Mid March and it feels like we are still in winter. Rain, more rain, wind, frost, tiny bits of sunshine then more rain. The patio pots are all still water logged but most of the plants look like they have survived although some are covered in moss like the red astrantia. But I am hoping the astrantia will soon pop up through the moss.
Moss taking over the astrantia.
The crocuses that were eaten when they flowered in the trough last year have survived as I put one of the seed tray lids over it this time. They looked great in the little bit of sunshine that we did get.
Crocus sieberi ‘Firefly’ in the sun.
Most of the hellebores are in full flower now so here are a few:
In the stumpery: the small white erythronium are almost flowering. The pulmonaria are looking lovely with their spotty leaves and pinky/mauve flowers. The tortured hazel looks a little half and half as the side that gets the most sunshine has the most catkins on it and the shadier side is looking a bit bare. Even the dead witch hazel that is still clinging onto it’s dead leaves has some colour – the leaves look almost red. There are some very fragrant flowers now on the sarcococca and also on the winter flowering honeysuckle.
The best news is that we spotted the first lot of frogspawn on 6th March this year and the other day I counted at least 30 frogs and loads of frogspawn – at least 11 clumps! And even better than that- Harry saw loads of newts in the pond at night (he counted at least 10 but they move really fast so getting a photo was tricky).
Frogs and frogspawn 2026.Frogs and newts.
The mouse plant that we are trying to get rid of in the raised bed came back with a vengeance so Harry dug down and got most of the soil out of that corner. Before we put and soil in there we will wait and see if any more reappears. We have already waited over a year to get rid of this stuff. Right next to that area is a small clump of tete-a-tete narcissi and at the other side a clump of hardy geranium so I am hoping the mouse plant will not appear in amongst them.
Tete-a-tete narcissi next to the dug out hole.
With a bit more sunshine the rest of the narcissi out the back will bloom while the large yellow daffodils out the front garden are flowering away and the mahonia it just about to bloom. I can’t wait to get out and enjoy the garden without having to wear about 6 layers of thermals. I have just got over a horrid cold and am still struggling to keep warm even in the house. On the plus side – I haven’t seen any huge slugs yet this year – it is only a matter of time.
It’s the end of February, and the end of an era for my family. This year has had such a sad beginning, with the passing of a friend, then my dear mum, followed by my mum’s remaining sister. Mum loved her garden and pond and also many houseplants. I have taken a few of her houseplants to care for them as I think it is a lovely way to remember people by. As you tend their plants you can reminisce about happier times and even talk to the plants as though you were talking to the person themselves. Here are some pictures of my mum’s garden.
Moan, moan ,moan, yet another cold and soggy winter. We finally got a short spell of sunshine the other day so I nipped out into the garden to see what had started to come through. The usual snowdrops, narcissi, a few crocus, hellebores, and yellow erythronium are just coming up. Some of the hellebores have buds, some have a couple of open flowers and others only have leaves. The old leaves need to come off as they are pretty manky looking and new leaves will pop up soon.
The rhododendron and the pieris have promising buds and hopefully (if I can keep the pigeons off) the choiysia will have some buds too. The sarcococca has a few buds on, the lonicera fragrantissima (winter flowering honeysuckle) only has a few flowers so far, but it did get a prune in autumn as the branches were overhanging the path. The corkscrew hazel has a few catkins on but the witch hazel only has a few brown wizened leaves on it. It usually has beautiful spidery orangey-red flowers on by now. I do hope it is ok. This is what it looked like this time last year. I have asked around and some people think it may not have had enough water during the summer (well I was on bed rest most of the summer) while others think it may be wind scorch. It may well be dead but I have tried the scrape the bark test shown here Is my tree dying? and just can’t make up my mind if it is or isn’t so I will just leave it alone and see what happens. The leaves did put on a bit of an autumn show but then just went very dark brown and didn’t really fall off. There are some buds but they look small and skinny so I am a bit perplexed as it has been in that position for 12 years now and was only 3 meters away before that – we moved it when we got rid of the greenhouse and made the stumpery.
Dead looking witch hazel.
