Category Archives: flowers

Everywhere you look…

12/06/2018flowers, plants, seed-headsJackie Elwin

another plant is blooming – yeah! Today is lovely and warm in the sunshine but in a couple of days (just when the roses come out) we are due heavy rain. Just our luck, but we haven’t had much rain at all so the garden really needs it. But for now there are lots of plants enjoying this weather. The Honesty is a lovely bright purple, but the slugs are having a good go at them. The chives are looking lovely. My Parahebe Porlock is a great do-er and is in a pot alongside a little pink rambling rose. I just trim it back every year and it keeps coming back. I wish I had planted my Syringa in front of the Viburnum in the raised bed so that I could see the whole shrub as it is covered in scented flowers but the Viburnum is blocking the view – hey ho. The Thyme in the raised looks great under the purple Acer and next to the Saxifraga umbrosa. I do have a few Geraniums (forgotten the name of a few) which have started to flowers now, including the wild ones. The blue one is looking a bit flat. The tiny Geranium dissectum looks cute with it’s tiny flowers and hairy stems but I bet it will be a thug if I leave it to seed, so, I keep taking the seed heads off. The same goes for the herb-robert (Geranium robertianum). The Hebe is covered in tiny pink flowers and the bees adore these. The ragged robin is looking, well, ragged but pretty. The Pasque flower has gone over and I didn’t get a chance to photograph it this year but the seed heads are very pretty.

Lunaria annua purple honesty

Allium shoenoprasum chives)

Parahebe ‘Porlock’

Syringa Josiflexa Belleicent

Hebe ‘Pink paradise’

Lychnis flos-cuculi (ragged robin)

thyme, acer and saxafrage

geranium double violet/pink?

geranium blue?

geranium pink?

geranium wargrave pink

geranium cantabrigiense Biokova white promo

geranium dissectum (tiny)

gersnium robertianum (herb-robert)

Pulsatilla vulgaris (Pasque flower) seed-head

raised bed end-on

Feeling blue…

09/06/2018flowers, garden, plants, raised bed, stumperyJackie Elwin

what a week! Suffice to say we have had the builders here for a few days and the less said the better!! Scaffolders grrrrrrrr!!
I don’t have that much in the way of blue in the garden but I may add a few more blues over the next few years. The brunneras are still going strong, as are the veronicas, but the forget-me-nots are looking a bit straggly so I have been pulling some of them out. They will have self seeded and will pop up all over the place next year. My mecanopsis Willie Duncan and Susan’s Reward are doing fine now. The slugs really went for them when they were first planted last year (or was that 2 years ago?) but they are now looking good. I moved the blue iris (Jane Phillips) from the middle bed to a sunnier spot last year, having only had them a year, and although they appear much happier the slugs got them too! The centauria blue is flowering away but it looks like something has sat in the middle of it, it is just not able to hold it’s own weight. (the white one got eaten by the pigeons!!). The pale blue aquilegia is still flowering away. My proper blue bells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) that I have in little pots didn’t flower again this year so that has been 2 years now with no flowers. There are a few blooms on the blue geranium but maybe I should thin it out a little as it is spreading just a bit too much and is coming up through other plants now. I had to cut back the Jacob’s ladder as it was being used as a slug nursery and was being completely decimated. That was right next to the fennel (which was also decimated by slugs) so, now that I have dealt with the slugs they might get a chance to grow. This time last year the fennel was over a meter high! There has hardly been any rain over the last 6 or 7 weeks and I have had to keep on top of the watering which takes ages. And the poor pond too needs topping up, and with no rain water about, I have to spray tap water into it. The tadpoles don’t seam to mind. Anyway the garden on the whole is looking ok and the wee sparrows and tits have started to fledge so there is a lot of cheerful chirping about.

Aquilegia pale blue

Centauria blue

Iris ‘Jane Phillips’

Mecanopsis ‘Susan’s Reward’

Mecanopsis ‘Willie Duncan’

Raised bed

garden from patio

stumpery right side

stumpery left side

In flower now..

