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Blotanical Awards 2009

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First Tulip of the Season

A tulip flowering in early February

While other parts of the UK have snow, here at “Costa del Dyffryn Ardudwy” a tulip popped up!

Garden Visiting in Winter

The temperatures are plummeting and the wind is coming from the East. Icy blasts cross the garden and the ponds are frozen.

However on Friday, when it was still mild and raining (nothing unusual there). Our local gardening club went garden visiting in the village.  Guy and Margaret Lloyd had opened their garden for us to have a peep at their winter garden.

I wrote about visiting this garden in May 2008, when it was open for the afternoon under the NGS.

Garden visiting was just what I needed to get me out of my January trough.  While the best time to visit Ty Newydd is in the summer, the garden provides interest throughout the year. The majority of the planting is trees and shrubs, but not just any old trees and shrubs.

If I think of evergreen planting, I think dull.  I imagine this comes from going to a school where the main planting was Ivy, Laurel and Rhododendron.  Mostly rhododendron ponticum. Nevertheless on Friday Guy’s garden was alive with colour and form and also beautifully scented.  I think that some of the winter flowering shrubs do have the best and most welcome fragrance. The No1 spot belongs to the Daphne bholua ‘Jacqueline Postill’ this was planted near a path, close to the back door – a most perfect spot for winter perfume.  Also doing “the scent thing” were; Sarcococca, (Sweet box) and Hamamelis (Witch hazel).

As we are by the coast here – our climate is kinder in terms of temperature and most years we can get away with growing slightly tender plants. Guy has used our Maritime climate to his advantage and I was particularly taken with the Acacia baileyanna ‘Purpurea’. It is a beautiful small tree (or large shrub) and it is the structure of the foliage that I find so attractive … so I can forgive it for having yellow flowers.

The yellow flowers of the Acacia baileyana in January

Rhododendron edgeworthii could help me “get over” my loathing of that genus. It has rust coloured indumentum – which makes the plant seem very tactile.

indumentum on rhododendron edgeworthii

Another plant that I found intriguing was tree heather.  As I don’t have anything from the Erica family in my garden it caught my eye as it would be such a good plant for any early insects that might be searching for food.

tree heather flowers in January

These plants are only the tip of the iceberg of the winter interest in this garden.  Other plants I noted in my journal include a white vinca (possibly difformis) doing a wonderful ground cover job – the white flowers shining out like twinkling stars beneath the trees. Drimys – with evergreen leaves and dark red shoots. Coprosma ‘tequila sunrise’ … now this would fit in my garden! Also a Fuchsia microphylla, which was still in flower.

Sadly I seem to have damaged the camera lens I took with me and didn’t realize until I got home and downloaded the images.  I would like to have made a slide-show of some of the marvellous plants we saw.

It was a fine visit, the garden had diverse structure, texture and colour in January, there was also tea and cake. So if you spot a garden that is open now, go visit it – you may be delighted and surprised with what you find. I was

“The New Book of Salvias” Betsy Clebsch

“The New Book of Salvias, Sages for every garden” is not a new book, it was first published in 1997. The expanded and updated book that I have was published by Timber press in 2008.  Despite the fact that some of the original text is 15 years old, if you are growing Salvias then this is a very practical book to have on your bookshelf.

I am not a “natural collector”. I cannot imagine having a lot of different varieties of the same species of plant in my garden, although Salvias may prove me wrong! When I visited Derry Watkins in October 2010 I was blown away by the salvias that were still going strong in her Autumn garden.  I bought Salvia confertiflora and Salvia involucrata. There we go, the start of a love affair with plants that I knew very little about. My mind associated Salvia with either sage to eat, or those dumpy little things that are sold as summer bedding.

I started looking for Salvia seed to buy (Robin at Robins Salvias is a good place to start) I had no idea that there were so many different varieties available for a gardener. Where to start, which to choose?

Timber Press however came to the rescue by sending me “The New book of Salvias, sages for every garden” by Betsy Clebsch to review. Of the 900+ species of Salvia, Clebsch’s book covers approximately 150 which are “gardenworthy species and significant hybrids”

At the back of the book are some very handy pages with 7 lists covering things such as a flowering season guide and a shade tolerance guide, great for helping you to choose the right plant for the right location.

Included in the book are straightforward although small photos of some of the salvias mentioned, together with some botanical and line drawings by Carol D. Barker.

The book documents the Salvias alphabetically, this section covers some 280 of the 344 pages. Each description has information on habitat, growing and flowering characteristics, hardiness and propagation information. Betsy Clebsch’s knowledge shines through all of the plant descriptions. There are also some recommendations for other plants that will work with Salvias in a planting scheme.

The one that caught my eye was a combination of Salvia confertifolia with panicum virgatum. I think this may be a combination that I am going to try for myself at some point, as I have some switch grass that I want to move.

For me this is a useful book with a wealth of information. It will help me to ensure that the plants that I have in my garden will get the location and care that suits them best. I found it fascinating to read about the native habitats. The “New Book of Salvias” is what it is, a reference book of salvias suitable for the garden. If you are interested in Salvias it will be a welcome addition to your bookshelf.

Of the Salvias mentioned in the book – I have about 10 in the garden already, with another dozen in seed packets waiting to be sown. So there are more Salvias in my garden than any other species of plant and that does surprise me. It is also starting to sound like a little collection!

spires of bright blue salvia uliginosa flowers

That January Feeling …

It is probably a good thing that I don’t do “New Year Resolutions”! If I did they would be along the lines of; draw every day, use the camera often, eat well, exercise more, update all my blogs and websites.  By now – 2 weeks into January I would have failed on every front.

January and I are not friends. At the start of every new year I turn into an apathetic blob and can hardly drag myself about the place. All my good intentions vanish into a blue funk.

The last few days however, despite the freezing nightime temperatures, (which to my mind are right and proper for January) we have had some golden days. Yesterday, Dobby, P. and Snowdrop dragged me out for walk along the “prom” in the glorious sunshine.

At the start of January we had gale-force winds that crumped the polytunnel and wiggled the fences but I didn’t realize how much sand the winds and the water had moved.

Long shadows in the January sunshine

No – we are not walking on the beach, but alongside the road to the harbour in Barmouth – which has been closed because of the amount of sand that the elements have dumped on it.

Despite the wind – the garden has held up pretty well. I find it hard to get my head around the amount of things in flower after the mild start to the winter currently I have everything from snowdrops and hellebores to pelargoniums and salvias flowering at the same time. I have to wonder how the rest of the flowering year is going to pan out!

Since I started this blog I have had 10,784 spam comments.  While Akismet is brilliant at stopping these spam comments from ever reaching a published page, I do have to glace through them just to make sure that a “real” person has not slipped through the net. There have only been 15 that have slipped though the net since October 2008 – for some reason a couple of years ago my spam prevention decided that Easygardener was a spammer and had a period of a few months where I had to retrieve all her comments. But wading through a pile of Spam comments “just in case” every evening is not my idea of fun so I have added a Maths question to the bottom of the comment form. I am sorry for the inconvenience that this might cause you – and I do hope that it will not stop you from leaving comments …. I also wonder if it works! Please let me know if you have any problems.

It was on this day 4 years ago that I started a “Garden blog” in January 2008. I moved to my current home here in October 2008. I would like to thank you for the 6.5 thousand comments that you have shared over the past 4 years and well over a hundred thousand pages views … You rock!

:)

Seasons Greetings December 2011

Christmas card from an Artist's Garden

Seasons Greetings

From Digger, Mrs Grumpy and Shedman