The Year Gone By

As you do during the yuletide holidays (as well as drink, eat, eat, drink) I’ve been looking at my photos from the past year. Planning and dreaming of 2016, surely the weather has to be better. And I will be more organised, I will weed more often, I will label more plants. I will NOT procrastinate, an ugly word for an ugly habit.

Who am I kidding? Well it’s best to start in a positive mood…..no such thing as cannot etc etc.

Looking back, I suppose it’s been an exciting year – opening to the public, featuring on local and national BBC Radio and, next week, on the telly, I am chuffed and so excited about the year ahead.

Lots of work ahead but just for this week, I’ll keep eating the chocolate and flicking through my photos and seed catalogues. Surely the dreaming and planning is as much fun as the completion of the garden “to do” list.

Have a lovely rest folks and may your gardening in 2016 be merry and joyful!

As you do during the yuletide holidays (as well as drink, eat, eat, drink) I’ve been looking at my photos from the past year. Planning and dreaming of 2016, surely the weather has to be better. And I will be more organised, I will weed more often, I will label more plants. I will NOT procrastinate, an ugly word for an ugly habit.

Who am I kidding? Well it’s best to start in a positive mood…..no such thing as cannot etc etc.

Looking back, I suppose it’s been an exciting year – opening to the public, featuring on local and national BBC Radio and, next week, on the telly, I am chuffed and so excited about the year ahead.

Lots of work ahead but just for this week, I’ll keep eating the chocolate and flicking through my photos and seed catalogues. Surely the dreaming and planning is as much fun as the completion of the garden “to do” list.

Have a lovely rest folks and may your gardening in 2016 be merry and joyful!

Summer's Swansong

What a beautiful autumn...the sun just keeps on shining and there's hardly been a breath of wind for what feels like forever. We haven't had such a lovely spell of weather since April.

Garden wise, we are having a ball.....working in T shirts, carelessly leaving tools out overnight, having our break times outdoors.....no hats or thermals, it's just lovely but I suppose our autumns, on average, are more pleasant than our springs, and the soil is certainly warmer at this time of year.

I'm still potting on seedlings of aquilegias and other perennials sown fresh from our own garden seed. We really need to start lifting and dividing early flowering perennials (geums, galiums, geranium macrorrhizums & phaeums, primula) but they are still growing so strongly and the ground is so dry that I will leave it for another week or so.

The bulb order is due to arrive this week so there will be lots of work ahead, but the weather's to remain pleasant which will certainly shorten the winter for us - hopefully we will not pay for it this winter, hopefully Mother Nature will not be saving the gales only to throw them all upon us in one fell swoop.

Some beautiful autumnal sunsets.

September Settled

Well a better month at last.... a lovely spell of settled weather on the whole and the garden seems to be enjoying it.

The crocosmia are enjoying the sunshine and the hydrangeas, rudbeckias, phlox and eupatoriums are all flowering later than usual. 

As is often the case in a mild autumn, the roses are putting on a second flush and many of the primula are showing a hint of what lies ahead for us, from late winter to spring.

The garden closes for winter next week and whilst I've enjoyed the varied visitors, including folk from all corners of the world, I'm looking forward to the work of cutting the meadows, planting more bulbs and wildflower plugs that we have grown from seed (yarrow, ox eye daisies, meadow cranesbill). I also want to start dividing some of the earlier flowering perennials such as the nepetas and geums. I will leave the plants that are still flowering (crocosmia, phlox and heleniums) until spring. 

Two other major tasks we hope to complete before Christmas are the new pond beside the sapling meadow and the "making" of a border along the rose / butterfly walk thin front of the laid hedge. This will of course be done by the "no dig" method (earlier blog post with our method can be found here ) and I think the roses will love it. But it also means that we will need lots of low growing perennials to plant at the feet of the roses.......my favourite "chore" - finding new plants! 

I hope you enjoy your garden this autumn wherever you are! 

The purple and gold bed in the cottage garden with geranium wlassovianum, inula hookeri and solidago.

