Without a doubt, the star of the garden at the moment are my Colchicums. What started off as 3 bulbs increased over the years and was eventually divided into two clumps. The original clump stayed more or less as it was, but the few that had been moved have been very busy underground increasing nicely. They have increased so much that I think I could move some to a couple more places.
This is my original clump and is always the first to flower.
Back in January, long before lockdown started, I found a man in my garden from Calor Gas who provide our heating from a large tank at the side of our house. A huge tanker comes every 8 weeks and tops it up so that we never run out. The tank has been hidden behind a 7ft Leylandii hedge for over 30 yrs and it seemed as though everyone was happy.
How wromg could I be!
The Leylandii hedge can be seen at the back left, this has now been cut to the ground and the beech hedge has been cut down by half.
The woodland has 3 periods when I visit it each day, first of all in Jan/March for all the snowdrops and narcissus, now in September for all the little cyclamen hederifolium and then in Oct./November for the autumn tints.
When I got up this morning at about 6am and stepped into the garden, it had a definite autumnal air about it. The sun had just risen over the trees but it was what I call a misty, moisty morning with the sun illuminating all the spider’s webs in the garden, they were beautiful, but I always think of them belonging to September not August.
So beautiful and so perfect, covered in droplets.
It is a long time since I wrote a post, I hadn’t realised how the time has flown by. I am still at home a lot, just going out a couple of times a week and keeping away from all the people having a staycation here in Devon. It has been announced on our local news that Devon and Cornwall are “Full”, we can’t cope with anyone else coming here for a holiday if we are to obey social distancing rules!
Begonias by the front door.
It has been a strange sort of month weatherwise, a bit of everything really but not much rain which we really need. In spite of this, plants are carrying on doing what plants are supposed to do and making the garden nice and colourful while they are at it.
I’ll start by my front door which is north facing and doesn’t receive any sunshine. Heucheras, hellebore and begonia are happy here though.
July should be hot, but not here, certainly not a flaming July so far! We have had mixed weather this month, a lot of cloud, some days warm, others a bit chilly, a little rain but not as much as I or my plants would like and a little bit of sunshine. The plants have carried on as normal and flowered away as usual, so let me show what I have flowering in my garden at the moment.
The hydrangea under my kitchen window.
Looking round the garden at the moment, it is very colourful in most of my borders. Thinking about it, most of the colour is coming from bulbs, tubers, corms etc as well as perennials. I’m thinking Iris, hemercallis, crocosmia etc. I’ll start with hemerocallis as they are providing most of the different colours at the moment.
While wandering round the garden recently photographing all the flowers for various posts, I couldn’t help but notice all the hostas that were doing so well and I thought it such a shame that I was the only person to appreciate them. I have so much shade in the garden so when planting up each shady bed I have automatically reached for hostas, ferns, astilbes and heucheras as the low level planting.
Hosta Great Expectations with a yellow heuchera which picks up the yellow in the hosta. Campanula has seeded itself there and is joining in. This area is a mass of snowdrops in February.
Where has June gone to, it is rushing by faster than ever before, I just can’t keep up with everything! There is so much flowering at the moment, it is difficult to choose what to show you, roses have already had a post all to themselves and I am trying to avoid any blooms that were shown in my last post on the 15th, so here is my offering for June 23rd hosted by Chloris.
I have poppies sprouting everywhere on the rockery where shrubs have been cleared away, dug over and compost added. Just ordinary purple ones, but never mind, they look lovely and I am really enjoying them.
