Through the Garden Gate -- August 2024

The garden has needed very little work doing to it this month. I have pottered around deadheading, cutting a few plants back and cutting flowers for the house. Now at the end of the summer it could probably do with a good tidy up, but I'm reluctant to cut back too much yet. There are some mare's tail weeds growing at the back of the borders just where it's difficult to get at them without trampling over plants, so I'm trying to ignore them and I will tackle them later in the autumn.

We still haven't had any real summer weather, but are hoping for something better in the autumn. 

As the summer flowers go over the late flowering ones are the hydrangea 'Limelight' which is full of big flower heads and the Japanese anemones. 

In the back garden are a clump of pink ones and the shady part of the front garden is lit up with white ones. 

At the beginning of August we went on holiday to Wales to a lovely part of south Snowdonia. We stayed in a cottage on a farm with a river running by and mountain views all around us. The scenery was beautiful.

We always like to visit a garden when on holiday and the nearest was Plas Brondanw near Porthmadog. The gardens were created by Clough Williams -Ellis who built Portmerion. which we have visited a few times in the past. I had never heard of Plas Brondanw before but was keen to visit. 

The views of the Welsh mountains were all around the gardens providing a borrowed landscape. The gardens are a bit Italian in style with a lot of structure from stone walls, paths, buildings and statues and are divided into rooms. 

We enjoyed looking round the gardens so much we went round twice! Although we had never heard of Plas Brondanw before it is obviously well known as Gardener's World did a feature on it recently. It was nice to see it again on TV when we returned from holiday.

I am linking this blog to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post. 

Through the Garden Gate--August 2023

On Gardener's World last week Monty Don described his garden as 'chaos'. That's a good description of my garden at the moment. It's that time of year when many plants are now going over, others getting big and flopping over. 

If I go out to do some gardening I'm never sure where to start. Putting in plant supports earlier in the year is something I never get right, I forget which ones need the support and I often don't have enough of the right sized supports. As I've been working in the garden trying to tidy up I've been trying to decide which plants to cut back and which to leave over the winter for the wildlife.

The highlight of the garden over the last few weeks has been and still is the Hydrangea 'Limelight' with it's lovely creamy white conical flower heads. It's about four or five years since I planted it and each year more flowers have appeared. This year I've been able to cut some of them for the house without spoiling the display. 

Down in the shed border there's a tangled mess of white lysimachia and pink Japanese anemones. It does look to be out of control but I like it. The Hosta bed in the front garden is quite a dark area which doesn't get much sun and a couple of years ago I planted three white Japanese anemones to brighten it up.  These started flowering a couple of weeks ago and are looking good.

I always sow some annual flower seeds for the  allotment cutting bed and usually have enough left to fill a few gaps in the garden. I grew Lavatera for the first time this year and am quite pleased with how well they've done. They seem to be trying to climb up the arch with the Getrude Jekyll rose. They are almost the same colour too.

Now at the end of the month the weather seems to be improving a little. I'm hoping we might get a nice warm spell in September and perhaps the garden will perk up a bit.

I am linking this blog post to Sarah's blog at 'Down By the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post.