Astilbe Mighty Pip

The prairie border with crocosmia Severn Sunrise, Carmin Brilliant & Solfatare and achillea Cloth of Gold.

The old autumn bed today with the pinks and purples still going strong - phlox and monarda among others.

Summer?

All I can say is that it was a good summer for the trees and shrubs - incessant rain, I mean non stop rain....more rain than we had in winter.

The poor old roses, they tried their best but I've spent many a day deadheading brown mush from our lovely albas and noisettes. On the plus side, it lets you see which roses are rainproof - American Pillar and Cerise Bouquet both stood up pretty well, as did Bonica.

Oh well, onwards and upwards....I'm already making a wish list of roses to add to the garden for next year. (Soupert et Notting, Henri Martin, banksiae lutea, Appleblossom.the list goes on!).

The trees, hedges and shrubs are growing like billyoh which is great but the poor bees and butterflies have been very thin on the ground. The forecast for the next fortnight suggests a dry spell, but with cold northerly winds....the hydrangeas, crocosmia, rudbeckias and eupatoriums are only beginning to flower so I'm wishing for a settled month ahead (the kids are back at school - or, in my case, school and university....I can't quite believe where the time has gone). The weather's always lovely when the kids go back to school!

Newly planted veronica spicata Red Fox

A mixed bunch from late summer (despite the rain)

The autumn bed at dusk, after the rain.

The cottage garden

The lovely Ispahan, trying her best in the rain.

LD Braithwaite flowering through Rambling Rosie.

Summer Catch Up

Where have the weeks gone...really, I cannot believe that we are in the middle of July - I have been so truly madly deeply busy.....excuses, excuses as always.

June was chocabloc with group tours which was lovely - we had a drought which was a pain but great for the visitors - not an umbrella in sight. Of course, it started to rain about two weeks ago and it hasn't stopped since, with wind galore. Strong gales forecast for Friday... :(

On the flowery front, we have the roses doing their thing, albeit later than usual but this may work in our favour for next week's open weekend (if they survive the gales!) Virginiana is just about to start flowering...happy days.

We have sowed our biennials since my last post, they always seem to grow so slowly compared to annuals but I suppose they have almost a year to grow to flowering size.

The annuals are painfully slow in the garden after the cold spring and dry weather but are finally starting to grow. 

A few highlights...........

Dianthus carthusianorum  - a pop of pink on wiry gale proof stems.

Perk of the job....a bucketful of leftovers.

Another garden favourite - hordeum jubatum, foxtail grass.

A cottage garden medley.

The cottage garden in late June heading towards the height of exuberance.

A Perfect Day

Yes the gales certainly did come at the start of the week - the garden was blown to smithereens and I was truly fed up. We tidied and restaked and tidied some more so you can imagine how peeved I was to find that a gale warning was in place from Friday evening right through into Saturday afternoon, right in time for our open weekend.

And the gales they came with torrential showers - you start to think, "Am I wise in the head?"
More staking and tidying.........then the crowds came in droves. Today the sun shone and it was fabulous.....the feedback from the visitors was amazing and of course I'm on cloud nine, exhausted but happy.

Enthused and invigorated, I'm ready for lots more lovely visitors, about 18 groups of visitors coming this month and I can't wait.

Tasks between visitors this week:

Plant out remaining hardened off annuals - statice, amaranthe, scabious, snapdragons and perennials - agastache Globetrotter, nepeta grandiflora Border Ballet and penstemon.

Plant out rest of veg - peas & beans (and sow more lettuce etc).

Sow biennials - hesperis (Sweet Jane), digitalis (Foxgloves), dianthus (Sweet William) lunaria (Honesty) erysimum (wallflowers).

And best of all, enjoy the garden! Roll on summer!

May Summer Begin Now

It seems, when I look back at my blog, that I'm obsessed with the weather but then, what gardener isn't?

I'll keep it brief....average temperature of 8'C, a frost the like of which we haven't seen on our peninsula in living memory, frequent hail stones and now severe gales forecast for the next two days. 

