The joy of having a garden....

... and it is a joy, believe me.  This is an iris siberica (sorry no name) which I planted three years ago.  It has taken three years to bloom - and what a reward!  Outer petals very long and just like velvet.   I did think, this year, about digging it up and moving it, but obviously it took it's own sweet time to settle in and here's my reward.  I think I'll get ten blooms this year, and hopefully more next.  

I have sibericas elsewhere in the garden; one a pale yellow and and brown, and one a blue and white mottled which might be "Flock of Butterflies".  Some, like this one, not in a border but next to a stone sink, filled with water for the birds to  bathe in.  I am widening that border sometime this year so they will  then be in the company of other plants, but they will stay next to the sink

Every day something else to delight, some roses have bloomed and gone already, some are in full bloom, and some still in bud.  All have their own character and colour, some have a glorious smell, and some have been bred just to stand up to attacks of all kinds including weather.  But - you pays your money and takes your choice.

The day lilies have started!  A little early, but the first one is blooming - an apricot colour with a cream stripe through the petal.  The rest are full of bud and I can't wait for my Blousy Ladies to come out and play!

Goldfinch in the garden today

Look!  saw this in the garden this afternoon

Came to have a drink of water.... can't say I have ever seen one in the garden before, but in these strange times, it is our habit to sit in the garden, have lunch, read a book, or perhaps do a spot of weeding.  Today I was clipping dead  twigs from my Acers, and suddenly, with a flurry of wings he flew straight past me and arrived!

What joy we are having this Spring, seeing things we never gave the time to before.  I may not have ever seen one, but surely they have always been there!  What about you?  What are you spotting in these quiet times?

Holly Blue butterfly spot in Dorset garden (May 2020)

Holly Blue Male


Now here's a puzzle!  a very small blue butterfly flitting about this afternoon.... and there are 3/4 different kinds.  Was it this?  yes it was!  Because the underside is very plain and a sort of white colour, so when he settled for a while, I spotted it!

It was only this morning I was walking past the Holly tree and spotted the flowers.... I have never seen holly flowers in my life (seen plenty of berries of course!) but during lock down life has a slower, nicer, quieter pace in the garden and somehow, there is more time to inspect the borders!

That's the third "first time spot" for me this year, and I saw an orange tip again this same afternoon.

Spring Garden Tour at Pine Tree Cottage

Hasn't mother nature given us here in the UK a lovely gift of a month of glorious weather?  More like June than April?  All I know is that lunch in the garden on a nearly daily basis at this time of year is unheard of, and  so with Mr Mac as an "at risk" prisoner (but a comfortable one!!) the garden is a delight this year.  So here is a selection of what's out currently.  Enjoy my garden, and stay safe all.

PS a few of these are sideways on.  Sometimes my computer  will not do what I want.......

Glorious white daffodil with palest cream trumpet.  No idea why, because the bulbs I put in here last year were def. yellow!

Ceanothus (Commonly called Californian Lilac - which it isn't!).  60+ variants, of which mine is one.  Spring flowering, likes my soil and smells lovely as you walk by.  From a little slip about 16 years ago, mine is now 15 foot high and 15 foot wide.  Gives shade for later flowering things when it's own flowers are over.

Miniature Iris (6 inches tall tops).  Miracle this was allowed to bloom because some birds like the taste of the  petals and eat them before they are fully open.  This year, no attacks at all and it was such a lovely surprise to see them.

Here they are en masse - lots of new babies so should have a really solid patch next year.

Euphorpia (Characias).  Love this lime green early in the year..... of course the green "flowers"  are not flowers at all but bracts, and so that lovely green colour hangs around for ages!  Easy to grow, cut down to about 4 inches at the end of summer and they will come again.  Wear gloves, as the sap sometimes causes a rash

Ah, now! The glory that is a tree peony.  I thought I had lost this for it disappeared for a couple of years only to spring up again this year, and forgave me (whatever I did) with four huge and gorgeous blooms.

Close-up of the biggest Peony flower, it got bigger than this and opened out flatter with yellow stamens within.

And this is huge clump of iris which started as 2 little clumps of leaves and one flower stem when I bought it from a nursery 4 years ago.  I will split it and move half somewhere else at the end of the  flowering period. There are about 50 flower stems on it, each giving several blooms (so probably about 200 all told)  and it's such a picture.

Here is the first bloom so that you can see the colour in full sun.  (Sorry, this is sideways)  Depending on the amount of sunshire, it may appear nearly black or dark brown.  It's gorgeous!

Finally in the tour, the first Clematis.  I only grow the texensis group as they are easy care and can be cut back in February to around 12 inches as they flower on new growth.  This one has a green flash (see the top two petals) .

