted to see this a little more often and as it is on the edge of the road close to the area being driven over by cars and delivery vans as they clumsily reverse around the corner.  I moved it to the gravel garden in around April, and as the stems were raggedy also cut it right down.  As if a Turkish mountain goat had had a good meal, and thankfully it is right back, and apart for the water in when transplanted it hasn't any watering and very little rain until just a couple of days ago.

2. Also in the gravel garden just sneaking into the picture above is a little plant that I saw and bought as a 'souvenir' from Beth Chatto's garden.  It is Phyla nodiflora commonly called Turkey tangle frogfruit, a creeping vervain. The turkey and the partridge are be side by side. It dies back for the winter and seems to disappear for that season.

3. Another plant in the gravel garden that is resilient to the dry weather we have been having is the often featured Erodium Frans Delight. It has a very long period of flowering, and here is due to a session, where I sit down on my kneeling cushion and remove all the spent flower stems.

Erodium Frans Delight

A small plant taken as a cutting is growing quite happily without any watering over in a hard baked batch of clay to which I had mixed in some horticultural grit.

4. Over in the front 'Mediterranean Garden' is a plant that has the most wonderful shape.  Again a silver leaved plant: Ballota pseudodictamnus is a favourite on many levels. In front are some Sedum 'Purple Emperor', with Artemesia Powis Castle towards the back left hand side, and various low growing resilient plants such as the silver leaved Euphorbia myrsinites.  I have left it to hopefully self seed to increase the number of plants along the front garden, but this week the old flowering stems need to be cut back.

Ballota pseudodictamnus

During the week I and fellow gardening club members went to visit a member's garden, in Wells established only a few years ago.  Anthony and Maggie's garden facing south on a hill with wonderful views had again been planted with mainly mediterranean plants.  Their Ballota seemed to have a different shape to its stems, so a few cuttings were 'begged' and are now planted directly into the soil in the back garden.  Of course it may have been just different conditions that led to the variation in growth.  It will take a couple of years to tell.

5. Curving round the outside of the house out of sight of any of my windows the Mediterranean garden has other plants that have to survive without watering and this  Teucrium Hircanicum works well the adjacent silver leaved Centaurea 'Silver Feather'.

The exchange with Jim last week about which plants require less watering or non at all, enabled  me to look at the garden and consider the planting from an interesting angle. A few plants have been earmarked to increase, which some I am already starting to remove as they require watering just at the time when the waterbutt is empty.  Until this week we have had very little rain missing that which fell over on the top and to the north of the Mendips.  It is ironic that the pictures taken yesterday evening have rain drops on them, and maybe even on the camera lense. It was mainly very light rain and I am sure with just a day of sunshine it will be back to dry again, but we have a few showers and cooler temperatures forecasted. 

6. This week Jim is showing us his allotment, I have a small postage sized vegetable are, but I have also been a bit lackadaisical about my small veggie area this year. After seperate weeks of being away I hope to make the autumn more production, and have got on with a little sowing in my new tiny modules, one of which I raised a set of pansies which are already in the ground.  I am taking some tips from Charles Dowding who only lives a few miles away. 

Amongst these are lettuce, which I think will need resowing now the temps are a little cooler, as on the first day of their sowing it got a bit hot in there under their dome, as I had not yet put on the white fleece to reduce the sunlight and heat, but this morning I can just see evidence of the coriander seed.  The first lot is now in flower, over the next few days, I pick the green seeds and freeze these to add to the various spicy dishes and preserves I make.  This way they retain the fresh coriander leaf flavour. 

Coriander in flower

This morning and this evening will be slug and snail hunting season...taken on The Amelanchier tree in the front garden.

That is all this week, hopefully with less watering, more time can be spent on other garden activities.