By March 22nd things were beginning to happen in the front border that showed that Molly was on the move once more. The “molly” I’m referring to is Paeonia mlokosewitschii, commonly known as Molly the Witch. When the leaves first break through the soil, they are the most beautiful burgundy colour.
This is the last post from me about the Scillies. We were lucky with the weather on a few days while we were away and the good weather lasted into the evenings with some wonderful sunsets. Having dinner each night in our hotel, it was a question of rushing out quickly to find a spot before the sun went down. This first photograph was taken from the quay where our ship came in.
You may remember a previous post that I did about planting up an old tin bath with tulips and pansies. The idea was to provide the tulips with nice well drained soil, which I just don’t have in the garden here and to cover them with the pansies so that the squirrels, voles, mice etc wouldn’t be able to smell the tulips and then dig them up to eat them. It worked, hooray!! we have a bath full of lovely colourful flowers!
As you can imagine, wild flowers are everywhere on all the Scilly islands, no matter which one we visited, they were everywhere. Some are garden escapees that are now spreading wherever they can get a foothold and are now considered as local wild flowers. The first flower that we saw everywhere were bluebells, but not English bluebells and far bigger than Spanish bluebells, these were on steroides, they were huge!
I thought I would catch up with the garden before showing the photos of the wild flowers in the Scillies. When we got back, the difference in the garden was amazing, blossom and an explosion of flowers everywhere. New growth on bushes and trees show that spring has certainly arrived, and the birdsong is almost deafening – lovely!
I had thought that I would write about the islands we visited in order, but knowing that you are all plant lovers, I decided to put Tresco first as the planting there is so unlike anything else in the British Isles.
To sail away to the Isles of Scilly, just 30 miles off the SW corner of England, for a weeks break. My doctor has told me to try walking more to build up my muscles after the last 2 yrs illness so we decided that the Scillies were almost flat and not too far away! Even though the islands are so close to the mainland, they have a much warmer climate than we do here, due to the Gulf Stream which comes across the Atlantic from the Caribbean. We spent the first day travelling through Cornwall, stopping at a few gardens on the way. The first garden was at Bosvigo House in Truro which was on Gardeners World a few weeks ago with Carol Klein.
I left you with the tale of the white pheasant while we sailed away for a weeks break. Having returned late last night, the first thing I did this morning was to check the greenhouse to see if my meconopsis seedlings had survived with my neighbour looking after them, of course they had, well they didn’t one year but that was a different neighbour! Next I checked the woodland to see what the pheasants had been up to while we were away and was very pleasantly surprised.
You may remember a previous post about our phantom fritillary eater, and I ended up accusing the male pheasant which struts around the garden after waking me at 5 in the morning. The other day, when I went to draw back the bedroom curtains, there in the woodland, in a shaft of sunlight, right by my fritillaries was……….
…..the white female pheasant! I flew downstairs, flung on my wellies and gardening coat as I was still in my pyjamas and crept up behind a holly bush to try and get a photograph, not very good I’m afraid, but the best I could do in the heat of the moment. I made myself as small as I could and crept into the woodland trying to stay behind the trunk of one of the oak trees, sad to say that they are thinner than I am unfortunately! The pheasant had walked to the end of the woodland where she then lay down behind a tussock of grass with just her head showing. I must have been within about 8 ft of her and was just raising the camera when suddenly she was off into the air, flying through the trees, across the garden and into the field. This is the first time we have seen her in the garden and now wonder if it is her causing all the damage to the fritillaries.
One thing I did notice however after she left me, was how many more fritillaries had opened up in the sunshine that we have had lately.
To start with there was just a cluster of pale coloured flowers, but as the days went by, more and more purple flowers opened up, there were lots of buds hiding down below which hadn’t been seen by their protagonist, and therefore escaped being eaten.
Reading various books, it is obvious that I am not the only one who has this problem, Beth Chatto solves her problem by eating them (the pheasants not the flowers!) and various books about bulbs say that pheasants are partial to fritillary flowers. So what can the answer be?
I don’t really want to fence them off, but on the other hand it was so depressing to see the first flowers so chewed. Lots of replacements have now appeared so there will be plenty of seed to sprinkle around. I’m still thinking that maybe the pheasants were tempted because at the time everywhere was frozen solid, no creepy crawlies or juicy worms for them to eat so my fritillaries were next on the menu unfortunately!
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