40 years at Cilgwyn Lodge
Sunday, April 3, 2016
I had been looking forward to 2016 for some time - after all it
is not that often that you get the opportunity to celebrate 40
years of living in the same house. It is a privilege to have been
the custodians of this special place for so long. Census returns
from 1841 onwards confirm that no -one else has lived here for that
length of time.
An aerial photograph of Cilgwyn Lodge from 1969 and how
the garden looked when I came to live here
April 1987 House garden
The latest aerial photograph from 2009 showing
current layout of both gardens
The date of the anniversary was 29 March. In 1976 it was a
soft mild day with good growth in the gardens, some plants of
which, as a relatively inexperienced gardener, were new to me.
Hellebores and a few emerging hostas particularly took my attention
and have been lifelong friends since then (the original hosta Albo
Marginata lives on in many divisions I have taken from the original
plant over the years), and both hostas and hellebores have been
substantially added to over the years.
Looking forward to the future is not as easy now as it was in
the carefree, healthy years of my late twenties. It was clear that
sooner or later as we grew older, the garden of 1 acre and
adjoining plant nursery would become more difficult to manage and
that opening for the NGS would become more pressurised as the years
went by. However I did not expect the end to come quite so quickly.
I reported in last months News that I had been ill for a large part
of January and February with a respiratory condition affecting my
right lung. I recently received the sad news that I have an
incurable cancer on the lining of the lung called mesothelioma.
I have chosen to have no treatment at present and intend to
take every day as it comes and to enjoy the garden for as long as
possible, especially as Spring comes ever closer.
Moira and gardening friends have done a great deal of work in
the gardens so that they look as good as they have ever done at
this time of year. We are so grateful for their kindness and hard
work which has lifted my spirits considerably. At what is usually
one of my busiest times of year, I have been on much reduced duties
in the polytunnels and doing some limited weeding usually from a
sitting position!
Moira and friends Estelle and Colin hard at work in the
Koi Pond border
I do intend to continue to publish my monthly website news which
I have so much enjoyed over the last 6 years and which has received
such positive feedback from many readers. The gardens are still
here and with wildlife and countryside all around us, there is
always something of interest to write about, so please keep
visiting us in digital format, even though the garden and nursery
are no longer open to the public.
Weather
At last we saw the end of the 4 month stranglehold of wet and
windy weather when high pressure started to build in the
early part of March culminating in over 2 weeks of fabulously dry
and sunny weather during mid month, In spite of the sun and a few
warmer days it was generally cold day and night with a good few
frosts, down to -5C on four occassions. Day time temperatures
rarely got much above 10C although the mercury climbed to a balmy
14C on several days allowing lunch to be taken outside. What a joy
after those weeks in hospital earlier in the year!! Rain and a
couple of gales late month were almost welcome as the garden had
started to look dry.
Garden update
As mentioned earlier, the main March job is cutting back all the
18 borders which this year was completed by our dear friends.
All the haulms were burned on that one special bonfire I always
look forward to. As you can imagine all the haulms amount to a huge
amount of material which being air dried goes up in a huge inferno!
There are far less weeds this year than I have seen for some time,
except in just a couple of borders where bittercress still
displayed its abilities to reign supreme over all other
weeds. Growth everywhere is quite slow and erratic and
some plants like snowdrops stopped growing and had a another go
later in the month.
Paddock garden after make over and first mowing of
lawns
The Red Border - only plants in growth are
hemerocallis
As we have no visitors this year I have much reduced my seed
sowing which seems strange as it is a particular passion of mine
and a major pre occupation in March with sowing, pricking out and
potting on having to be factored in alongside all the other early
spring tasks. Many of the seeds I had already ordered (over 150
from the Hardy Plant Society alone) have been distributed amongst
friends. We will not be growing many vegetables which perhaps
will be the hardest thing to come to terms with. I have grown
vegetables both here and in my previous garden in Gloucestershire
continuously since 1972.
The dry weather allowed the lawns to be mown and given spring
treatment, and I have to say how pleased I am that the grass looked
good all winter and how thick it was when cut. I think this is
partially due to the fact that we had no long prolonged
frosts all winter and that I used a professional long lasting
feed based on potash and phosphates with very reduced nitrogen
which enabled the roots to be fed providing a good structure to the
sward.
What's looking good?
Not much to be honest. The cold days and nights have held
everything back but the hellebores which sat and sulked in all the
rain have had a new lease of life and there are one or two real
stunners.
A superb yellow with vivid red star centre - a new
aquisition from last year
An old favourite from Farmyard Nurseries, just
outside the kitchen window. Planted to catch the late afternoon
sunshine which intesifies the good red colour
When not many other herbaceous plants are in
flower foliage can be an exciting alternative. In this pic. a
carpet of almost black leaves of anthriscus "Ravens
Wing"
Corydalis temulifolia "Chocolate
Stars"
The incredible black leaves of a heuchera, name long
since lost!
Daffodils were right on cue for Easter and I have discovered
several new ones to me this spring (which is not difficult given
how many registered cultivars there are).
