Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

Like many bloggers, I post elsewhere from time to time. One of my regular haunts is The Hardy Plant Society Blog where I post every month about fabulous plants for pollinators. 

Here is my latest offering: http://www.hardy-plant.org.uk/blog/shoe-0517 
I hope that you enjoy it. 

My apologies for redirecting you today. I will be back here next week, by which time, fingers crossed, we might have had some rain in Norfolk. The soil is so worryingly dry!
Best wishes,
Sarah


More gorgeous blooms in gardens around the globe may be found at http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/

Twenty-First-Century Gardeners

The twenty-fifth anniversary of the internet set me thinking about the ways in which technology has impacted gardeners' lives. Once upon a time I gardened in isolation and on occasions I was fortunate to share my enthusiasm for plants with 3 elderly gardeners. I will be forever grateful for their company, encouragement, advice, seeds and cuttings. Twenty-first-century gardening needs not be a solitary experience. I might garden alone, but within seconds I can share my latest horticultural triumph or crop failure with thousands of fellow gardeners and receive advice, support, sympathy, and on those rare occasions when the going is good, a virtual pat on the back.

Ulting Wick Garden 2015

If your nearest and dearest are not nuts about gardening, meeting fellow gardeners and spending a few hours indulging in plant talk is a great luxury. In the UK, members of All Horts, an online group, arrange garden visits and invite fellow members to join them. It was during one such visit to Philippa Burrough’s wonderful garden at Ulting Wick in Essex, that I met Persicaria orientalis. I also met gardening enthusiast and fellow Twitterer, @ToBoldlyGrow, who admired the Persicaria in Philippa's garden and decided to start some from seed. Earlier this year, along with other wonderful plants which he had grown, he gave me some Persicaria orientalis.

Ulting Wick Garden 2015

Persicaria orientalis is an annual with the splendid common name of kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate. I planted it opposite my garden gate, not because I was optimistic of a kiss, but because I wanted to see it every time I went out or arrived home. In any case, I would need a ladder for kissing because the gate is taller than me, and kissing atop a ladder is a folly even in the first throes of love. Persicaria orientalis' rate of growth is impressive. It has managed to reach at least 1.5 metres (around 5’) since I settled it into its new home in June. It likes full sun and well-drained, dry soil, which is as well, because the soil has most definitely been dry this summer. It will flower until the first frosts and I am hoping that it will do the decent thing and seed itself about.

Persicaria orientalis at Le Grys Farm

In return for Persicaria orientalis, I gave @ToBoldlyGrow some Tithonia 'Orange Sunshine' plants. I might not have grown Tithonia if it wasn’t for Jason, who blogs at Gardeninacity. Jason lives thousands of miles away from me. We have never met, but his enthusiasm for Tithonia is contagious, so I sowed some seeds. These wonderful bee magnets are now growing in my garden, in @ToBoldlyGrow's garden, and in his sister's garden too, both of which are over a hundred miles away from mine. Without the internet, none of this would have happened.

Tithonia 'Orange Sunshine' at Le Grys Farm

We might be aiming for a paperless society, but most companies continue to produce mouth-watering glossy photo-packed catalogues to be savoured and drooled over during those long dark days, when the sun barely shines and we are up to our crowns in thermals. Researching plants, whether on those pages or not, takes little effort these days. It certainly makes the quest for rarer varieties less arduous than it was in the last century. 

Ulting Wick Garden 2015

The search for a plant will often lead us to untried nurseries and should all go well (and in the history of my extensive shopping experience, it always has), a lifelong relationship with these nurseries will soon be formed. In the UK, we are blessed with the Independent Plant Nurseries Guide, an online resource which came about in response to a thoughtless, throwaway comment by a well-known gardening presenter earlier this year. Three passionate plants-people took action to repair any damage caused by his comment, and now we are blessed with an ever-increasing list of nurseries. How I would love to visit them all!

Ulting Wick Garden 2015

I recently had the pleasure of meeting some fellow garden bloggers. We are all members of the Twitter- and Facebook-based group, Garden Bloggers. We receive support from one another, discuss blogging issues and, as it turns out from our meeting, share seeds and books. I was delighted to receive Glass Gem Corn seed from James, who blogs at Reflections On The Dew Pond. Having never grown Glass Gem Corn, I am really looking forward to trying it next year.

Ulting Wick Garden 2015

The first social media site was launched in 1997; blogging also dates back to the '90s. My children were born in the twenty-first century. They are teenagers who have never known a world without the internet, social media, or blogging. Like many families, we have rules about mobile phone manners, but at some time every day, I will see them with their heads bowed over their phones as they plan their social lives and share experiences with their friends far away, and I wonder how they could have ever managed without the internet. Then I look at myself and wonder how on earth I survived without it for so long.

I am linking this post to Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day to share the joys of Persicaria orientalis and Tithonia 'Orange Sunshine', which are both blooming their socks off in my garden at the moment. Why not pop over to http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/ to see what is blooming elsewhere around the globe?

