Six on Saturday - Roses roses and other plants

 Absolutely no rain, we are as dry as it can get, and this is 'Soggy Somerset' and mid June.   

The roses deserved a few bucket full of water over the weeks especially the newly planted ones.  I bought The Home Florist Timeless collection and they are starting to really show their colours beautifully.

1. The first of this collection to be picked is Rose Home Florist Timeless Pink. Even though not picked in bud, this bloom has lasted nearly a week, and still no sign of  shedding of petals.

Rose Home Florist Timeless Pink

The foliage is dark green and shiny and best of all disease free.  The plant is strong and stems upright, with good strong flower stems. The scent is a gentle one, similar to the scent of a Rose Scented Talcum powder, with no lemony tang. I took the rose in the vase to the garden to compare the colours, and they are the same, but indoors out of the sunlight the pink is more nuanced even to my eye, rather than just the effect of the camera.

Rose Home Florist Timeless Pink

2. Rose Home Florist Timeless Cream has not yet been cut, and I suppose to have those lovely single stemmed roses, I ought to have disbudded it.  Again the flowers last a long time on the plant, with the plant equally as strong and healthy looking as Timeless Pink.

 Rose Home Florist Timeless Cream

3. With the Cream roses in the middle it is still clear that Rose Home Florist Timeless 'Charisma' is darker that Timeless Pink, but in very much the same colour range, which  mean they would go very well together in an arrangement.

 Rose Home Florist Timeless 'Charisma'

The tacky covering on the leaves here is not due to greenfly but deposits of parts of the catkins from the large Holm Oaks that grow nearby.  

The Purple variation was planted a little way away out of the fierce burning sun and is yet to come into flower.  

4. Another new rose growing against the party fence is Rosa Malvern Hills.  At present there are just a few small stems with roses on the apex, but I guess this rose will take a year or two to bulk up.

5. Of rose colour but not a rose is this Rhodohypoxis 'Pintado'.  After a dry sejour in the shed over the winter, it is now back in bloom, still in its pot. but looking like it is ready to be potted on.  I planted another one straight into the gravel garden, and will assess to see whether it survives the winter here.

Rhodohypoxis Pintado

6.  Again in the gravel garden, which has had many sessions of dead oak tree and male catkins removal, is another rose colour plant.  I grew this one from seed gathered with my own fair hand, and is in its first flowering season, it does seem to be at home, and riding out the hot dry weather. 

Dianthus carthusianorum

It's Jim from Garden Ruminations who is responsible for chivvying us all along and keeping up our spirits and I think you know where he is if the in post doesn't work.

 

In a Vase on Monday 12 June 2023

 In a week where it has felt we were in a Mediterranean Climate with hot days, very warm nights and still no rain here, it feels right that my first vase come from my dry front garden where because of the conditions, it is very much Mediterranean type plants that thrive.

It all started when I knocked over an allium head when I was trimming the golden lonicera balls.  Then I went on to snip a few other bits: yellow flowered Phlomis fruticosa 'Bourgaei'. Centaurea Montana Alba, Centaurea 'Silver Feather', stems of Linaria Canon Went, and finally at the top pink flowered Phlomis pupurea Matagallo. When I went to visit Beth Smith and her beautiful garden leading down to the sea: Foamlea, with the Phlomis fruticosa 'Bourgaei' plants, she wondered whether I might be interested in growing a larger collection of Phlomis, of which she had been National Collection Holder.  Well with this weather it may be that I do consider a few more Phlomis for the garden.

However the last of  the first flush on the Rose Grace has yielded a little bunch.  I decided to give the plant a good cut back as 80% of the flowers were over, and this way the second flush will be on a well shaped bush. The Vase is one my father brought back from Japan many years ago, and was my mother's favourite, and with her birthday just gone bringing it out was in remembrance of her. 

For our WI Book Club we have been reading A Ladder to the Sky by John Boyne.  There was a bit of a 'frisson' around the fact that some of the characters were male homosexuals, however our meeting in June has been postponed, but I can say that I found it lived up to the description on the cover.  I would recommend it. Mr S thought it was a little long winded and felt the denouement lacking somewhat.

