GBBD - April '10

After a hard winter, most plants seem to be almost catching up with where they were last year. The plum trees are smothered with blossom. The hellebores have been out for an age but still look good. The daffodils are going over quite quickly, after a few warm days at the weekend. But to just stand in the garden, and smell the spring, and practically see the plants growing before your eyes - happiness.

For more flowers in April, visit the host of GBBD, Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Wordless Wednesday - feel the forcing

The Dorothy Clive Gardens

The warmest day of the year so far saw me in the mood for a bit of garden visiting. I was going to go to Dunham Massey but changed my mind and went to the Dorothy Clive Gardens in Shropshire instead.

Detail on stone bench

The gardens were created by Colonel Harry Clive for his wife, Dorothy, and cover 12 acres. They are best known for the quarry garden area. This area is full of large rhododendrons and azaleas, with a top storey of mature trees. In some places ground cover plants have started to grow and flower, giving added interest.

Grape hyacinth

Ferns 'fwinging' in the undergrowth

Peony foliage emerging
I was initially disappointed when I arrived, as I realised that I was around three weeks early to witness the rhodies and azaleas at their best, along with the extensive plantings of tulips. But the quarry garden is like a maze to wander around, and I enjoyed looking at the differences between the rhododendron cultivars, even when most of them weren't flowering.

Rhododendron leaves

Laburnum arch - no, really

It's worth looking up in the quarry garden

The daffodil walk was at its best, though. And the scent of swathes of Narcissus 'Jack Snipe' just added to the feeling of calm which the sunshine and the sight of hoardes of butterflies had already instilled in me.
The daffodil walk

The scree garden has just been refurbished, and I spent 15 minutes or so chatting to the chap who was literally putting the finishing touches to the planting. He is a member of the British Alpine Society and spent time pointing out plants which had been grown from seeds sent by alpine plant colleagues from around the world. And we were both pleased to see the Tulipa humilis in flower - it had apparently come out for the first time that morning.

Scree garden

Tulipa humilis

You won't find cutting edge garden design. You won't find modernism. You won't be challenged to think about gardens as art. This is a garden as love - love for a wife. If you're in the area over the next month or two, go and explore it. And feel the love.

What's in a name?

SomeBeans, the under-gardener, has picked up a lot of knowledge about gardening and plant names, just through the process of osmosis. Years of Gardener's question Time, Gardener's World, and trawling round gardens and garden centres has led to some of it being absorbed.

Not all of it, however, is absorbed completely correctly. I suspect that it's deliberate...

So, we have Camillas instead of Camellias, Mangolias instead of Magnolias (though SomeBeans was recently vindicated in this by a single mention of Mangolia in a journal extract of Ernest 'Chinese' Wilson in a book I was reading. I maintain that it was a typing error.

This is the time of year when the flowering currant, Rabies, apparently looks its best. We also have Solomon's Seed rather than Seal. There's also Dicentrica, a rather weird mix of the correct name and an energy company.

"Dicentrica"

SomeBeans is triumphant if I occasionally make the mistake of saying any of these the wrong way (i.e. his way). So forgive me if I make reference to Dicentrica, Camillas and Mangolias when I'm in polite gardening company - it's peer pressure.

STOP PRESS: Biodiversity Competition Entry

This post is dedicated to all of the wonderful images and information that are being sent to me as entries for the RHS biodiversity competition to win a year's membership of the RHS.

I have received the brilliant photo of a hoverfly (below) and some great ideas from Liz Arblaster:

Copyright: Liz Arblaster

Liz says:
"To encourage biodiversity I try to use plants attractive to wildlife; flowers, trees and shrubs all have wildlife in mind with a range across the seasons to provide food. I leave tidying to a minimum for insects to hibernate over winter and especially encourage Bees, Hoverflies, Butterflies, Moths and Birds.
Without the wildlife the garden feels empty to me, and nothing makes me happier than hearing buzzing or watching Butterflies flit around the garden."

Thank you, Liz, for your great entry - the photo is amazing.

Hot on Liz's heels is this wonderful photograph from Kay Halley.

Copyright: Kay Halley

Kay explains:

"Our front garden consists of 300 square metres of lawn, cultivated by us for 10 years as a meadow. It is on chalk so we have introduced a number of chalk grassland species, many from locally collected seed and it is cut just once a year in September. It supports around 120 species of herbaceous flowering plants including 13 species of orchid, plus tree, shrub and grass species and in summer it is heaving with insect life. In recent years we have collected seed from our meadow and used it to reintroduce cowslips and other common species to nearby roadside verges."

Thank you Kay - a real inspiration. I can almost hear the sound of all the insect life your meadow must attract. Beautiful. And I don't think I've even seen 13 species of orchid.

Rosie over at Leavesnbloom is encouraging biodiversity with her new lacewng hotel. Rosie has even developed her marketing patter to encourage the aphid-munchers:

"We’ve got a great holiday (lifetime) package for all you Lacewings. We are going to be offering free board and keep from about August 2010 onwards but until then the leaves‘nbloom garden can offer a great daily banquet on condition that you lay your lovely eggs in the garden (about 300 per lacewing would do nicely rather than American express or visa) and allow your little ones larvae to roam freely in the garden where they can feast on our lush greenfly (that’s the chef’s speciality by the way)".

I've got a feeling that Rosie's hotel will be full when the season starts. Thanks for entering, Rosie.

Can you beat those entries? There's only one week to go. See this link for details on how to enter.