More information about the garden at Ulting Wick may be found at  http://www.ultingwickgarden.co.uk/
The Independent Plant Nurseries Guide: http://independentplantnurseriesguide.uk/
Jason blogs at https://gardeninacity.wordpress.com/ and James may be found at 
https://reflectionsonthedewpond.wordpress.com/

Prince Charles, The Smiths and a Passion for Podcasts

There was a time when I would have cranked up the volume on my car cassette player and sung my heart out to the strains of The Smiths. These days, although I am still prone to a spot of singalongaSmiths while driving, I am more likely to be clinging onto every word of a gardening podcast. My addiction to podcasts is interfering with my social life. Lingering post-lift conversations are a thing of the past as passengers are hastily disgorged from my vehicle so that I can settle selfishly into Gardeners' Question Time and similar treasures.

It was during one of these blissful solitary podcastly moments that I heard Prince Charles speaking about his love of delphiniums and how he would like to see battalions of them. Why wouldn't he? Three delphiniums make a handsome group, but a multitude of them yomping through the borders must be a marvellous thing. I prefer to think of them as a corps de ballet dancing through my garden rather than a battalion storming my barbecue area, but that aside, he and I are clearly of a single mind when it comes to beloved plants: more is most definitely more.

Taking care of mass Delphinium planting in the traditional way must be time-consuming. This doesn't scare me because (look away now if you are faint-hearted) I don’t stake my herbaceous perennials.... not even my delphiniums. I do, however, plant them in the least windy, most sheltered parts of the garden. After the storms which have battered us over the past few days, I had been expecting to see them slumped like a posse of teenagers over their mobile phones. I was wrong. These sturdy plants are dancers with serious core strength. They might not be as ramrod straight as those we see at flower shows, but they are most certainly standing tall and strutting their stuff, despite the occasional curved stem. Most importantly, bees love them. They are as popular as Nepeta with our buzzing friends at the moment. 

June borders might be a feast for the eyes, but while I was working in the garden a few days ago, I was bowled over by the most divine scent. Following my nose I found myself face-to-flower with Abelia mosanensis. Given that the roses are all belting out fragrance at the moment, the fact that quiet little Abelia flowers managed to eclipse them says much about the beauty and strength of its scent. First discovered in Korea, this 1.5 metre high shrub is a member of the honeysuckle family. I grow it in full sun, but it will take a little shade. Its light green leaves turn shades of red and orange in autumn and best of all, it is popular with butterflies and bees. Of all the myriad flowers deserving attention in June, a quiet, humble shrub with tiny blooms wins my heart. That is as shocking as telling the teenage me that there are more desirable plants than a limp Gladiolus which has been flailed about the stage by Morrissey.* 

*Just in case you are too young to remember.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PV4eiDi12w

Prince Charles on Gardeners' Question Time http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b074zy95

I am joining with http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/ for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. Why not head over there and see what is blooming in June around the globe?

If Bees and Butterflies Gardened

1980s fashion is making a comeback. Incredible though it might seem, one of my daughters has proudly claimed ownership of some of my old clothes! 
30-year-old 501s no less, or should I say pre-loved vintage jeans? Suddenly I feel in tune with today’s teens, which is a welcome change, because usually I am at odds with them due to my lack of Kardashian general knowledge and a prehistoric preference for gardening blogs over make-up vlogs.

Sometimes I find my tastes at odds with pollinators too. I may bill and coo over a spectacular bloom, but the pollinators might have other ideas, lavishing all their attention on a gentler, quieter flower. These plants are easy to overlook, especially if they bloom all summer and continue into autumn with little intervention from the gardener. One such long flowering perennial is Scabiosa columbaria subsp. ochroleuca. For the past fourteen weeks, bees and butterflies have been lavishing their attention upon its flowers. Fourteen weeks! And it will continue to flower its socks off well into October.

It is a dainty plant which prefers sun and well-drained soil. Masses of delicate primrose flowers are held aloft grey-green filigree foliage by wiry stems which sway gently in the summer breeze, yet shrug off autumn storms and torrential rain. It isn’t huge; it reaches just 50-60 cm tall (20-24"); and it may be quiet, but it is tough.

I left this scabious unwatered in dry weather this year and it thrived irrespective of my lack of care. I have a number of these plants in a demanding area of our garden: the carpark. It is unfenced, so deer and rabbits can come and go as they please. They cause damage to other plants, but they have never touched this scabious.

I grow it amidst a sea of Stipa tenuissima because the border gets buffeted by fairly lively wind. Since there is little point in fighting the weather, I have celebrated its excesses with grasses and scabious. Scabiosa columbaria subsp. ochroleuca is a pretty little thing. I love looking at it every time I park my car; yet it is the flurry of pollinators around the flowers which truly drew my attention to it and helped me to appreciate the huge contribution this quiet little plant makes to the garden. If bees and butterflies could garden, they would surely grow this plant. 

I am linking with May Dream Gardens to celebrate Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. Why not head over there and see what else is flowering today on this wonderfully diverse planet? 
http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/