A sad looking hydrangea

We have a hydrangea shrub outside our front door which has really got too big. So big it was causing access to the front door difficult. I have trimmed it away from the path  but don't want to do anything which will spoil it. It has lovely pink flowers in the summer and now in autumn the flowers are turning dark red. I've always admired those hydrangeas which turn that lovely deep pinky red colour in autumn, so when we moved to this house two years ago and saw that we had inherited one I was really pleased.

A few weeks ago we had the front wall of our house repainted and after the painters had left I realised that they had leaned their ladder across the hydrangea breaking some of the branches and causing other branches to flop over.  My poor hydrangea was a sorry site.

I thought at first that this was a good opportunity to cut the shrub back more, but the damaged bits were on the other side away from the front door. However, I  cut the broken branches and put them in a vase in the house and have continued to cut the flower heads over the last few weeks. They make good cut flowers.

My house has been full of hydrangeas and I have realised that you can't get rid of them.  If they are put in a vase they don't die, they just dry out and can then be used in winter flower arrangements or Christmas wreaths.

So now as well as having vases of them in the house I have a store of dried heads in the shed waiting to be used for other things because I can't bear to get rid of them.

Through the Garden gate-- October 2019

 

 The garden is still looking good even though there are not so many flowers about now. I love walking around and spotting the odd flower hiding amongst greenery, like Rudbekia, Cosmos, Calendula and Potentilla. Still going strong are the Sedums and hanging on in there are some tall dark blue Salvia, Schizostylis and Michaelmas daisies. But the one which seems to show no signs of giving up is the hardy Geranium--Rosanne. It has flowered all through the summer and is still full of flowers.

We had a lot of heavy rain in October and our bottom border which is always damp is really sodden, so in my tidying up I have not touched the soil.  Elsewhere I have been clearing away any very dead plants but leaving those with seed heads.  This tidying up has meant that the grasses now can take pride of place in the borders.

One grass which I am really liking is a Miscanthus sinesis zebrinus.  This grass has been moved about so much, after growing in a pot at our old house, I planted it in the raised bed here in our new garden but it got lost amongst other plants. Earlier this year I moved it to a new border next to the archway and it absolutely loves living there.

One of the first trees  we planted in our new garden, two years ago was a Rowan.  This year is the first time it flowered and produced berries.  I was surprised to see that the berries were yellow--I thought they would be red. I should have read the plant label properly! But I love these yellow berries they have been a lovely contrast against its red autumn leaves.

Also full of fruit is the crab apple, planted earlier this year, the fruit is turning red now and there are lots of them.  I wonder how long it will be before the birds get to them.

I have planted up some autumn containers with cyclamen and violas and these are providing lots of colour near to the house on the patio and outside the kitchen door.

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

Autumn at RHS Harlow Carr

I've not blogged for ages, lack of time, energy and inspiration being the reasons. I've composed many  blogs in my head whilst out and about, only to forget about them later. This week though I decided to make a bigger effort. I was inspired.

Saturday is my birthday and I was thinking about treats of the going for a day out type. I don't know if it is because my birthday is in October that I so love autumn, the colours, falling leaves, smells of garden bonfires etc. So I decided that we would do an Autumn visit to RHS Harlow Carr, we haven't been since Spring.  There were lots of changes going on, new paths and borders being made which meant that we couldn't walk along some areas.  We didn't mind this as we could still see all the gardens and it was interesting to learn of the plans.

We always check out the kitchen garden first to see how it compares to our allotment. On this visit though I started to wonder why I bother growing vegetables.  There were broad beans and peas--mine have long since finished and I never have any success with growing a late crop of peas. The leeks were a good size, mine are thin and won't be ready to pull for months. Celeriac--I have given up trying to grow it.  The cabbages looked very healthy, much better than mine.  My husband pointed out that the vegetables are better looked after than ours because there are always staff looking after the garden.  We visit our allotment  about two or three times a week in the summer, less often at this time of year. The kitchen garden at Harlow Carr is also very open, no overhanging trees casting shade like our allotment.

We moved on to the greenhouse where there was an amazing display of pumpkins and chillies. There is a really big pumpkin bed in the kitchen garden and they always have a lovely display of them in the greenhouse in the autumn. I don't grow pumpkins on my allotment because I don't have a lot of space. Chillies, well I do try, but this year they haven't done well.

It was time to move on and stop feeling bad about my growing failures, so we had a coffee in the summer house. This is always a good place to stop for a rest.

Nearby in the Alpine House there was plenty of colour from the many fascinating plants. Outside the alpine house was an interesting poster display celebrating 'Dig for Victory'.

We had lunch at the café near the woods, sitting outside watching the birds which get fed well on crumbs from people's sandwiches and cakes. Next stop was the old bath house which had a local artists'  Christmas crafts display.

As we had come to revel in the Autumn colours we headed off into the woods, stopping first to examine some of the sculptures which were part of a sculpture trail.  I like the squirrel.

We spotted a newly developed area at the edge of the woods which was a stumpery and fernery.  I'm always interested to see a stumpery as I have started one in my own garden.

This was a good one, there were little areas with stumps and ferns and other woodland plants and it would be easy for people to get ideas for their own gardens.  I was pleased to see some of the plants which I have used in my little woodland area at home--ferns, hellebores, hardy geraniums, pulmonarias. I must be doing the right thing. I noticed also that the stumps and logs were arranged to look like they were growing out of the woodland bed.  Mine at home have just been plonked down--I can easily rectify that.

