Author Archives: marytheherb

On churchyards

20 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Churches and churchyards, Wildlife

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Last week we had a very pleasant day visiting churches in the south of Buckinghamshire and Slough.  It was interesting to see what havens of peace, flora and fauna churchyards can be, especially in urban settings. They must play an important role in our perception of the quality of our towns. At St Mary’s in Slough the churchyard is still filled with graves but it is a large and peaceful place, as is the ancient St Laurence’s just down the road at Upton-cum-Chalvey.

St Mary’s Church, Slough

There is an interesting project called Living Churchyards where the participants maintain their areas as oases for wildlife. http://www.arcworld.org/projects.asp?projectID=271

At Langley Marish Church as we entered the churchyard we heard chirping from the wall and realised that birds were nesting in the wall itself.

We also visited rural churches including the beautifully renovated Hitcham, quaint Dorney and Stoke Poges, where we ate our lunch and visited the Thomas Gray memorial. Thomas Gray stayed nearby and may have written his ‘Elegy written in a country churchyard’ here, although there are other contenders.

Thomas Gray memorial at Stoke Poges

An unusual but delightful day in lovely warm weather.

Evenley Wood Garden

14 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Garden visits

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This weekend we visited Evenley Wood Garden again (near Brackley, Northants). We first went there in early spring 2009 and were very impressed. It is a delightful woodland area that is sheltered on a windy day. The daffodils and hellebores were on display and so was the wonderful ‘river of scilla’.

The river of Scilla at Evenley Wood Garden

Last year we thought that it had improved and this year everything is looking very good.   In April the magnolias look impressive and in May the rhododendrons and azaleas are a picture. Yesterday it was very quiet and we felt that we had the wood to ourselves. The garden is open weekends until June and again in mid-July for the lilies. The garden is unusual in this area for its acid soil. More information can be found on its website http://www.evenleywoodgarden.co.uk/ It is well worth a visit.

The wild garden

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Wildlife

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March being pleasantly warm there were quite a few butterflies around. The brimstone is always the first about in the spring and a very welcome sight. This year we also saw quite a few peacock butterflies. I hope the cold weather in April has not been too bad for them.

Peacock butterfly sunning itself on the path

The frogs had their usual sex fest (it always seems a little later in this garden than others) and left masses of frogspawn. About two weeks ago there was still mostly a squirming mass of hatched tadpoles on top of the water lily but now they have all gone, and looking yesterday I couldn’t see a single one swimming about.  Something similar happened last year and I can’t tell where they are going. In previous years there have been tadpoles and small frogs galore. There are various predators in the pond, of course, including newts and dragonfly larva but I can’t believe they could have taken all of the tadpoles by now. Are they hiding or has something else happened to them, I wonder?  

Happy frogs, I hope!

The larger pond has probably given me more pleasure than any other part of the garden. Particularly when new here, I spent hours watching pond life. It is so charming to see what seems like a whole other world. It looks delightful but it is a nasty world of predations. One year I spent some time catching water boatmen and flinging them into the undergrowth, believing that they were too numerous and fearful for my tadpoles. I found out later they could fly. Now I leave well alone. To protect the aquatic wildlife I never use chemicals anywhere near the pond.

Herb plans

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Gardening, Herbs

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Herbs

I am trying out growing on plug plants with a view to selling them, somehow, when they are large enough.  I bought 90 plug plants from Norfolk Herbs and they are fine, sturdy little things. This is an experiment as I have no idea how quickly they will grow to a reasonable size.

Herb plugs growing on

 I am aiming to produce 18 large pots with 5 herbs in each and will do a couple of assortments:

basic i.e. rosemary, thyme, curled parsley, sage, mint;

type 2 – Prostate rosemary, golden marjoram, french parsley, thyme ‘Silver Posie’, lemon verbena;

type 3 – Apple mint, purple sage, french parsley, tarragon, lemon thyme.

I am hoping it won’t be too difficult to sell just 18 although I also have some of my own cuttings and divisions to sell to add a bit of variety. It may well be that they won’t grow large enough this year and I will have to keep them for next year, which is not really a problem.