Male Orange tip in the Dorset garden....

How lucky am I?  Two spots I've had in the last couple of days....both the Brimstone and this Orange Tip  I have never seen before in my long life.  Is it because we are lucky to have really warm pre-Easter Sunshine this year?  ...And because we are confined to home, we are lunching outside in the loveliness of Spring?  Yes, I suppose it is!

Male Brimstone spotted in Dorset garden today!

Brimstone (male/underwing)

Every time I spot a new-to-me butterfly or moth I never seem to have a camera in my hands, and today, this one was "flitting" far too fast for me to get a pic anyway.  Definitely a male because definitely yellow but it was glorious to see in it's flight and it's the male that is yellow.  So I think I'm right, a male Brimstone.  The joy of Spring in the garden!  

Gravetye Beauty and Clematis Wilt

Gravetye Beauty is just the most wonderful clematis.  Not a loud shouty double, but a beautifully formed long bell of a flower which gradually opens and separates into separate petals.  And the colour!

Well.  put one in new this Summer about a week before a really hot spell, but watered it regularly, and also inserted a 12 inch pipe into the soil so that watering was made easier, and that the plant could suck up as and when it needed a drink.  It's a late bloomer, so most of September it was glorious, had grown to about eight feet and was covered in buds and flowers. Then we had a couple of really rainy days and I didn't leave the house.  And when I did? - Gone, all gone, sagging, dead and sorry for itself.  I knew what clematis wilt was, but had never had it in this garden. Looked it up on the internet, and all descriptions fitted.  So now is the time to chop it right down to 12 inches or less (in any case it's group is texensis, so either now or in Spring it should be cut down anyway) and check for dead leaves anywhere in the area.

Ah well, next year perhaps?!!

Thalictrum Splendide - new in the garden and a hole in my bank account!

This is Thalictrum Splendide (white).   I suddenly have a lot of them hahaha........  This is the tale of how you make a mistake shopping on line.  There is a large group of Thalictrum;  most seem to be either white or pink,  and bees like them.  They will give you a lovely frothy show, and so I placed my order and bought three.  When the parcel was delivered, on opening, they had sent nine.

 I phoned the plant nursery straight away but they were too busy to answer, so I left a message to tell them they might have sent too many.  In the meantime, I planted two groups of three, and the final three are outside the door waiting for me to make up my mind about their location.  I kept looking at the delivery note and one side quite clearly said "x 3"  whilst the final column said "9".  24 hours later they phoned me back.  Yes, the order was correct, yes they had sent nine.  I explained that I wasn't worried about a mistake, but maybe I should pay for the others because I didn't want staff to get into trouble.  But no, nine ordered, nine paid for.   When I looked back that the nursery site, I found that ordering one meant I would get three plants.  Didn't see that!  Cost me though, so here's hoping that all nine do really well!

But here's the PS.... the nursery member of staff said "Thank you for being so honest".  What?  Do people just not bother anymore?  Would this just be treated as a freebie?  What's your view?

Checkered skipper or not? Butterfly in a Dorset garden May 2019

 

This is a Checkered skipper and I cannot find a picture of any small brown butterfly that looks more like this from it's markings both under and on top.  However, the furthest south his has been re-introduced after a total failure is Rockingham Forest which is nowhere near the coast in west Dorset.  So.....? 

 

I didn't take this pic, and I never have a camera with me when I spot something interesting.  I took note of this little fella because the underwing markings were very pronounced which is often not the case.  However, those markings were darker than the Checkered Skipper pics I gave found,  So did I see this, or just something very similar?  By the way, it wasn't a moth.

Anyone?

Mini pond - it's a "thing"!!

I discovered this container many years ago in my next-door-neighbour's back yard.  She had it standing up with the curved (left of the pic) side at the top so that it looked rather like a little fireplace.  Every summer two pots of geraniums stood on the deeper side (right of the pic).  I told her that when she wanted to get rid of it I'd take it off her hands!  She died a few years ago and the new house owner didn't want it, so I asked if I could have it - yes, I could.  It sat outside my front door and every year it was home to pots of things not yet planted but that needed to be kept moist.  Not really successful as an object, but it did the job.  (By the way, Any suggestions on original use?  It's not a washing sink as there is no escape hole to let water out.  And it would originally have been the same height all round).

Then, a month ago, in a local paper, I read an article about "mini ponds".  The writer suggested sinking a washing up bowl into your soil, but look! I already had a container!  Got some help getting it to the desired spot, washed it out, and found some large pebbles and a couple of bricks and filled it with rainwater.  In washing it out, I found it had it's own built in fossil - a fan shaped piece of coral, I think ... so as we are a mile inland from the Jurassic Coast, surely it's local stone?