A second book. that I am about a quarter of a way through. is The Garden in the Clouds by Anthony Woodward, I have got to the part where they are manoeuvring the old almost derelict railway Guard's Van up a steep Welsh Hill.  This was one of the books recommended during our In a Vase on Monday Zoom get togethers earlier this year.  It is beautifully written, and I too would endorse it.

As usual these vases of flowers are posted on a Monday to join in with Cathy was the 'designer' and leader in chief of this weekly meme.  Over there if you wish to following her guidelines you may link your post, or just view other vases from people who love to garden, or even if you have 'gardeners' and like to pick your own flowers. 

Six on Saturday - 10 June 2023

 It has been another very warm and bone dry week.  The soil is cracking and daily sweepings of leaf fall and now added to this all the male catkins on the evergreen oaks  have been adding layers of detritus all over the garden.  Sticky green pollen is laying over everything and requires daily washing down of external surfaces.  Mr S will tackle washing the outside of the conservatory once all has fallen.  Despite all that the front garden planted out with Mediterranean plants continues to surprise me. 

Twice a day I have been cleaning out and filling the bird bath, and as I write the bird song is just so lovely.

 Let's get on with six specific items, or else Jim with award me the 'rambler' of the week prize.  It is over on his post that any of us that care to post six things about our gardens congregate.

1. Another sort of Rambler is this pretty rose: Ghislaine de Feligonde. It is looking really beautiful this week, and is right in my eyeline when I sit in the conservatory where we love to have our breakfast.  Yes I do listen to Mr S chatter, but my eye is always on something in the garden.  This week we have had young foxes, quite small ones, who ought not be far from mummy, wander in the garden.

Rambler Ghislaine de Feligonde

2. Rose Munstead Wood is far happier having been moved from near the wall to the middle of the conservatory border, where once the Salix Mount Aso was growing.  She has to have a hosing down and the detritus removed to have her picture taken. Mount Aso really only had a very short period of looking attractive, so it went last autumn.

Rose Munstead Wood

3. It has been my turn to be on the receipt of plants albeit a donation for our club funds was requested.  All that I know is that these two are cherry tomatoes.  When asked about the variety, Janette looked at me with glazed eyes. It is a question of 'wait and see'.  Is there a way from telling just looking at a young plant whether they are bush or cordon varieties of tomatoes? During the week, Janette found the seed packet and these are Roma Plum Tomatoes.

I also picked up a couple of courgette plants from another open day of the gardens at the Museum in Wells.

4.  Our WI gardening group 'Blooming Fun' had an outing to Bristol Botanic gardens on Monday, and it is strange how one notices something out of the corner of one's eye, and it suddenly twigs, excuse the pun, there is a plant I have.  It reminded that I haven't shown the Japanese Umbrella Pine for some time. It continue to grow and am considering a spot in the garden to replace a plum tree which each year is absolutely riddled with green fly. I have now had it ten years! It is considered a living fossil. 

 Japanese Umbrella Pine Sciadopitys verticillata

5. This bowl full  proves that Pea Mangetout Norli is a sure winner, and the taste is very good too.

Pea Mangetout Norli

6. If a plant has silver leaves plus is covered with minute hairs, you know it can resist the sun, and this little shrub in the front Mediterranean garden is not minding the dry weather.  

Ballota pseudodictamnus is easy to propagate: I find a little piece of spare soil and just push some cuttings in. let them root, then find a new space or give plants away.  That way is far easier than caring for cuttings in pots.  I find after a few years,  the older plants as they get a little straggly even when cut back, and new plants looks neater..  I got my first plant in 2018.

That is my six this week, hope the weather breaks and it starts to rain a little.

In a Vase on Monday

Icebergs would melt if they came into the garden, and they would shed a whole lot of water too....

A simple arrangement of white Iceberg Roses, and Phlomis fruticosa 'Bourgaei'.  There was a delightful scent from the Phlomis but one which affected my eyes. I was moving the vase from the living room to the utility when I could hear my neighbour in hers.  The posy was soon passed over and hopefully the roses will last a couple of days and the Phlomis should last longer.

I could not get the rose heads to stay where I wanted them as the oblong  vase top was a little wide, so I twirled some raffia around the stems, and used my 'souvenir stones' from Tresco to anchor them. Here is a link to the first of my posts about Tresco Gardens. There are earlier posts about other parts of the Island too.