Any tips on selling plants locally would be gratefully received. I get the impression from talking to some people that selling in a small way is not any easier than a larger scale operation and that if I really want to do it I should think bigger but as I said this year is very  much experimental. Having mentioned my plans to a few people I already have a few potential customers.

Visit to Batsford Arboretum

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Garden visits

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We visited Batsford Arboretum a week ago. It is a charming arboretum with something interesting in every month.  There is also now a very nice tearoom and shop. The cherry blossom was looking spectacular. There are so  many species but I think my favourite is Prunus incisa, the Fuji Cherry. The blossom looks very delicate and in the pink varieties there are a number of shades (I suppose dark buds and lighter open flowers) on the tree at one time. The blossom seems to last quite a while as an extra bonus and there is good autumn leaf colour too. This is a rather newly planted cultivar.

Prunus incisa ‘Mikinori’ at Batsford Arboretum

Pear blossom can be stunning. Here is Pyrus nivalis.

Pyrus nivalis at Batsford Arboretum

This is the charming Cornus ‘Ascona’. It looks a bit like something a child would draw.

Cornus 'Ascona'

April 29th 2012

29 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Flower garden

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The countryside is looking so beautiful with its variety of fresh greens and the blackthorn and wild cherry blossom. It reminds me afresh of the beginning of Robert Browning’s charming poem:

Oh to be in England
Now that April’s there
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England, now.

Looks like today is going to be a very wet one but, obviously, I can’t complain because we need the rain so much.  I am really pleased with the garden at present and particularly the east border, very much a spring feast, and am still filling it with odd things including pulmonaria, forgetmenot, welsh poppies, moved from other places. The bulbs have been excellent. I loved the Crocus ‘Cream Beauty’. The new daffodils are all looking very pretty – I especially liked Cottinga – and the erythronium are now in bloom. I also need to get some summer plants in there. Now I must add a mulch of chipped bark that has been waiting on our drive for a few months. We reshingled the path a couple of months ago. It was a ragbag of any old stones and gravel and is now uniform in colour and texture.

Part of the east border - a work in progress

  The rest of the flower/shrub garden 

Daphne odora was good value back in March. It was planted about 4 years ago and flowered for the first time last year. Mahonia japonica ‘Bealei’ has been very pretty this year. Unfortunately my Daphne mezereum only had one flower on it – very disappointing. Does anyone know whether it needs any special care? Bergenia and pulmonaria are both going well. The relatively new Exochorda macrantha ‘The Bride’ is starting to look fetching. All the forsythias were fantastic value as always. Vinca minor is performing well as ground cover near to the larger pond. I am worried that my lavender, inside the box hedging, is not going to do well this year. It has become very woody and probably needs replacing.

The annual/perennial seeds are germinating/growing on in the new mini greenhouse – coreopsis, rudbeckia, dahlia, anise hyssop, aubretia. I only really discovered growing flowers from seed in the last few years and it gives me enormous pleasure as I hope it does the bees and butterflies.

February musings – 12 February 2012

12 Sunday Feb 2012

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Maybe it is because I am retired and not leaping out of bed at an early hour that I am for the first time aware of February as a turning point. The increasing hours of daylight are making us wake earlier and the dawn chorus has started. Everything is beginning to feel hopeful again and, of course, I can smell the start of a new growing season. How exciting!

This is in spite of the recent snow and arctic conditions that I prefer to believe will not last much longer.  Certainly garden plants look rather stunned by the end of the incredibly mild winter weather. The Iris Reticulata is looking somewhat surprised and so even are the snowdrops. The frost has made the vegetable garden floppy. The field beans have keeled over, the leeks look sad and the parsley is just a sodden mass, but I know that once the weather warms up a little they will all bounce back again. A  lovely pink hellebore is flowering in the back garden. I ought to remove the old leaves and give it some air but I never do and it invariably performs wonderfully, flowering until well into June.