We are opening our garden for the National Trust UGS next weekend so you may understand my frustration. June is our busiest month for visitors and after all of our planning and prep, I just want the garden to look its best.

OK so enough moaning, on the positive side, the trees are growing well, the yellow rattle has germinated well in the new meadow area and last year's newly planted areas are starting to take shape.

And I'm happy cos that's what we gardeners are - apparently we are the happiest profession in the UK. (Bankers are the most miserable...nuff said.)

Here's hoping for a wonderful June!

The front garden filling out.

Persicaria Superba, a thuggish but useful plant at this time of year.

Chelsea Week

Isn't it so exciting? It's Chelsea time and I'm dying to see all of this year's trends / designs. A sneek peek this evening hinted towards the natural look staying very much on trend, which I love of course.

Back at Kilcoan Gardens, things are still slow. We had a lovely workshop on Saturday with 11 amazing girls.....and the sun shone!! It's to warm up this week so here's wishing for some surging forth of plants as we are opening this year for the National Trust Ulster Garden Scheme on 6th & 7th June and I'm so hoping for a great display.

We are still very busy potting on, hardening off and planting out but this week should complete the bulk of the work...just in time for the whole process to start over again with the biennials - I'm determined this year to do a better job of filling the current hungry gap with more honesty, wallflowers and hesperis. 

The veg garden is woefully behind as always, just not enough hours in the day and it always get put to the bottom of the "to do" list....I need a wee retired grandpa to come in and take it over....any takers anyone?! Tomorrow's priority will be the veg - planting out brassicas, direct sowing carrot, parsnip, beetroot and anything else I can think of. The peas & beans are almost hardened off so that they can go out at the end of the week.

What else, what else.....I need to make a new list! 

Polemonium looking lovely in the cottage garden.

The orchard with geum rivale, camassias & Pheasant's Eye narcissus.

Confessions Of A Plantaholic

Wind....with a side order of gales. Anyone else tired of our spring weather? Yes I know that April was lovely but it was cold....cold and dry - I don't really feel like I've enjoyed any spring weather as yet - I have yet to strip down to a t shirt. 

The plants are strangely behind in someways (late narcissus still not blooming yet camassias are all out in time). Rosa Canary Bird has usually flowered by not but not this year, and yet, the rugosas appear to be on track for blooms any day now.

What have I been up to? A sore back from a silly shovelling of topsoil Thursday week ago has slowed me down a little but I've got plenty of willing helpers for which I am very grateful. 

Last week, I potted on more of the autumn sown perennials: aquilegias, astrantia, thalictrum aquilegifolium, white catananche, pink and white physostegia, nepeta grandiflora Border ballet, purple & white veronica longifolia. The spring sown perennials are also coming on well - agastache Globetrotter, veronica longifolia Pink Shades, also some penstemons and dwarf hollyhocks. Gosh, it's only at times like this when I start to list what I've sown that I start to get quite excited.

Confessions of a plantaholic - a few more plants just fell into my path / hand / bag when I was at Garden Show Ireland last week....polemonium Purple Rain & Henriette, geranium Blue Cloud, epidmedium Warleyense, calamintha nepeta, brunnera Mr Morse, aruncus aethusifolius, mukdenia rossii, filipendula purpurea, lunaria redviva - where am I going to plant them all??!!

Still so much to do....I can feel (another) list starting...where's my pen?!

April Flowers

April was a lovely month for the most part, pretty cold but lovely. The entire month was spent getting the garden ready for our first open event last weekend and we were lucky to have so much dry weather that we were able to get lots of painting and sorting done.

On the other hand, lots of new plants and bareroot hedging in dire need of some water, so we were glad to see the rain arrive, but it's bitterly cold.....only 2'C this morning and just yesterday, gardens inland were telling of overnight lows of -6'C which has played havoc with their lovely emerging spring growth. We have taken a slight hit - some of the hydrangeas have been affected but we should be grateful for our milder but much windier micro climate.

Plants looking lovely this month... the pulmonarias have been wonderful, some favourites - Opal & Roy Davidson. The cowslips, polemonium Lambrook Mauve, lathyrus alboroseum, ranunculus Brazen Hussy, euphorbia martinii and amygdaloides purpurea are all looking lovely.