The hebe Pink paradise always has a few sporadic flowers on it as does the viburnum Bodnantense Dawn. I took out a lot of the golden Japanese rush (Acornus Ogon) as it was creeping everywhere and getting in amongst the roots of other plants but it is a nice golden colour in a winter garden when potted up in a window box. However it needs a bit of TLC now. It lives under the bird feeder, behind a the rose Gertrude Jekyll, as it not only helps prevent the seeds from the feeder getting into the bed, but also stops the rush getting out and spreading through the bed.
Acornus Ogon
There are loads of evergreen to see in all parts of the garden to break up the browns and greys of winter. A lot of ivy and ferns, cyclamen, heather, hebe, sarcoccoca, berberis, variegated holy, tree heath, epimedium, some grasses, and the saxifrages and succulents. Even the young foxgloves and dead-nettles look ok during the winter.
At this time of year when the sun is still low we don’t get much sun sunshine in the garden. I can see it flooding the golf course out the back and I can see it across the playing field out the front, but not much gets into the garden.
Miscanthus in the winter sun.
The conservatory gets a little bit more, but only for a short time and the patio only catches some rays on the table top through the conservatory window.
In the conservatory the crocuses have flowered as has the hyacinth and of course the cyclamen. The oxalis palmifrons is still not showing any buds. I did see some paler growth which I initially thought might be buds coming up but they were actually very young leaves that were not very green. Everything needs a bit more sunshine – including me!
Oxalis palmifrons young leaves looking a bit pale.Bulbs on the table in the sunshine.Bulbs and cyclamen.Crocus sieberi ‘Firefly’
While I was deadheading the crocuses the spring on my Darlac cut-n-hold snips broke. Darlac tools have what they call a ‘limited ‘’lifetime’’ guarantee’ so it is worth holding onto the packaging and write the date of purchase on it and keep your receipt. I couldn’t find anywhere on their website about how to get a replacement spring. Apparently they were taken over by Fothergill’s but their website didn’t give any clue about how to obtain a replacement spring either so I phoned the Darlac customer services and they took my details and said that Fothergill’s would send one out to me. I use quite a few different tools from Darlac – check out some of my favourite tools. Thank you Darlac.
Darlac broken spring.
So the end of January – beginning of February looks very cold, wet and grey still but there is so much coming through that the garden will soon be full of colour again.
Happy New Year! Yes I know I didn’t do a blog post in December. I didn’t forget, I was just trying to stay warm as it was pretty cold most of time. The ramp gets extremely slippery in the freezing weather and we have been having a lot of freezing temperatures lately so I haven’t been in the garden for ages. I don’t fancy getting stranded in the freezing cold just because I can’t make it up the ramp due to ice. I have been putting fleece over the plants in the conservatory plus keeping an oil radiator on during the night to try and keep the room around 5o C or more. When there is an occasional glimpse of sunshine I remove the fleece.
Sunshine in the conservatory.
Harry has been keeping a couple of areas in the frozen pond melted so the gas does not build up under the ice. Some people keep a small ball on the pond and say that it prevents the pond from icing over completely but that has never worked for us. Plus I don’t want the dog jumping in to try and retrieve it! All the slabs are very icy.
Frozen pond.
I have been keeping the birds fed and changing their water on the patio. When one birdbath freezes I put out a fresh one and defrost the frozen one. The pots are all defrosting now as the temperature has started to rise a little. I am so looking froward to spring and feeling a bit of warm sunshine and seeing the garden come back into colour. I am grateful for all the evergreens so I am not just looking at bare brown twigs, and soon there will be flowers on a few late winter flowering shrubs but we are just a little too early for them yet.
Defrosting bulbs.
Even the patio slabs are slippery so I still have to be careful. At least we haven’t had the snow that a lot of other folk have been having (so far). I remember the Beast from the East when I had to clear the snow from the patio almost every hour to keep a path clear to the bird feeder (with Harry’s help). Eventually I couldn’t even open the door to do that. I was stuck indoors for ages. Edinburgh is reasonably well sheltered from a lot of extreme weather so we don’t do badly really I just don’t do well in the cold.
So, I got the repaired wheelchair back – ok so far, except it has devolved a creak on the left hand side. I did not get that ‘pressure mapping’ of my cushion done (despite being promised twice) and it was because the OT at wheelchair services ‘doesn’t believe in it’. Then a few days after my so-called assessment the cushion deflated at the right back quadrant with a slow puncture! That is the area where my right ischium sits by the way- you know – the bone I had the pressure sore on. I ordered a new cushion and wheelchair services delivered one a few days later (which is great service). I was on an old spare one until it was delivered and that too has a slow puncture in exactly the same place. This is all soooooo frustrating.