I always feed the birds but I have given them extra rations during this cold spell. From the lounge windows I can watch chaffinches, robins, blackbirds, various tits but mainly great tits, house sparrows, wood pigeons and wrens. One or two goldfinches, so pretty, have stopped for a quick snack on the potentilla. I saw a small thrush this morning but haven’t seen any before and I noticed a small flock of fieldfares in the trees. They are rather handsome birds.

Anyway, the new spirit of hopefulness has prompted me to compose my first garden centre shopping list this year. It looks rather expensive!

December reflections

19 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in Herbs

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December is definitely the time to look back at the successes and failures of the year before moving on to the exciting planning for next year.

Overall the garden looked great this year. I was aware of all the weeds but I don’t think visitors (unless they are avid gardeners themselves) really notice them. All the beds were highly productive and pretty much as planned.

A new herbaceous bed in July

The outstanding bed was the new rock/alpine garden – it was a joy all season. One plant in particular deserves recommending – Achillea ‘King Alfred’ flowered from spring until late autumn. The thymes were also great performers. They loved the sandy soil and gritty mulch and grew much faster than I had anticipated so they are all running into each other. They are Thymus serpyllum ‘Pink Chintz’, Thyme ‘Doone Valley’, T. s. coccineus, T. pseudolanuginosus. Santolina ‘Lemon Fizz’ is good fun and I tried and failed to take some cuttings, obviously not carefully enough.

The unusual feature in the bed is a small Monkey Puzzle tree. We bought this, height 13 inches, about 5 years ago. It was in the front garden but grew not an inch in three years, so, thinking it was not in the right spot, I moved it into a pot while deciding what to do with it. This year I wanted to find it a permanent home since it was still just the same, no growth that I could see. The only place that seemed even remotely suitable was the rock garden, so that is where it went. I am going to measure it in a moment but I am pretty sure it still hasn’t grown. Anyway shortly before moving it there I decided to look up growing these trees and found that it is quite usual for them not to grow for years after being moved! I should have left it where it was.

My passion – herbs

My real gardening love is herbs. I discovered them when I first worked in Birmingham Reference Library in the early 70’s and was serving some lovely ancient herbals to readers. I started growing them in my parents’ garden and in all my subsequent gardens. What I really love is the sensuality of gardening with herbs. Every time you work amongst them the scents are delightful: lemon balm, marjoram, rue, mint, curry plant to name but a few. I love their histories and the knowledge that you are working with plants with a long tradition of cultivation and use. I love their simple beauty.

The first herb border

And then there are all their uses. There is nothing like popping outside to gather a handful of herbs for the lunchtime salad. For me, the most interesting addition to salad is Buckler Leaf Sorrel – wonderfully lemony. Young horseradish leaves also pack a punch, but every herb adds a new dimension to your salad.

In consequence most of the plants in this garden are probably herbs. They are a main feature of almost all the beds and some of them are represented in all the beds, e.g. marjoram, although once you’ve got it it’s pretty difficult to stop it being part of every bed. The other delightful thing about many herbs is how much the insects love them: Gatekeeper butterflies on marjoram,  for example (I have only just learned how specific butterflies are in their tastes); bees on borage and hyssop (pink as well as blue varieties); hoverflies on parsley that has gone to seed, all a delight to watch.

So the idea is to incorporate herbs into the garden in every way and increase the number I grow, which is in excess of 60 varieties at present. I have the main culinary herbs and am trying to introduce cultivars in new borders.

Last winter was difficult for some of the herbs and I am hoping that this one won’t be as cold. I know now to cover the bay, which has come back amazingly well after frost damage, but much of the growth is very young and would be highly vulnerable in a long, cold spell. Since living in the south midlands I have managed to keep rosemary every winter whereas in the Pennines I lost it pretty well every winter. I have introduced some varieties which are not as hardy as the species Rosmarinus officinalis and was very worried about how they would get through last winter. Oddly enough the only one I lost was R.o. Maybe because it was a taller bush. Who knows.

Here’s to a mildish winter and an early spring!