• The jumble of bricks and pebbles create a little cave in case a toad arrives (hoping!) 

• the stone in the middle of the water is not completely submerged so that bees can land (although the article did suggest wine corks, but all my wine has metal screw tops at the mo').

• The left hand side of the container is shallow enough so that should a hedgehog get in, he can get out again without drowning. 

 Next - you need to give shelter and protection from predators (a couple of cats use this garden as the end of their perambulations and also we do get sparrowhawks).  On the left of the pic is the original border edge, so I dug out the turf between the old edging and the mini pond and planted things that will give some good cover and provided a little toad shelter - terracotta, so should keep coolish.

 But I wanted to plant around the container, not just on that one side, and had a light bulb moment then!  I had some slabs from a path being laid and some had been broken in the attempt.  What if I put those broken pieces next to the container, but with a gap for some planting?  You can see from the pics that there is a small amount of soil left for that purpose.  It looked OK, but not really very professional.  So I added a whole slab each side and  removed more turf to have the slabs sunk into the grass (making for easy mowing).

You can see my footprints, I was out there early for the pictures, and the dark marks are dew.  So now I have some little areas at each end of the container to plant, and when established should look more natural and give Mr Toad, should he ever arrive, even more cover to mooch around in!  (of course, if frogs come, they can use the covers also - or maybe I will even get newts!!)

Here's a miniature Iris in full bloom and behind it, although unseen at the moment, is a large lump of the common yellow flag Iris, often seen near water.  My garden is at the top of a hill.  It gets full sun from dawn onwards until around 4.00pm, with the exception of  an area of shadow from a holly tree which gives the mini pond area some shadow from around 1.00pm onwards.  So I steer clear from any plant that says "likes cool, damp conditions".  However, when filling the mini-pond (which I guess in high summer will be daily), the overflow slides off in the area where the Iris are planted.  Win-win!
 

And here, some bulbs in pots are ready to plant out elsewhere, but giving colour and interest now.

And there it is, ready to go.  Well, I say ready to go... in fact the blackbirds that nest in my hedges found it within an hour, and have daily baths!  You can see at the top left of the pic that I am tidying up the border and the edging, but didn't get as far as the mini-pond because I was far too excited!!  Look carefully at the back of that border and you can see huge clumps of primroses - and I never planted one!  It's been a good year everywhere here in the South West of England for primroses,  and I've been particularly lucky as they seem to love the conditions in my garden so I just left them seed.  We have a grass area outside out hedge on the road side which is not owned by us.  It's maintained by the local authority.  I think some of those primroses are headed for that area shortly.

  I'll come back in a couple of months to show the area with completed planting and perhaps a wildlife report too..... "Come on Mr Toad!"

Euonymus alatus (spindle berry) in Autumn

Eonymus Alatus

Have I done this before?  Have you seen this lovely shrub?  Forgive me if you have...... I grow this for the glorious show, two weeks in early Autumn/Fall every  year.  It's spread is around 6 ft, height 3 foot or so.  Bare in the winter, lime green once the leaf buds open, insignificant flowers.  But Oh!  that wonderful pink.

 Gardening is like that for me.  I don't do bedding plants unless it's to fill in spaces, and then it  will be nasturtiums, nigella, or something that may seed itself for next year.  But I love colour, and I try to have something flowering every month of the year.  These are leaves, not flowers of course, but there is no other shrub that gives me this glorious show - and it's two steps from my front door.  When the leaves first start to turn, they are just pink tips to the leaves.  If you look at the bottom of the pic you can see some leaves not fully turned to pink, but very quickly, the entire bush is PINK! PINK! PINK!...... and then the leaves start to fall and it's over.

Never mind, next year will come soon enough.

Holly Blue in my Dorset garden - August 2018

Well, look what we found today in the garden!  This is a male open and closed.  The top picture shows you that the underside is white with little black dots.... so small, too, just over one inch across when open.  I only record butterflies I have never seen before, and since I have now found out that these breed on holly in the spring and ivy in the summer, I should have seen them before because we have both in the garden; but never did.  Such a dainty sight and we were so pleased to find him.                                                                                       The pics came from the UK Butterflies website, which I always refer to first when I see a new one, before contacting my friend Sarah whose hubs is an expert "flittery" person.  That way I can get it right when I tell you about it!

