Warm days and nights, torrential rain and strong winds - welcome to crazy August!!
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
A roller coaster of a month but the garden has coped well with
all the weather has thrown at it and has looked fantastic
throughout the month. We are at last cropping a wide selection of
vegetables after one of the most difficult years ever. The
combination of warm days and nights and lots of rain has been the
key and plants from South African summer rainfall areas (dieramas,
crocosmias, kniphofias) have absolutely loved it and are flowering
like never before. And the lawns ...... lush and green, but not so
long ago we were all being encouraged to turn them into gravel
gardens because of the prospect of regular drought or other obscure
ecological reasons. It may of course happen but if you are a
traditional gardener there is nothing like green lawns to set off
the borders. They have been much admired by all our
visitors.
Crocosmia "Star of the East" large 2 inch flowers in a
light orage fading to lemon white centres. One of the best and long
flowering
A "red hot poker" that isn't red (not many are!!). This
is an elegant, refined cultivar "Green Jade" with slim spikes to 3
feet.
On a personal level the highlight of the month was the
celebration of Moira's 60th Birthday on 3 August and a long weekend
which included a birthday dinner, BBQ and days out with friends
staying over. She had a wonderful time and a good friend Rena made
the most fabulous birthday cake decorated with scenes of the garden
watched over from above by Moira's beloved cat Bojo who died last
Autumn.
The famous cake- it took Moira 2 weeks to summon
up the will to cut it up as it was so perfect! It tastes as good as
it looks.
The birthday girl on her special day inside her special
present - the conservatory!
Weather
Mostly covered in the introduction but temperatures have been
the highest of the year with 2 weeks of daytime temperatures above
21C and a max of 28C. Over the same period the nightime minimum was
over 15C with a max of 19C - even on wet days!
Garden update
The rabbits have continued to plague the vegetables in
particular and a few herbaceous plants. They don't eat the ones you
expect them to, like juicy lettuce or hostas but they decimate
things like achilleas, cornflowers, runner beans chewing off some
of the main growing stems, and of course cabbages. Continuous use
of fleece and an electric fence protects the vegetables but all the
other garden plants have to take their chance. Slugs and snails are
having a bumper year and weeds just love it!
With the visitor season having started earlier this month I am
back to mowing the lawns every day when possible and cutting the
lawn edges at least once a week. Aside from keeping on top of the
weeds and slug control it is a quieter time of year with sporadic
planting of gaps in the borders or introducing new plants. Lots of
dead heading to do of course and continuous staking in view of all
the wind we have had.
I dug all the potatoes in the second week of August and the crop
was only 3 x 56lb sacks - under a third of last years record.
Strangely in view of all the rain the potatoes were relatively
small and some varieties like Harmony hardly cropped at all with an
average of just 4 tubers per plant - it embarasses me to say so!
Desiree as always the best performer by a long way. Garlic on the
other hand was terriffic with 100% success rate and some fairly
large bulbs to see us through the winter. Onions a disaster, some
planted as sets had hardly moved beyond the size they were when
planted. More embarassment!!
Dwarf beans are one of the successes, none better
than this fine berlotti bean, good for slicing when young and very
early often the first week of July from a late april sowing, good
shelled when still tender and for drying for winter use. Nice
colour too!
Herbaceous fabulous - see below, clematis slow and struggling
with the very wet ground, shrubs immense growth and later flowering
annuals and tender bedded out slavias just coming to their peak.
Roses repeating well rewarding feeding with rose fertiliser in
early June, but flowers being spoiled and not lasting long when the
heavy rains come along.
What's looking good?
How long have you got? It has been one of the best late summer
shows ever with some earlier flowering plants lasting much longer
than usual and all the late summer perennials now really getting
into their stride boosted by those marvellous annuals like cosmos
and rudbeckias. So the choice is limitless and choosing the best is
difficult but I will let the pics speak for themselves.
This magnificent hydrangea paniculata "Great Star" a
recent introduction with huge sterile star shaped flowers set
around a few fertile flowers in a well balanced laceap head A tall
thalictrum rochebrunianum providing a misty see through veil, much
appreciated by recent visitors.
A charming 5 foot woodlander kiringishoma palmatum
revelling in all the rain and flowering its heart out with lemon
bells that don't fully open. If you want more open flowers select
k. koreana. Both are fine plants and bone hardy. An all time
favourite rudbeckia "Goldsturm" and the subject of our website
banner image, just squeezing into the picture to say hello - what
would autumn be without it? (see also August 2011
news)
A lovely white hemerocallis with light green throat.