Favourites

I have quite a few hellebores. I read recently that, in English folklore, witches used hellebores to summon demons. Make of that what you will.

My favourite hellebore in the garden just has to be this one:

It reminds me of strawberry Cresta, which our next door neighbour sometimes used to give us when we were little. Delicious.

Now, must be off - I've got demons to summon.

Wordless Wednesday - Iris 'Harmony'

Biodiversity, the RHS and a competition!

I’ve mentioned in a previous post about it being the International Year of Biodiversity. And whilst worrying about the conservation status of mountain tapirs and giant pandas, we may feel a little hopeless about what we can do to help. The United Nations do give us some suggestions on what we can do to improve biodiversity, but it is within our own little pieces of the world that we can do most of all.
Encouraging biodiversity isn’t just about conserving rain forests and saving tigers from extinction. In the UK, biodiversity has been studied for many years, and organisations such as the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) contain a wealth of information about biodiversity in the UK, including maps of the distribution of some species. The RHS has been working with the NBN to map the spread of the rather naughty red lily beetle in the UK, using reports from gardeners across the country. It looks like much of Wales is OK at the moment, but I can vouch for it being present in Chester. Whilst in general I’m all for biodiversity, I’m afraid that my enthusiasm doesn’t extend to welcoming this frass-encrusted blighter into the garden.

The RHS is keen to encourage recognition of the International Year of Biodiversity and to inspire gardeners to ‘do their bit’ to help maintain diversity. Whilst some may mutter about bandwagons and jumping, the RHS has been involved in surveying biodiversity over a long period of time (nearly 40 years worth of moth survey data at RHS Wisley and a long-term review of plant and animal records at RHS sites, with some data going back to 1910). Anyone going to Chelsea Flower Show this year will have a chance to learn more about supporting wildlife in the RHS’s Continuous Learning area.

So practically, what can we do? The RHS suggest that doing even just one thing to encourage biodiversity will help. They have a range of suggestions for encouraging wildlife into the garden, as do other organisations such as BugLife and the RSPB. Sometimes it’s easy to think about encouraging pretty birds into the garden, but the rather less camera-friendly creepy-crawlies are vital to a well-functioning ecosystem. If I may quote Sir David Attenborough, an absolute hero of mine:

“It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for - the whole thing - rather than just one or two stars.”

and:

“If we and the rest of the back-boned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if the invertebrates were to disappear, the land’s ecosystems would collapse. We would do very well to remember them."

As keen garden bloggers, you are probably more aware than many, and more active than many on this topic. And now is your chance to show what you have done to encourage biodiversity in your own little patch of the wider ecosystem, in a competition!

All you have to do is email me a photograph demonstrating biodiversity in your garden, and a short description of how you encourage it.* I will post the photos up on this blog, and will choose a winner shortly after the closing date of Sunday 18th April. The RHS are kindly offering a prize of RHS membership for one year to the winner. Benefits of membership include free entry to RHS gardens (if you’re lucky enough to have one near you!), free access to RHS recommended gardens, 12 issues of The Garden magazine, and expert horticultural advice.

You may well see a few UK blogs running this competition, so if you don’t win on this blog, you may win elsewhere. Good luck, and whilst we may not be able to do much to help the plight of the mountain tapir, we can do a little to support the dwindling numbers of wild birds, butterflies, bumblebees and bugs that help our gardens function.**

* Please email your photos and fewer than 100 words of explanation as to how you encourage diversity to happymouffetard at gmail dot com. All (appropriate!) photos will be posted here, and the winner's photo may be posted on the RHS website. The judge's decision is final. The winner will receive one year's free membership of the RHS. Open to UK residents only, I'm afraid.

** Yes, I know that I’m guilty of double standards, wishing death on the beautiful lily beetle whilst encouraging everyone to support insect life. But they eat my beautiful snakeshead fritillaries!

EDIT: Just found via Twitter this link to the Royal Entomological Society's Garden Entomology leaflet - lots of information on creepy-crawlies in there.

Digging into Alabama Fudge Cake

I wish.

However, the soil on our plot at the allotment reminds me of it. As SomeBeans* digs into it, it looks like a cake slice going into a rich, chocolatey cake. Good enough to eat.

With the warmth of the sun over the past week or so, it will soon be sowing time. I haven't yet resorted to the old gardener's method of telling whether the soil is warm enough to plant. That method is, allegedly, to drop your trousers and sit on the soil. If the soil is warm enough to remain seated on, then it is warm enough to sow. I think I might worry the plot neighbours if I did this; instead, it's handy to keep an eye on the weed activity.

Our plot is 'blessed' with a wide range of weeds to help us do this. The ephemeral weeds such as hairy bittercress seem to have survived the cold weather very well. They haven't quite started growing yet. It's the perennials which are showing signs of stirring, and we have plenty of those. Although the horsetails haven't quite poked their noses above the ground, you can find evidence of them rising to the surface when you dig. The real early bird is ground elder, the leaves of which are now starting to show.

I don't blog about the allotment very often. Partly because I rarely remember to take a camera down there. The main reason, however, is that there are only so many ways of writing about weeding. Digging up deep-rooted perennials, hoeing annuals, forking out couch grass roots. That's about it, really. If the gods in Tartarus had been keener horticulturalists, Sisyphus would have been damned to eternal weeding instead of the simpler task of rolling a boulder up a hill. Still, I suppose that's the flip side of having soil as rich as an Alabama fudge cake.

*Poor SomeBeans. He does do most of the digging. I think he enjoys it.

Wordless Wednesday - Grapes of Stone