It’s difficult to know where to start, there are so many flowers all vying for attention this Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. I think I’ll start in the front with some oriental poppies in the Bee and Butterfly border.
This one is such a pale pink, it looks quite ethereal.
Twelve months pass by far too quickly these days and another birthday has been and gone! Thursday last week dawned bright and sunny and the weather forecast promised us a dry and windy day. Having looked at the National Garden Scheme website, we found a garden just over the border into Dorset that sounded rather good, so off we went, having first booked in for lunch near the garden before we left home.
This was the view that greeted us, everything looked so pristine, no weeds to be seen at all, the edges of the lawn were so crisp, not a leaf out of place.
I am quickly coming to realise that the Iris family is such an amazing family of plants. Flowers can be enjoyed from one member or another for well over seven months of the year and even this is getting longer with new Iris re blooming. The iris comes in so many different colours from white, right the way through to black. They also have such varied requirements as to the soil and situation where they choose to live, from sand right through to enjoying sitting in a pond, some of them also like the sun, some the shade, some half way between. I am now gradually finding an iris to suit all my different beds and borders here.
The Rule Book says that box balls should be cut on Derby Day, which, to those of us who don’t follow horse racing, is the first weekend in June or thereabouts. I say rules are there to be broken and that box balls should be trimmed when you can’t stand their shagginess any more! Living in the south west of the country, where it is a little warmer and a lot wetter than other parts of the British Isles, I couldn’t stand it any longer three weeks ago and everything got a haircut.
The woodland is much the same as last month, I’ve not got any more new planting done as I’ve been concentrating on trying to get the borders weeded in the main garden. With all the rain we have had, at least we can see the weeds, they grow so tall so quickly and the benefit of the rain means that docks slide out beautifully with such a long root, very satisfying! Hopefully by next EOMV I will have completed planting up all the plants that are still standing in their pots! The new planting that I showed you last month has settled in nicely and I have only had to water a few times as we have had so much rain!
We have been away for the weekend visiting our son and dil. We were taken out on the Saturday, not to visit a garden as such, but I couldn’t resist peeking over the walls to see what sort of planting lay hidden.
It will probably be obvious to all in the UK where we went and maybe to some of the rest of you. It would be a bit tricky trying to weed this part.
Foliage at this time of year is putting on such a spurt of growth, some need cutting back and some need tying in, whatever it is you can’t ignore it or you would have a garden that quickly becomes out of control! Fortunately there is lots of foliage that is well behaved. I will start with Mahonia Charity which has beautiful new growth contrasting with the old.
Looking back through old photographs of my Meconopsis Lingholm, this year they are four weeks later to flower than in 2011, I can’t believe that they were in flower half way through April that year. Even though they are later, there is still that sense of anticipation, while waiting for the buds to split and show the first hint of the electric blue that they are famous for. Such a beautiful turquoise blue, I don’t think any other flower has the same shade of blue. I think it looks especially lovely against the acid green of the Euphorbia palustris planted at the back of the bog garden.
It is half way through May already and time for another Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, kindly hosted by Carol at May Dreams Garden where we can peek at all the lovely flowers all over the world!
Everything is growing so quickly, including the weeds, they are growing faster than I can pull them out, no sooner have I weeded a bed and started on another, they are up again. I must get more mulch and ground cover sorted to cut down the work.
I will start with a photo of Euphorbia palustris which is at the back of the bog garden behind one of my carvings. I’ve since read that this euphorbia can be planted in ordinary soil so maybe I will split the clump in the autumn.
I didn’t make our usual pilgrimage to the local bluebell woods last year, so this year I decided that I had to make up for it. About 25 minutes drive from us is an oak and beech wood and at this time of year it is an absolutely wonderful sight with a lake of blue stretching into the distance. This is the sight of an old Iron Age Camp where people and animals used to live from 800 BC to 100 AD. For more of the history of Blackbury Camp please click here.
There are rather a lot of photos, so please sit back and enjoy this fabulous sight which comes just once a year.