My favourite new narcissus has to be Blushing Lady, I was worried it would look a bit brash but it's a subtle blush and the scent is superb.

Lathyrus alboroseum

Cowslips by the pond.

Polemonium Lambrook Mauve

A wonderful evening in April.

Autumn Bed Update

Progress...the new autumn bed has been revamped and replanted - I can't wait and yet I wait with trepidation - will it work? The lovely thing is that, if it doesn't work (design wise), the bees and butterflies will still love it and we can reuse the plants elsewhere.

Despite the woeful weather, I'm feeling rather upbeat, Things are slow but little bits of plants are popping up everywhere.......pulmonarias, erythroniums, newly planted late flowering narcissus, epimediums, lathryus vernus, fritillaries, muscari. 

Back to the autumn bed, I've tried to keep it simple. Fewer plant varieties in bigger blocks - here are a few of them:

Veronica spicata Red Fox
Liatris Kobold
Monarda Beauty of Cobham
Achillea Cerise Queen
Lupin The Page
Iris Dear Delight
Molinia Variegata
Pennisetum Hameln

The bed is not easy to design, as it's an S shape, simply because the old autumn bed, which started a kidney shape was extended to an elongated S. A few gatecrashers are there including dahlia Blue Bayou, hydrangea Magical Amethyst and fuschia Mrs Popple. There are also a few anthemis, astilbes, persicarias, salvia nemorosa and sanguisorbas.....watch this space!!

A pic from last summer, in its first year, of a small section showing lupin The Page, anthemis and echium Blue Bedder.

And the list goes on

I've made yet another list, as you do......so much to accomplish before April when we open the garden. With the best will in the world, my list's not shifting, as in when I look at my list on the laptop each night, I'm not able to tick off any tasks, yet my days are filled with "must do" garden jobs.

Last week, we planted more bare root trees in the front fields, in an attempt to soften the wind which whistles up the stable yard and blatters the autumn beds - alder and field maple. As I've said before, the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is now (old chinese proverb) and I'm hoping they will grow pretty quickly. A hornbeam hedge has been planted behind the cottage garden as the fence is already 18 years old - hopefully in about 7 years time, the fence can come down and the hedge will provide the shelter from the westerly winds. A hedge beats a fence every time...cheaper, less maintenance, wildlife friendly, longer lifespan.

We have also added species roses to the boundary hedges to add colour and provide more food for wildlife (100 so far).  

My bareroot plants have all arrived for the new autumn bed..........for another blog post - gosh I need to get them planted. But also lots of potting on needed, in the tunnel, of autumn sown perennials:

Lupins The Page, Chandelier and Gallery Yellow
Achillea Cerise Queen
Veronica longifolia Pacific Ocean
Verbascum phoenicum
Everlasting sweetpea
Catananche caerula alba
Aquilegia Dragonfly Mixed
Thalictrum aquilegifolium

and others that I can't remember.

It's bitterly cold and folk say "It's still only March" but I would love to work without my salopettes, thermals and furry hat......oh the freedom of it! Roll on an idyllic spring!

A queen bee on muscari last Tuesday 

   Hellebore at the bottom of the orchard.

Know Your Onions

We've been planting more alliums in the garden...they should have been in before now but Christmas kind of got in the way, then I had a pesky virus, then the weather wasn't great...excuses, excuses.....I am the world's greatest procrastinator....a horrid word for a horrid habit, it runs in the family and I'm afraid I've passed it on to my poor son. Procrastinating is not a good thing to do in the garden, as time, and nature, wait for no man...seed sowing, bulb planting, perennial splitting all have to be done at the right time but hey ho, they're in now and hopefully won't be the worse for it.

We had started to plant Purple Sensation in the prairie last year among the crocosmia as this border is all foliage no flower until mid summer. The allium foliage can look a little messy after flowering which the crocosmia foliage will help to hide.  I hadn't realised that the geum Blazing Sunset would flower so perpetually and this produced a pleasant clash of colours, à la Great Dixter. We didn't have enough to reach the end of the bed so they have been continued and bulked up a little. Hopefully they will bulk up themselves in a few years.