We had a few very cold days following a whole lot of rain so I haven’t been doing much outdoors. Amy put some mulch down around the rhododendrons and cut back some anemones and other plants that have gone over, and pruned a few shrubs. The crocuses and irises that I potted up are poking through so I must keep them from getting waterlogged so they are still under the table for now. There is only so much room under the table so I have tipped a few other pots onto their sides to try and prevent them getting waterlogged too. I have cuttings of various plants (that should be outside) sheltering on the conservatory sofa trying to dry out.
In the conservatory the cyclamen are just starting to flower. The aeoniums are losing their lovely deep red colouration and are taking on more of a green tone now. The cuttings of the chunkier hare’s foot fern are doing ok although they are very slow. One cutting has one frond and another cutting only has new growth bumps appearing underneath the root cutting so at least it hasn’t died. Any leaves that fell from the Kalanchoe tomentosa ‘Dorothy Brown’ I left on the top of some soil in a small pot to see if they would take root. A few of them have grown tiny new pups (or at least leaves) on top of the fallen leaves and one has developed roots.
My oxalis palmifrons has produced lots of lovely leaves but has had only one flower so far this year. They need lots of light to flower but the conservatory gets very cold and even though these are hardy I think they would flower better if they were kept in a warmer room. The trouble is the house is cold and none of the rooms have enough light for them. The streptocarpus saxorum cuttings are flowering away – they have such dainty little flowers on wiry stems. I think the parent plant died due to me not giving them adequate water – ha- I usually over water plants at this time of year.
Streptocarpus saxorum cuttings flowering.
The Christmas cactus is flowering now and adding some much needed colour into this drab weather. All of the pots of crocus are outside this year but I may bring a few in now to see if they will come into flower soon.
Schlumbergera truncate
Most of the leaves have now been shed from the deciduous trees but there is loads of green still from the ivy clad walls and the evergreen shrubs. The pigeons have had most of the rowan berries but the blackbirds got some too. The fabulous red seed heads of the miscanthus ‘Red chief’ grass are now a mucky brown colour but the leaves gave a final flourish of autumnal colours before turning straw coloured.
Miscanthus ‘Red chief’ autumnal colours.
For now I am just trying stay warm and keep as many plants as possible from getting waterlogged.
Well my relief at my healed pressure sore on my right ischium was short lived – as a few weeks later the skin broke down again and I was back on bed rest. I hadn’t been doing too much and I was really looking after my skin but, it did what it did. It is soooo frustrating. My fixed wheelchair was dropped off on the 15th October (finally!!) so now I have to wait to be ‘pressure mapped’ at a wheelchair assessment to make sure my wheelchair cushion is actually doing the job of relieving pressure on my butt, and to check that the wheelchair is set up right for me. I have already had to drop the footplates by 1.5cm.
Harry did the vine weevil nematode application and I now have Amy (gardener) to help with the garden. Hopefully my skin will toughen up soon and I can get back outside again. All I have managed to do these last few months is keep the patio watered and the houseplants alive. I did have time when I was up to pot-up some crocus and narcissi.
At the end of September I noticed in the pond some weird looking thing so I fished it out to see what it was. It turned out to be a fruiting body of a water lily. I have never seen one before so I chopped it off and brought it into the conservatory and kept it under water. It turned into a gelatinous mass within the red casing. The gel dissolved away to reveal the seeds. It was very smelly so I just threw it out (I don’t need any more water lilies anyway).
Water lily fruiting body.Water lily seeds surrounded in gelatinous material.
Back in March this year I went along to a talk about ferns by Heather McHaffie and she very kindly gave out a few cuttings from a hare’s foot fern. I got a couple of cuttings and it is only now starting to grow fronds. Boy do you have to be patient with these things. I do have a more dainty version of hare’s foot fern so I am so pleased that this is growing quite happily now.
Hare’s foot fern rhizome cutting.
There is still plenty of colour in the garden: still flowering are the Japanese anemones, verbena, geranium (Rosanne), persicaria, guara, fuchsia, cyclamen, erigeron, a few roses, viburnum, and even a few verbascum.