I am feeling a lot better, and wonder now what sort of affliction could have reached out and grabbed me, sometimes feel tired, but I am getting there.

I'm joining in with Cathy and others with this offering for In a Vase on Monday from their gardens.  I heard that Cathy had been poorly, but as well as being busy with the garden is baking in readiness for her open day.  Cathy has unusually not posted yet, so I shall make this post live and check later in the day when I return from a visit to Bristol Botanical Gardens, and make the link live then.

Here is a live link to Cathy's post this week, where there are the sweetest of little pink roses.

A Week in Tresco Gardens at the end of May - Part 1.

I'm  very lucky to have been able to holiday onTresco in the Isles of Scilly.  We had extended our visit at both ends of a three day break organised by a few members from the Henton Gardening Club. As we had not had an overseas holiday for several years, and had missed out on South Africa, this would be a great treat for us.  We had the most wonderful clear, warm and dry weather. A few years back I was really getting myself ready for a trip to South Africa to view plants, but with rising costs etc, regretfully have left it too late.  

Viewing all the plants in Tresco, it was as if the best of plants from various continents had been brought together and I was delighted that with our New Inn Hotel, we had a card covering us for entry for the duration of our stay. 

What follows is a few of the best pictures. They are by no means comprehensive nor of all the plants I spent my time admiring. As there are so many pictures and memories I wish to share, this will be the first of two posts on the garden.

Yellow Pin Cushion or Leucospermum Plant

Red and Orange within the Leucospermum Bloom

These closeup don't quite show the expanse and size of the plants, of which I would not want to hazard a guess at the numbers of flowers per plant.

Another flower which I felt a compunction to look closer at were the gazanias. I remember my father going off plant hunting in Africa during the 1960s and returning with a selection which then went on to be grown in the Municipal Gardens in Mauritius.

From the leaves this may be an Arctotis.

My favourite Gazania in the gardens

My Mauritian friends will understand my pleasure in seeing the Agaves, which grew around the island in large botanic gardens as well as in gardens.  A different form was grown and harvested by hand in areas of the island that may have been too dry for sugar cultivation or other crops.  Furcraea foetida, was introduced to Mauritius, and grown in plantations to be harvested and manufactured into cloth, which they were made into bags for exporting raw sugar.  This production ended when raw sugar handling was exported through bulk sugar transfer facilities. 

 

Also known as the century plant several Agave Americana were in flower.

Dotted around there were also the variegated forms again a great form often found in Mauritian gardens.

I was delighted that a number of the Protea were in flower.

The King Protea, Protea cynaroides from South Africa

'The Tufty Bract Protea' or some such Protea.

As it was so sunny, we often had to look for a shaded spot to rest, or at least Mr S to sit whilst I went looking around the garden or at a particular grouping of plants, the bench by the Water Sculpture of an Agave by artist Tom Leaper, was just perfect.

As we sat, several birds came to drink or cool down in the water spouts, and we wondered what this usual bird may have been. In certain lights it was a golden yellow, cap.  Later in the week when we were being shown round by Alasdair Moore, he said these were just the usual Blackcaps that had been feeding on the nectar of the flowering Puya berteroniana

For one of the days we were joined by Alasdair Moore Head of Gardens and Estate at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, who was spending a few days at his island home. He led us on a guided tour of the wilder natural north of the island. 

Alasdair Moore outside Tresco Gardens

The following day Alasdair walked up with us to the gardens, pausing at various locations even before we went through the entrance he regaled us with various details about the history of different buildings, the gardens and plants.  Here Alasdair is standing before a male Leucadendron argenteum, of which several are planted along the grass verge on Carn Near Road. 

Alasdair then went on to show us around the garden where he had been Assistant Head Gardener for 10 years, and still has a great fondness for it, pointing  out with great pride various plants which he had planted, or nurtured.  Another member of our group, Rosie had worked with and knew Alasdair well on promoting Tresco, so dinner together at the New Inn on Tuesday evening was a splendid affair with great conversations. Rosie had had the idea for the competition which led to the creation of the Mediterranean garden when the Agave fountain is situated. 

For a good descriptions of the Tresco Gardens read

Kew without a Roof, Mediterranean Society

The Ox Magazine