Category Archives: plants

Rain, rain, rain…

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.

flowers, raised bed,plants,
Chionodoxa luciliae
flowers, plants, stumpery,
Dens-canis snowflake and Primula denticulata
plants, flowers, conservatory,
Orinithogalum umbellatum and violas

Happy and sad…

I don’t do very much with the front garden but last year I noticed that the Mahonia has some powdery mildew on it so I took off most of the affected leaves and cut back some of the top growth.  It still doesn’t look very happy although it will be flowering very shortly and I might just pull off the poorly looking leaves, give it a feed, and see what happens.   The daffs look just fine though.  I think these are called King Edward but I lost the label years ago.  The clumps need dividing so I can fill the gaps.

front garden, plants,
Mahonia
front garden, plants,
King Edward

Bulbs and …

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.

conservatory, plants,

Hens and chicks…

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.

conservatory, plants, flowers,
Sempervivum ‘Reginald Malby’