21/05/2018flowers, plantsJackie Elwin

are a few more of the late spring, early summer flowers. The Veronica gentionoides ‘Blue streak’, the speedwell (another veronica species), Erica arborea (the tree heath), Galium odoratum (sweet woodruff), Circium rivulare Atropurpureum, Silene dioica (red campion) and a few others. Some you really do have to look for, like the Arisarum proboscideum (mouse plant) as the funny little flowers (that look like mice with long tails) are hidden under the leaves.

Circium rivulare atropurpureum

Erica arborea

Galium odoratum

peony (unknown)

Silene dioica

speedwell on a mossy log

Veronica gentionoides Blue streak

Arisarum proboscideum

Aquilegias …

20/05/2018Aquilegia, flowers, plantsJackie Elwin

everywhere. I adore Aquilegias (columbines or granny’s bonnets). They are so pretty and quite a feminine looking plant with tall slender stalks and dainty flowers. Even the buds look pretty. I did buy certain named types years ago but I just let them self seed where they wish. I have just posted the photos under their colours in case I name they incorrectly. Some are just in bud whilst others are in full flower. I do have other colours: pink, purple, pink and white, and a lovely pale blue pom pom type so I will update this page when I get some reasonable photos of them. I recently read an article about Aquilegia downy mildew here and I really hope I don’t get it here. The article is a few years old now, so far so good.

Aquilegia ruby

Aquilegia in bud

Aquilegia dark purple

Aquilegia deep maroon

Aquilegia pale peach

Aquilegia purple and white

Aquilegia white

Aquilegia white and lilac

Poor old clematis…

12/05/2018flowers, plants, wildlifeJackie Elwin

has had to go. I loved my Clematis montana alba, especially when it was over-grown and would hang down over the door in the back wall where it made it look like there was a secret garden behind the wall. Trouble was that nobody could get through the doorway easily so I had to keep it a little clipped. Sadly, it succumbed to some bacterial or fungal infection and died. Possibly clematis slime flux? no idea but it didn’t look good so I whipped it out, added some new soil and planted a pink climbing rose (Generous gardener) which I hope will be able to cope with the conditions. It will get some sunshine for a few hours per day, but it is in dry shade so I will have to keep it well fed and watered.
My cherry tree (Prunus Shirotae Mount Fugi) is in a half barrel on the patio and it has had gorgeous blooms over the years but has started to die back and is therefore shrinking in size so this autumn it will have to come out and have it’s roots trimmed, then get re-potted into a slightly bigger half barrel and hopefully recover to bloom for a few more years.

Clematis montana alba

Clematis slime flux?

Prunus Shirotae Mount Fugi

Prunus and bee

Warming up now…

05/05/2018flowers, plantsJackie Elwin

so the garden is starting to get some lush green (and bronze/purple) foliage to cover up the bare soil. More spring plants are blooming while some of the early ones are over already. The corydalis, erythroniums, and some primroses are over but still have their leaves. The tulips, epimediums, brunnera, myosotis, pulmonaria, dicenrta, vinca, fritilari, oxalis, erica, viola, some narcissus are in flower. The anemone blanda white put on a great show last year but was a bit lacking in flower this year. The lilac drumstick primula and primula veris are still flowering but the primula vulgaris has stopped flowering. The hellibores are still flowering away. The vinca makes great ground cover and I have the major and minor ones (violet, deep purple and white varieties). The dicentra gives great cover under the rhododendron. I had been waiting for my epimedium grandiflorum Rose Queen to flower so I could get a good picture of it along side the tulips Mystic Van Eijk but it is flowering quite late this year. I do have blossom on the viburnum (bodnantense dawn) but it had quite a severe prune last year I will need to wait till next year for a better show. Same goes for the Osmanthus burkwoodii.

