Spring Flowers March In.

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Pauline

Spring has certainly arrived in March, the flowers are coming thick and fast with new ones opening up everyday. Wave after wave of new ones are making the little woodland so pretty at the moment, definitely my favourite part of the garden  at this time of year. Other parts of the garden are also waking up, today the sun is shining and has quite a bit of heat in it,  the birds are singing and we have seen them collecting nesting material, yes, spring has sprung! One flower that has been out all winter is the heather which is by the dead oak.

Heather

Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Wave of Yellow.

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Pauline

Slowly but surely, the colour in the woodland is changing from the white of the snowdrops to the yellow of the narcissus as they gradually open. It is as if a wave of yellow is slowly expanding across the garden, like an artist picking up yellow pigment with their brush and spreading a colour wash over their paper.

Woodland

Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments

Before and after.

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Pauline

I found a photograph album which contained the before and after photos which we took when making the garden here years ago, or , if you like, how we turned , not quite a field,  more wall to wall grass, into the garden that we have today. This was before the digital age so I have just photographed the photos and hope they will be ok. This first photo is of one of our neighbours!!

Bull

Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged , | 18 Comments

Goodbye Snowdrops.

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Pauline

I promise this will be my last post about snowdrops this year, or at least I think it will be!!!   Galanthus nivalis, or the wild snowdrops, are now flowering away in the woodland and shady borders, making small drifts of white here and there. More splitting to be done to achieve the wonderful drifts that we see in the press at this time of year. Both the singles and doubles of the wild one multiply so quickly, it really is easy to get loads and loads of them within a few years. Most of the photographs in this post are long shots of my snowdrop borders with just a couple of special ones included.

Snowdrops

Continue reading →

Posted in Hints and Tips | Tagged , | 20 Comments

Who’s swimming in my pond!

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Pauline

I was going to call this post ” Sex orgy in my pond ” but I thought that might attract the wrong sort of person and their comments!!  When walking past the pond yesterday there was such a lot of croaking going on and then the noise of lots of splashing, I just had to investigate. Sure enough, the frogs had arrived to do what frogs do at this time of year!

Frog

Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged , | 16 Comments

Foliage for February. GBFD.

Posted on February 23, 2012 by Pauline

I wasn’t optimistic when I went into the garden this morning to take photos of foliage for Christina’s foliage day, I know, I’m a day late, everything was looking very bedraggled after all the rain yesterday and overnight. Some parts of  the garden still haven’t been tidied since last autumn and they are just a horrible squishy mess, no photos there then! The first plants that caught my eye were the silver ones and the curry plant, Helichrysum italicum, was even smelling of curry, was it the rain that was bringing the perfume on the breeze?

Helichrysum italicum

Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Hellebore time.

Posted on February 18, 2012 by Pauline

The month of February is well known for it’s snowdrops, but also flowering now and for the next month or so, are the beautiful hellebores. They come in such a variety of colours and shapes these days, you must see them in flower when you buy, then you know exactly what you are getting. They haven’t enjoyed the frosty mornings that we have had at times during February, but once the temperature rises, the stems come back to vertical and the flowers look beautiful once more. This photo was taken last year, I don’t have enough flowers out on each plant yet to be able to cut some to bring indoors!

Hellebores

Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged | 18 Comments

Flowers for February.

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Pauline

In spite of the frosts  that we have been having,  there are still flowers in the garden which don’t seem to mind the low temperatures. A lot of the flowers that we had last month, which were flowering out of season,  have now been burnt by the frost,  japanese azalea, quince, mahonia and Choisya ternata. Most of the plants that are  flowering at the moment are in the woodland, which does give them a certain amount of protection from the weather. The snowdrops that are in this photo are the wild Galanthus, the doubles are flowering nicely but the singles at the back are only just coming out, not sure why they are so late. It’s not just my garden where this is happening, a friend tells me that her wild singles are only just coming up whereas her doubles have been flowering for a while now.

Galanthus

Continue reading →

Posted in News, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Second Wave of Snowdrops.

Posted on February 11, 2012 by Pauline

The first wave of early snowdrops are now finished and the second wave is taking over. There have been problems with all the frost that we have had in the past week or 10 days, the hybrids just collapse onto the soil and only right themselves when the temperatures rise. The flowers only open when the sun is shining and sun has been in short supply recently, mostly very grey days with the clouds moving away at night time to let the frost in! In spite of all this the snowdrops have put on a good display in the little woodland strip.

Woodland

Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged , | 16 Comments

Temperature problems.

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Pauline

When the temperature drops below freezing, as it has lately, hellebores and large snowdrops show that they aren’t happy by collapsing on the ground. As soon as the temperature rises a bit, to above zero, the flower stems right themselves once more and the plants look as they should, with the flowers standing upright. The other day, we decided to meet a friend from Wales at Painswick Rococco Gardens to see the masses of snowdrops that they have beneath the trees. Just one problem, my snowdrops  here were standing proud with the temperature above zero but when we got to Painswick the temperature was minus 5 degrees and this was how we found their snowdrops, all collapsed on the ground.

Snowdrops

Continue reading →

Posted in News | Tagged , , | 18 Comments