Never lose a label with a hem. With tens of thousands of cultivars
it can make naming it very difficult!
The view across the Paddock Garden herbaceous
borders
One of the nicest and later flowering thalictums the
very choice and highly sought after double delavayi to 3-4 feet
Rather lax in habit (not morals!!) and will probably need
some gentle support. Sterile so expensive to buy
My camera and I have had another diagreement! (its days
are numbered). This is a rare species yellow flowered
delphinium zalil which I say is lemon yellow as does the marvellous
Chiltern Seeds catelogue from whence it came but the camera says it
is cream. Whatever it is absolutely charming. Grows to a about 2
feet.
Wildlife and countryside
Some of the bigger dragonflies are very active on warmer days
but far less than just a few years ago before the 2 very cold
winters. Another reason for wanting some milder winters! Plenty of
dragonfly larvae in the Paddock Pond so hope for the future.
Several good sightings of kingfishers this month and do I ever
have the camera? You hear them before you see them with their high
pitched whistle folowed by flashes of brilliant shining blue. The
most exotic bird in the UK without a doubt.
As with last August very few butterflies on the wing just some
tortoisehells and peacocks with the obigatory cabbage whites.
Plenty of smaller insects with many suitable flowers to choose
from. One of the best plants for attracting insects is currently
echinops ritro a globular headed blue thistle which is always
smothered in them and bees love it too.
One of the few peacock butterflies I have seen,
luxuriating on the lovely flower head of phlox maculata
"Hesperis". More wide spread and smaller individual flowerheads
than the paniculatas they have coped well with all the heavy
rain. 4 feet+ tall and absolutely no staking.
Farmers are still stuggling to get in the harvest mostly silage
and some haylage being made, with little suitable drier interludes
to make hay (4 day minimum).
Visits
At last we have started to have visitors again for The National
Gardens Scheme with 6 group visits in the last 9 days and 3 more to
come. It has been such a part of our summers for the past 13 years
that it has seemd strange not to have had them before now. The
weather has been kind for us on the days we have opened this month.
Since the conservatory has been built we we have less space to
provide teas for larger groups but Myddfai Visitor Centre and
Community Hall just 2 miles from us has proved to be an excellent
venue for our visitors to have tea and browse the well stocked gift
shop. We will however continue to serve teas for groups of 16 or
less.
In 2013 we will be able to resume accepting visitors for the NGS
by prior arrangement from June to the end of September so if you
are planning a garden outing then please get in touch. We regret
that we will not be having another Open Day. Every year since 2000
visitor numbers on Open Days had increased to the point where it
had become almost unmanageable even in a one acre garden with a
large field close by for parking. It had become an eagerly awaited
annual event in the area and we are so grateful for all the support
we have had and hope that people will understand the reasons for
our reluctant decision. It is of course still possible to visit by
prior appointment and to purchase plants from the nursery and we
look froward to receiving visits on this basis from gardening
friends old and new.
In September the garden talks season begins with bookings all
over south and west Wales but there are still plenty of dates
available between September and March so if you would like Keith to
give a talk to your club or society please get in touch.
Just time this month to make one garden visit, to Picton Castle
near Haverfordwest and what a delight it was. One of those magical
days out when the sun shone, the cafe, gift shop and plant sales
were of the highest order, the Castle tour very interesting and 40
acres of gardens took us 4 hours to tour! The herbaceous planting
in the walled garden was exceptional and a plantsman's delight. We
thoroughly recommed it as a venue for a quality day out. With the
exception of Powis Castle, a personal favourite, Picton is surely
one of the best gardens in Wales.
Picton Castle. 700 years old and a great backdrop around
which to build a garden.
A short distance from where the earlier picture was
taken was this wonderful deep purple mop head hydrangea but when
you need a label can you ever find one?!! The PH of the soil
obviously has a big part to play in the sensational colour of this
clone.
At the entrance to The Walled Garden (the main
herbaceous garden) was this magnificient stand of kniphofias, 8
foot tall so probably at a guess and in the absence of a label,
knifophia uvaria nobilis which as Bob Brown says in his wonderful
catelogue for Cotswold Garden Flowers, "may when conveniently sited
be used as a local landmark". He can always be relied on to find
the right words to capture the essence of a special
plant.