Tulips Budlight and some larger tulips (unkown)

Tulips Mystic Van Eijk

Epimedium grandifolium Rose Queen

Brunnera macrophylla

Oxalis acetosella (woodsorrel)

Pulmonaria Lewis Palmer

Rain, rain, rain…

07/04/2018conservatory, flowers, plants, raised bed, stumperyJackie Elwin

sleet, and then more rain! My goodness when will we ever get into spring proper? I am not venturing out over the grass in the garden as it is like a very soggy sponge at the moment but there is a bit of sunshine and some sturdy plants flowering. Before the Acer (palmatum dissectum Garnet) are clothed in leaves, creating dense shade, there are a few Chionodoxia in bloom but they are taking a very long time to naturalize so are looking a bit sparse at the moment.
I moved the Dens-canis (Erythronium) from the raised bed to the stumpery area as the large fern in the raised bed completely smothered them. They look really pretty in front of the drumstick primula and I hope they will make a nice clump fairly soon.
I am trying to dig out all of the Ornithogalum out of the small bed out the front where my lavender is as the leaves have a similar habit to bluebells , where they fall to the sides and cover up anything under them and, as they go over and turn brown, look very tatty coming through the woody stems of the lavender. So I potted them up in the conservatory for the time being just to make sure all the little bulbs were indeed Ornithogalum and not mixed together with snowdrops. They were sold to me as nutans but I think they may actually be umbellatum instead.

Chionodoxa luciliae

Dens-canis snowflake and Primula denticulata

Orinithogalum umbellatum and violas

Bulbs and …

25/03/2018conservatory, flowers, plantsJackie Elwin

It is a lovely day here again and there is some pretty colours in the conservatory. I planted a few daffodils (Pontresina) in a pot to bring indoors so they are in flower now whereas the outdoor ones will be a while yet. The little blue bulbs are Puschkinia libanotica, which were free when I bought my tulips, from Bloms bulbs last year. Some of which came up flower first yet others came up leaves first. There is a little viola, cyclamen and a cactus too in this picture.

Hens and chicks…

22/03/2018conservatory, flowers, plantsJackie Elwin

no not chickens but houseleeks or in other words Sempervivum ‘Reginald Malby’ to be precise. I bought one last year at a charity stall planted up in an old tuna fish tin and it had a central plant with lots of little ones surrounding it. I split it up and planted all the little ones and gave them to friends and family and kept a couple back for myself. I planted then individually in tiny pots and this is one of them sending out runners with the little chicks on the end. It looks really cute from above.

I noticed a few days ago that the frogs have finally surfaced and we have a few blobs of frog spawn in the pond. Trouble is, it is exactly where the birds like to bathe so I hope the birds don’t disturb them too much.

Sempervivum ‘Reginald Malby’

Colour in February…

24/02/2018flowersJackie Elwin

Brrrr the last few days of February are going to be very chilly indeed and the winter will last through the first weeks in March bringing some snow. Well that is pretty normal for Scotland but there are a few brave plants that like to flower at this time of year in my garden. The Hellebores enjoy a bit of cold weather, although the pale creamy yellow ones are doing much better than the dark purple ones. The dark ones are planted in a raised bed and there hasn’t been a lot of rain this winter. The snowdrops are also in the raised bed but they can grow almost anywhere. The Iris reticulata are behind the garage and I can only see them if I venture out into the garden so I might dig up a clump once they have gone over and replant some in the front garden. The pond is freezing over, not quite all the way, during the night but is managing to have a little space at the far edge which means there shouldn’t be much in the way of toxins building up from decomposing foliage. Poor frogs who were probably about to start emerging for spring will have to stay put for a while longer until the weather warms up a little. The Daffodils haven’t opened yet but there buds are there ready and waiting. There are buds a plenty on the tress and bushes and the Witch hazel is in full bloom! There is plenty of green in the garden with the hardy ferns, evergreen shrubs, grasses, moss, hedge and ivy. Plenty of brown still on the bare tree trunks, and some trunks like the silver birch are almost silvery white. There are splashes of yellow on the leaf edges of some holly and on the leaf hearts of some ivy, and the pale yellow primroses are flowering too.