Narcissus cyclamineus cultivar at Aberglasney
gardens
A jonquill cultivar "Quail" very floriferous with multi
heads and an intense perfume
"Jenny", one of my all time favourite cultivars of
cylamineus hybrids
And an elegant modern cyclamineus hybrid
"Treena"
After all those hybrid forms nature does it best
with the native form of daffdil, N pseudonarcissus in the woodland
garden with late hellebores
In the propagation polytunnel there are some good lily seedlings
from my own seed sown up to 3 years ago. It can then take most of
them another couple of years to get to flowering size. Many
of them are lilium martagon which I find reliable and relatively
quick to germinate.
Perhaps my all time favourite is the giant Himalayan lily,
cardiocrinum giganteum which demands great patience from the seed
sower as it can be up to 7 years from seed to flower. But what a
great joy it is and well worth the wait. It was possibly the
highlight of my horticultural life when my first one flowered in
2014 and it still leaves al lump in my throat even when I think
about it. The good news is that when it gets established in the
garden it can continue to produce flowers from new bulbs it forms
every year for many years to come. And always so I am told, it does
better from your own bulbs from seed than any you can buy in!!
Cardiocrinum seedlings recently germinated from seed
sown in autumn 2014. Potential flowering dates from the huge
bulbs that will form in 6 years is2020/2021
The object of all that affection and anticipation. Well
worth the wait in June- July and 7-8 feet tall
Another bulbous plant that makes you wait for its flowering.
After 5 years this superb velthemia bracteata was the best of a
group of mixed colours from seed I obtained from the Hardy Plants
Society's 2011 annual seed exchange. Not I hasten to add a hardy
plant but many of us Hardy Planters don't worry too much about
that!!
And finally on the seed sowing front I am hoping that this year
of all years, the pots of tulipa sprenegeri that are in their third
year from my own seed will flower. Short growing, shade loving and
long lived in the garden they are one of nature's miracles. They
were originally collected in the wild from just one location in N.W
Turkey in the late 1800's and since 1896 none have ever been found
anywhere in the wild. All successive progeny available in
horticulture have come from seed from cultivated plants. Although
the tiny bulbs mulitiply well they grow very deeply and are
difficult to find for digging up. To be involved with this special
plant even in such a small way is a great thrill, and people
sometimes wonder why I am nuts about plants!! For more info Google
www, alpinegardensociety.net and search for tulipa sprenegeri
Wildlife and countryside
As I wasn't feeling well at the beginning of the month I
missed all the frog activity in the Paddock Pond which was later
this year, but by mid month most of the eggs had hatched and
the jelly they are laid in disintegrated. The toads then
started but so far there have not been very many and as they seem
to prefer warmer evenings they are probably biding their time. All
forms of wildlife are not governed by diary
dates but a whole host of prevailing
conditions,which is why there is such variability year on
year.
And speaking of variability snowdrops in the wild have been
flowering much later and are now as good as they have been since
the beginning of the year. Unusually their late flowering has
coincided with the main flush of primroses, not an event I have
seen that often.
Primroses are having a great spring everywhere you look
as on this country lane not far from us
And not far away is a similar sized group of
snowdrops
Finally having been used for some time to seeing large groups of
red kites. it has been reassuring recently to see buzzards
making bigger groupings of up to 5 or 6 which is how they used when
I first came here and before the kite numbers had begun to
increase. There is a feeling in these parts that the rise in kite
numbers has had a detrimental effect on buzzards.
Visits
Having resolved when my cancer was diagnosed that we were going
to make the most of every day, we have had more outings than we
have ever had at this time of year which included our 2 nearest
large gardens, Aberglasney and the National Botanic Garden for
Wales which we are lucky to have a short car journey away.
Aberglasney in March shows off the woodland
planings to great effect with moist humous rich soil in many areas
of the gardens and in the clearings are some choice herbaceous
forms the foliage of which is almost as rich as the
later flowers
This deep pink magonolia sprengeri "Marwood
Spring" is in a strategic position asyou come out of Bishop
Rudd's garden. It is really striking as its flowers are set against
the blue sky of a sunny Good Friday
And a really nice surprise was a superb 2-3 feet tall
flower spike of the earliest flowering arisaema
nepenthoides
The National Botanic Gardens is on a huge scale but is
nevertheless generously planted with something choice for all
seasons. A large drift of pulmonaria "Blue Ensign" creates a haze
when viewed at a distance
One of the best of all the named celandines is
"Brazen Hussey" found by Christopher Lloyd in a hedgerow near Great
Dixter with its almost black leaves perfectly matched to the
bright yellow flowers.
Mimosa in the Great Glasshouse
The Canary Islands
An elegant shrub is sparmania with lightly scented
flowers
Tropaeolum tricolor
What a joy in the South African garden to find a
King Protea coming into flower in a ledge in a rocky face. Such
brilliant planting as in much of the Great
Glasshouse
The unique roof is an attraction in its own
right
We are not opening the garden this year to visitors but there
was evidence earlier this month that some uninvited guests had
found a way around this!
Bloody rabbits!!