We have also planted allium caeruleum azureum in the cottage garden - a lovely clear blue compact head on a tallish stem (2 ft), from siberia so pretty robust and should clump up nicely.

In the cutting field, we have plenty of allium sphaerocephalon which continually increase in numbers but to the point of being useful as opposed to thuggish. Reaching a decent height of almost a metre, they flower for quite a while in midsummer and are very much on trend at the moment, fitting well with prairie style planting.

Finally, my favourite allium - roseum, the rosy garlic - a perfect size for a handtied bouquet, flowers forever (and lasts forever in a vase), with a sweet honey smell and the bees love it...perfect!

The origin of "know your onions"? Check it out here!

Purple Sensation in the prairie border.

Allium sphaerocephalon

Allium roseum

Purple Sensation

Pootling in Paradise

A beautiful winter's day....after a week's break from the garden, due to both the weather and a rotten cold, I headed back out today with my trusty helpers. This was the first day since last week that we weren't frozen - very unusual for our wee peninsula. Mind you, the garden doesn't seem too bothered, everything's growing on merrily.

Today, we removed the old hybrid teas from in front of the blue seat, they just didn't do well enough but the nepeta Walkers Low that we had planted around them, had romped away. So today we lifted and divided them (three year old plants) and added peony Sarah Bernhardt and white phlox to the centre of each small bed. To add spring interest, I have dotted through forget-me-nots that had self sown in the autumn bed. Yikes! Forgot to take a photo - here's one from last year - I just love the nepeta...slugproof, wildlife friendly, beautiful scent, wonderful cut flower, blooms from May till October....need I say more?

By the way, we all need to pootle more apparently....happy days!

Hedgerow Habits

 Two years ago, almost to the day, we decided to lay our old overgrown hawthorn hedge. The hedge was at the edge of the garden then, with the pony's paddock beyond but we have since planted the pony's field with native trees, a row of hydrangeas and a prairie border.

Anyway, we were quite brutal with the hedge and yet it has worked wonders and sprouted fresh growth along the old wood. There were some roses planted within the garden on the west side of the hedge a few years previous....Rambling Rector, American Pillar, Cerise Bouquet, Canary Bird and a few others (albas and gallicas) that have lost their label. We are adding a few more this year - Ethel, Stanwell Perpetual,  perhaps Sir Cedric Morris although he seems rather rampant and the hedge is yet to grow to a decent height.

We will also move a few other existing roses that are in the wrong place - Ghislaine de Feligonde, Nevada, Creme dela Creme. 

I have also popped in a few buddleias, some slipped from ones in the garden and some bought, then planted a few ribes and deutzias..........I've decided to name the length of the hedgerow "The Butterfly Walk"........seems rather pretentious, yet when asked by the lovely Cherrie McIlwaine (for Gardeners' Corner) what were my garden plans for the year ahead, I heard myself declare, rather foolhardily "I'm going to create a butterfly walk with..." and I blurted out every butterfly friendly plant I could think of......yes the buddleias and deutzias were already planted but a few shrubs do not a butterfly walk make. I will need to add more, so that set me to thinking (yay more plants!) and I have decided to let the actual bank behind the roses go wild, like a wild hedgerow verge - our verges are lovely in Islandmagee...lots of cow parsley, wild carrot and Alexanders. And I will add centranthus ruber which self sows everywhere, hieracum (Foxes & Cubs) which we have autumn sown from our own seed (have 75 plugs in the polytunnel), also geranium pyrenaicum and dianthus carthusianorum which we grew from seed last year. I must get some honeysuckle....Auntie Jo has already planted a few clematis montana Wee Willie Winkie which she grew from cuttings.

Isn't the anticipation almost as exhilarating as the end result?! Us gardeners have such vivid imaginations! Roll on summer!!

American Pillar.....two more have been added along the bank from cuttings. I will keep you posted on the progress!