Over towards the arboretum we stopped at the bird hide, but there wasn't a bird in sight. Perhaps they were all down at the cafe. The arboretum is a lovely place and as expected there was plenty of lovely colours.  There is a little area through a gate which has been designated a silent space where you can sit and be quiet and still.

Coming out of the arboretum and woods we walked along the streamside for a while.  Here we saw some work being done to improve the streamside.

Harlow Carr suffers a lot from flooding and there are plans to improve other areas of the gardens too. We saw more of the sculpture trail along the streamside. Some of the sculptures were of plants and were very realistic. From a distance I was wondering what sort of plants they were!

It was soon time to go home and we hadn't been around the whole of the gardens. Another day, another season perhaps.

Through the garden gate--July 2019

The weather has been beautiful this month, but too hot to do very much gardening. I have pottered about a lot, snipping off dead flower heads and cutting a few things back. But the garden hasn't needed much attention thank goodness and I have taken time to just sit and admire it all.  With having a fairly new garden  I still can't remember all the plants which are in there. So sometimes I have a lovely surprise as a plant comes into flower which I forgot I  planted earlier in the year.

    

The garden has been a riot of colour for a few weeks now.  The bottom border which collects all the water when it rains heavily seemed to suddenly burst into flower with pink astilbes and yellow lysimachias and a lovely pink campanula.  I don't normally put pink and yellow together but it looked wonderful and we were able to see it all from the house.

 This is geranium 'Rosanne' and it is full of bees.  It was in the back of the raised bed last summer and got a bit lost amongst all the other flowers, so I moved it to the front of another bed this year.  It has been flowering for several weeks now and I think it will carry on until the autumn

In the last week there has been a lot of heavy rain and the flowers have take quite a battering, both in the borders and in the patio containers, so I need to get out and do more deadheading.

The sweet peas are now flowering and provide me plenty of cut flowers for the house. I had to cut some of the lavender back last week as it was falling over the path, causing a bit of a trip hazard.  They looked lovely in vases around the house.

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

Through the Garden Gate--June

At this time of the year everything in the garden suddenly seems to go 'woosh' and get really big.  We have had a lot of rain recently which has helped the plants to grow and they are now all over the place.  So I have been cutting back some of the early flowering perennial plants especially the hardy geraniums. This has made room for the later flowering plants to spread out a bit and I have even found some plants in the borders which I thought had disappeared. In the gaps made by cutting back I planted some cosmos which I grew from seed.

There are also a lot of plants which have started to flop over because they needed staking. So I have been buying plant supports and canes and trying to tidy up these dangly plants. This is of course a job which I should have done earlier in the year before they got so big, but I am never organised enough to think so far ahead.

This Thalictrum is a really tall plant and looked much better after I had supported it with some canes.

I planted up lots of containers with summer bedding for the paths and patio and they are looking lovely now. I used a colour scheme of mainly pink, blue, purple and white. These seem to be the colours I go for in the flower  borders too.

This lovely deep pink poppy is called 'Bolero'

I love the blue veronica which I have in the garden and I was pleased to find this pink version in the garden centre.

When we needed a break from the garden we have visited the RHS garden Harlow Carr and one or two NGS gardens. It's always good to see how other people do their gardens and we always come away with some ideas to try out in our garden.

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

Through the garden gate--May

May is a lovely month in the garden.. My garden is looking so fresh and green  as new growth  emerges. I have been enjoying watching the changes as plants have come through and flowered. Now at the end of the month everything is so big and lush. We had a spell of lovely warm, sunny weather earlier in the month, but now at the end of the month it's cooler, but we did get some welcome rain.

We did some work this month on making the front and side garden borders bigger so we could get more plants in. I have spent some time planting up these borders with perennials. We made a new border by the gate.  Its a bit shady there next to the holly tree, so I planted hostas, aquilegias, a white camasia, a blue hardy geranium and a white dicentra. There is a blue white and yellow colour scheme here. One of the aquilegias is white and is really lovely as is the camasia which is only just coming into flower now.

In the back garden the raised beds are looking very colourful. The alliums were magnificent and are just starting to go over. The beds are looking very full and I wondered if I planted too many plants when we first did these beds nearly two years ago. But my intention was to create a cottage garden effect and that is what it is.  When we sit on the seating area next to the raised beds we can hear the constant noise of bees buzzing away. They are obviously happy so we must be doing the right thing for the wildlife.

Acer

Last month I wrote about our new crab apple tree bought with birthday money. This month I spent the rest of the money on an acer and a big pot to grow it in. It is in a corner of the patio with a few other shrubs in pots. The patio is becoming a favourite place to sit now that we have completed our new garden. The Gertrude Jekyll climbing rose which I planted in the autumn to grow up the arch has loads of flowers which smell wonderful, I'm really pleased with it.

There are others flowers which are looking good now.  The foxgloves are out. I love these flowers.

Foxgloves

Astrantia

I bought this persicaria last summer, it was quite a big plant so I split it up into four smaller ones to plant along the border. I wasn't sure if they would survive being messed about, but they are doing really well now. This one looks good next to the pink Thalictrum at the back of the border.

Persicaria and Thalictrum

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