November 22nd 2011

22 Tuesday Nov 2011

Posted by in Autumn plants, Greenhouse, Vegetable gardening

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What a damp, bedraggled looking garden, but still with a few flowers in bloom. Cornflowers and cosmos still flowering, as well as a climbing rose and various primula. The cotoneasters (C. franchettii) are looking bright and cheerful and the mahonia is a welcome source of scent for us and nectar for the bees. In this garden the viburnums are rather irregular in their habit and they are just in bud. They were attacked by viburnum beetle last spring but seem to have recovered remarkably well. They are some sort of Viburnum tinus, possibly ‘Gwenllian’. They are now large bushes and have really dark, glossy leaves.

In the vegetable garden

 This mild weather is giving my rather belatedly planted out leeks some good growing time. I have tried growing broccoli several times now and this year is as unsuccessful as the other times. I planted autumn broccoli and have tall, healthy looking plants but with no sign of any tender side shoots. They have been hosts to a large number of white fly but I am not sure that they have caused any damage. Broccoli will definitely be off the planting schedule from now onwards although I will leave these until spring to see what happens. Carrots, on the other hand, have been surprisingly successful. The second crop is now being harvested and they are very good. I have planted a small area with field beans as a green manure and they are looking very healthy.  Whether I will ever notice that they have enriched the soil in that area is another question.

The greenhouse

This is a cold greenhouse. The tomatoes and cucumber have finished and I must take them out and tidy the place up a bit. Some hardy annuals sown in the autumn have appeared and are looking strong – cerinthe and larkspur. I will be sowing sweet peas in the near future. Usually I have taken in the tarragon before now and must do it before the frosts arrive. I will also move the lemon verbena in case that can be saved for next year.

Next year

This is when I start planning for next year and for the first time we have no large changes to make to the garden. Getting the beds we already have up to a better standard is the plan. For the last couple of years I have had one small annuals bed (annuals planted onsite) and it has been interesting work but I think for next year I will make this a mixed bed and have more perennials.

Annuals bed July 2011

 My aim is to get as many herbs into the garden as possible but planted in a variety of locations including the rock bed and a number of perennial beds in different situations. More of herbs next time.

This week in the garden – 5th November 2011

05 Saturday Nov 2011

Posted by in Gardening, Pond

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Although we have had some desperately needed rain this week there has been ample opportunity to get into the garden and the rain has made the heavy clay much easier to work.

At present I am working on the ‘east border’ next to a large row of hedgerow trees – ash and field maple. This area is in the shade for much of the day in summer and autumn and it is essentially dry shade. There are some very difficult weeds here, mainly tormentil, which certainly lives up to its name, but also a lot of ivy and invasive grass.

Some of the plants are doing well but are smothered in weeds, e.g. sedum, golden marjoram, lysimachia. Sweet cicely is also happy here. So I will probably dig everything out and put back anything that I can rescue from weed roots. I am edging part of the border against the path with a very pretty Bergenia ‘Overture’ – beautiful magenta flowers. I used not to like bergenia but in a large garden where effective groundcover is required it is a really useful plant. This year another bergenia has flowered well from August until now, although it usually flowers in April.

I have bought and planted a couple of geranium macrorrhizum and a heuchera. I have also bought a number of crocus Chrysanthus ‘Cream Beauty’ some Narcissus cyclamineus ‘Reggae’ and Erythronium ‘Pagoda’ that will go into the back of the border around a newly planted hazel cutting. Since this will not nearly cover the area I will be infilling with as many divided hardy geraniums as  I can muster and moving pulmonaria seedlings from anywhere I can but mostly from here.

Another bed was a mess of convolvulus and jack by the hedge but the bergenia and pulmonaria have provided fantastic ground cover very quickly.

Last weekend we cleared out the larger of our ponds. Usually one of us falls in but this year we seemed to manage ok. We were clearing out stratiotes and glyceria – I wish we had never introduced the latter. The water lily, which is really too large for this pond, can wait another year before we lift it out and, I hope, get one that is a more suitable size.

Plant of the month – October

The prize has to go to this rambling rose. Its performance is usually poor, being highly susceptible to mildew, and the flowers are often dried up looking but in October, following a severe cutting back, it has been very pretty. It is looking even better now.