Verbena bonariensis
There are loads of pink berries on the rowan (Pink pagoda), bright orange crab apples (Everest), and the deep purples of the acer and heucheras are looking great as are the red seed heads of the miscanthus (Red chief).
Crab apples (Everest).Miscanthus (Red chief)Persicaria amplex {Blackfield).Purples, greens and splash of gold.
Some gold foliage of some ferns and the hakenechloa grass bring some bright as well as the silvery foliage of the snow in summer. On the patio the marigolds are still flowering and the pink buds are developing on the skimmia (Rubella) although the leaves are looking a bit yellow so probably needs an ericaceous feed.
Rambling patio rose.Marigold.
Storm Amy came along and happily only one large branch crashed down and flew over the garden up to the end of the patio but nothing was squashed. The top part of the clematis support came down but the clematis itself clung on so another job to sort out.
Up-date on the wheelchair issue – the NHS has supplied me with a temporary wheelchair for now and has ordered a new frame for the NEW broken one. I can use it but it isn’t great (I won’t go into details) but it does mean that I can now get back into the garden woo-hoo! Lots of weeding and dead-heading but mostly trying to keep it watered as we have had no rain for weeks. A couple of tiny drizzly showers do not count as rain as it didn’t even wet the paths. I also found out that the very leaky hose gun was the cause of my increasing right shoulder pain that spread from upper traps, up my neck and also across my collar bone to my SC joint. The reason for this was that I was trying to use the hose without getting soaked so this meant having my right arm out at awkward angles and turning my hand inwards to prevent the water running up my sleeves. Couple that with the weight of the hose and you get lots of pain. One new hose gun later and most of the pain on that side has diminished.
I do have to be more mindful when performing any gardening procedures as I am right handed I tend to lean over to that side, and it was my right ischium that had the pressure sore. I do try to use my left hand more for doing tasks but I am so much quicker and better with my right.
At this time of year a lot of summer flowering plants are going over (verbascum, geums, hardy geraniums, lavender, and honeysuckle). There are still plenty of flowering plants here at the end of August though: cyclamen flowers have appeared before the leaves, persicaria (I have white, pink and deep red varieties), Japanese anemones, verbena, some hellebores, gaura, agastache, mint, roses(especially Munstead wood and Gertrude Jekyll), eupatorium, selinum wallichianum, fuchsia, erigeron, miscanthus red chief, and some heathers. Some have just a few sporadic flowers such as weigela, hebe and viburnum. And there is plenty of colour from the pink rowan berries (the berries of Sorbus hupehensis Pink pagoda are almost the same shade of the Persicaria affinis superba flowers that have gone over), bright red honeysuckle berries, black elder berries and orangey coloured crab apples, foliage from all of the different coloured ferns and heucheras, succulents like sempervivum chocolate kiss and the deep purple – almost black aeonium voodoo, the garnet coloured acer and the brightness of the silvery white ground cover of snow in summer.
Pink rowan berries and persicaria.
The Japanese anemones Montrose are looking great. There are white ones on the other side of this bed (Whirlwind) that are slightly smaller than these.
Japanese anemones ‘Montrose’
The cool, shady side of the raised bed is mainly different shades of green at this time of year along with the garnet acer.
Cool shades of green and calming.Pulmonaria ‘Lewis Palmer’ spotty leaves.
In the stumpery the spotty foliage of the Pulmonaria ‘Lewis Palmer’ is still looking good. That has been over the whole spring and summer and it is just starting to look a bit tired now.
Garden at the end of August 2025
Right now I am moving pots around on the patio so plants that have gone over can have a rest while the ones still in flower can show off. I am removing any annual plants from the pots to free them up for the bulb planting come September. It will be mostly narcissi and crocus. Any plant going to seed I will collect the seeds from just in case they don’t survive the winter. I can store the plants under the bench that way they shouldn’t get too much rain during the winter. I am still not sure about the rose ‘Jubilee celebration’ on the patio as it has very droopy roses on it. They look great when they first open and are facing upward but then they just droop. I had put it in a large pot and it is kept well watered so it is just the nature of that rose.
Droopy rose ‘Jubilee celebration’.
On my rounds of watering in the garden I noticed some plants are just not thriving in certain situations. Our next door neighbours took at a couple of trees which has led to more sunshine on one side of the stumpery but I had planted some things that liked shade so I really must move them to a more suitable place. The corkscrew hazel is creating an umbrella affect and the plants underneath are not getting enough rain water (it is also using up water as it has longer roots). The primulas will have to be moved.
Dry thirsty primulas.
I have checked my bulbs and only 2 were duds – they were soft – so the rest are ready to plant once the pots are washed.
Just as I was starting to get up for a little more time as my pressure sore on my right ischium was healing – my flipping wheelchair broke! Arrrrrrgh! The left hand part of the frame/castor clamp has sheered so the castor will not work as it is sitting at a jaunty angle. I have no idea if this can be repaired or if I have to get a new wheelchair (supplied by NHS) so I have no idea how long this will all take. I do have a very old (39 year old) wheelchair as a spare but it isn’t quite the same height etc as my new one so I am reluctant to use it as I am having to do lots of transfers on and off the bed and loo and my ischium is still very delicate and I don’t want to bash it during a transfer. Harry has managed to do a temporary fix so I can still use the broken chair around the house but I have to be very gently with it so I can’t even go into the conservatory or patio in case it gets caught between the slabs in the grouting. My shoulder is still very painful and all this bed rest is not doing it any favours. For now all I can do is just keep the houseplants happy. The irony is that I was using a perfectly good 15 year old wheelchair but the NHS said it wasn’t fit for purpose and scrapped it – haha it was the brand new chair that broke!
Break of castor clamp.Broken area on the clamp for the castor.Broken part.Temporary repair.
I garden daily as I not only have a front and back garden, but also a houseful of plants, a conservatory, and a patio with loads of plants in them. This takes a lot of work and therefore time. With any disability you have to pace yourself so as not fall ill or make your disability worse. One of the symptoms of Sjogrens disease is fatigue and another is pain. In Scotland usually I am trying to get as much done as possible outside on good weather days, and concentrate on the indoor plants when the weather is inclement. Do too much one day and you will regret it for the next few days. This used to work well but these days I can only do so much at a time and have to pace myself so the jobs soon mount up. These last few weeks have been awful as I have a pressure sore on my right ischium. Being paraplegic, with no feeling or movement below the bra line, means I have to check my skin daily for signs of pressure sores or indeed anything else going on with my skin. Even though I check every day I did not recognise this particular sign (dry flaky skin) as the beginnings of a pressure sore. I did catch it early, but is still means that I now have to have many hours of bed rest! NO GARDENING! I can get up for a few hours per day and have to lift my behind many times to relieve the pressure on my ischium. So as you can imagine I haven’t been able to prune some of the shrubs that have finished flowering, dead-head, weed, do slug patrols or generally keep the garden tip-top. The patio has grass going to seed in every crack and the flowers and weeds are seeding all over the place. I had just bought a few plants and haven’t been able to plant them out yet. I have been up just enough to keep up with watering the house plants, conservatory and patio. It is sooooo very frustrating. I will definitely have to get continuous help with the gardening in future as I just can’t do it myself anymore. Harry has helped with the dead-heading but he doesn’t like gardening AT ALL and he is busy with his own hobbies. So I am off to find someone who is reliable, knows a bit about actual gardening – not just mowing the lawn, likes gardening, and won’t charge too much. Wish me luck.
The weather has been a mixed bag over June: some hot sunny days, some overcast muggy days, showers and wind, but on the whole not too bad.
The hebe has had a trim to keep it a neat shape and to dead-head the flowers. The tree heath (Erica arborea ‘Estrella gold’ ) has had a good chop as it was shading out some other plants a bit too much. The deutzia ‘Mont rose ‘ has finished flowering now and has had the old flowering stems chopped. I will have to give the mock orange (Philadelphus) the same treatment as it has just finished flowering. As we have had a reasonable amount of rain I can put down some more mulch to help retain some of that moisture. A few of the hardy geraniums have had a chop (later than the Chelsea chop time up here in Scotland) as there is a lot of damage on their foliage caused by the geranium sawfly (Ametastegia carpini). The tiny holes eaten all over their leaves look like lace work. They don’t appear to damage the flowers though so I will just have to tolerate them.
The Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’ is not looking great and I might just ditch it. The slugs have really gone for the ones in the stumpery and the only one that isn’t too bad has an upturned hanging basket over it to stop the pigeons getting at it. I have had to move the new heucheras from the back area of the garden to the bed that gets a little more sun. Again the slugs have really gone for them so I will need to give them a bit of protection until they get going.
Brunnera ‘Jack Frost’ damage.
I have been finding a lot of mushrooms in my latest batch of multi-purpose potting compost which can be very unsightly in amongst the pot plants, even in the house plants that I topped up with it. I don’t normally buy Westland multipurpose but my usual compost was unavailable. It is horrid stuff with huge lumps of wood and other bits and bobs in it, including small stones and bits of plastic, and it doesn’t retain moisture well. I will NOT be getting it again. The mushrooms were easily removed so the pots don’t looks so bad but the mycelium will still be in the compost.
Mushrooms found in compost in a pot of poppy seedlings.Mushrooms in compost with poppy seedlings.Mushrooms found in the compost of a house plant.
There are a few gaps in the borders just now so I am moving some of my potted plants from the patio into the borders to fill in some of these gaps. These small terracotta pot filled with succulents can cope in this area but I have larger pots with ferns in the shadier areas. I do have to remember and move them again before any bulbs come up in spring time.
Terracotta pots with succulents under a berberis.
I have removed a lot of the violets in the stumpery because, although they create good ground cover, they had loads of seed-heads about to pop, and they are competing with the ajuga (more ground cover), and covering over some of the self-seeded honesty.
Another good ground cover plant which is flowering away now, and the bees love it, is the Campanula garganica ‘Blue diamond Adrianic’ . I should probably cut it back a bit once it has gone over.
Campanula growing around the base of garden steps.
There are loads of pollinators about and they are loving all the the flowers just now: agastache, campanula, cirsium, astilbe, achillea, roses, alchemilla, giant cowslips, geranium, foxgloves, catmint, lavender, heuchera, verbascum, ragged robin, astrantia, bisort, marigolds, cistus, honeysuckle, spiraea, and thalictrum. I planted 3 yellow thalictrum from the same nursery at the same time only a few feet apart and one is growing way taller than the other two, and has more purple in the stems. I love the fluffy, yellow clouds of flowers that the thalictrum produce and loads of pollinators love them too. It is normally covered in them but not when I took this photo apparently!
Fluffy, yellow clouds of flowers on thalictrum.Astrantia
The wet corner is looking good just now but the rodgersia has not flowered this year. I think it is too shaded out by the huge royal fern. The soil is clay and there is a down-pipe just above the rodgersia. The fern and weigelia are covering the rodgersia.
Wet corner of the garden.
The moss roses and ‘Munstead wood’ rose have finally begun to flower and are looking great, but I still can’t believe how many roses I have had, and continue to have, on ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ – it is such a good do-er.
Loads of roses on Gertrude Jekyll.
I have in the past regretting planting certain plants and one of them was lily-of-the-valley. They look and smell absolutely gorgeous but they spread like mad and invaded all of the back border and the raised bed. They got right into the roots of other plants so I had to be ruthless and take the whole lot out. I would like to keep just a pot of them in the conservaorty for their lovely scent. In spring I planted out some Allium hair bulbs as I was curious about the flower heads. They look like little aliens with tentacles but when I asked facebook how far apart I should plant them everyone said that they regret ever planting because they spread all over the place! It certainly doesn’t say that on the RHS site but now I am wondering if I made the right choice, and don’t want to make the same mistake again, so I have just put them in pots so I have easy access to them to dead-head before they produce seeds. That is the plan anyway.
Allium hair flower head just opening.
And now the heat wave is over so back to normal for the time being – thank goodness as I don’t do well in the heat. The heat makes me breathless but It helps my arthritis, however it wreaks havoc with dry eyes, nose and mouth, and my eyes are now sensitive to the light which means I have to wear amber tinted wrap around sun glasses in bright sunshine. I already wear a large brimmed hat and sometimes even a nose protector! What must I look like? I get bitten by some beasties just underneath the brim of my hat and these bites are incredibly itchy to begin with and make little red blotches all across my forehead. They are not midge bites -I can hear the zzzzzzz of the midges coming and their bites are raised. So I wonder what July holds for the garden?