Bright Turquoise Damselfly

Today we visited a private garden open to the public.... which included tea on the terrace afterwards.  But although the garden was full of winding paths, and what we saw were many different Acers, Roses, hardy Geraniums, Iris amongst other things, what fascinated us the most were these beautiful creatures.  The colour really was staggering - iridiscent  turquoise.  But no picture I found did them proper justic.  They were about 2 inches long, and just like little pieces of jewellery. At one point there were 9 or 10 flitting around in front of our eyes, but none stayed still long enough to get a pic.  Had to dig around to find out exactly what they were, but found this on the Canal & River Trust website.  Here's what they say:

Damselfly

Damselflies are brightly coloured insects who, like dragonflies, are acrobatic masters of the air as they hunt for their prey.

Damselfly, courtesy of Karen Arnold

Damselflies are delicate and very thin and fold their wings back over their bodies at rest. You can sometimes spot clouds of them flitting over the water surface and amongst vegetation on sunny days. They feed mainly on mosquitoes, midges and larger insects.
The reed fringes of many of our canals and rivers provide excellent breeding sites and hunting grounds for damselflies - our maintenance programme involves the creation and improvement of canal banks with damselflies in mind.
In the past, any work on canal banks would have involved steel sheet piles. Today, with our greater emphasis on habitat creation, soft banks are created either using coir roles or hazel faggots. This allows the growth of reed fringes, ideal habitats for many species of insects, particularly damselflies.

 Sometimes it is pure luck to be in the right place at the right time..... and we were today.

Mrs Mac suggests..... What to read in JUNE

I was out of the country for two weeks, and came back to a garden just bursting at the seams!  And lots of roses, which is nice because I only grow the old fashioned kind for the smell. D'you remember  the floribunda affair?  In the UK through the 1960s, 70s, 80s there was a proliferation of floribunda planted everywhere Lovely, and as the name suggests, each bush full of flowers.

But still.  Although very sturdy in growth and bright in colour, where was the smell?  Not saying there was no smell, but if you have ever smelt Nuit de Young you will understand why I crave the smell of an old fashioned rose.  As you can see, it's not a looker.  It also is not a repeater, so one early show and it's done.  But its smell is intoxicating.  It is just worth it.  So worth it.

Moving swiftly on now, my lovely readers, it's the approach of the summer in the UK.  I just didn't know what to suggest until I caught the title of something I had enjoyed very much a while back.  So shall we go for

a good dystopian novel?

 Don't be afraid if you have never read one, this one is a peach!  See if you can find

Station 11 -Hilary St John Mantel

Peacock butterfly (female) seen in the garden this week - early May

Pretty girl!  I don't recall seeing one of these in the garden before, but every year I spot a "new" (to me) butterfly or moth.  Maybe I am just more aware of them, the more plants I grow for bees and other creatures. 

I had to look it up because although I was familiar with the name of the butterfly, I wasn't familiar with the creature - and I know it was female because the male's marking are the same but brighter.  That was what made me inspect her carefully, because she seemed to be sort of "dulled down" for one so highly coloured.  

Anyway,  there she is in all her glory.  Our garden is in West Dorset about a mile from the coast for anyone interested.

Large White male - Pieris brassicae

Spotted in the garden in August (and onwards)  this is the Large White.  Quite often see them in pairs in the summer months (are they mating on the wing, then?) flitting around.  But until t this year never bothered to find out exactly what they were called - just knew the old fashioned name of cabbage white because the caterpillars love cabbage leaves.  And look!  brassicae in the name!
Well here is the male, so look out next summer.                           

Celmatis Viticella "Kermesina"

 I do like clematis, and in a former garden I was never lucky.  Bill McKenzie was my first in this garden, and he just loves it - forgot to cut him back in February and he is RAMPANT!!  He's going to be cut back a bit in October, as I need to do some work on the border he is situated in.

A new bright red clematis I bought back in the spring , Madam Julia Correvon, went in with shoots all over the place.  It took a week for a bas**rd slug to find it  and eat every one.  So..... start again and put a copper collar round it.  It took 2 months for her to pluck up the  courage to shoot again, and this  time the bas**rd slug took 24 hours to find a way over the copper colour (or probably down from the shrub above it) and eat the new shoots.  All I am going to say is the root is not dead.... watch this space!!

However, To cheer myself up, I bought another viticella - Kermesina, with small flowers, and a wine colour petal.  I planted it, added a support and a copper collar and waited for it to grow up into a nearby silver birth, and over to the nearest fence.  Pah!  None of that nonsense thank you, not when there is a lovely support to grow round in circles! I haven't a picture of it taken by myself, but found this one on the internet from Sverre Lund, so thank you for that!

It's full height is around 3 metres, and they suggest growing it on an obelisk,  so I guess it's support is just what it likes.  Pretty on those long stems, eh?

They require no work at all, the viticellas, except to cut back to the first pair of shoots in February.  How easy can that be?  So if you have never tried on before,  Try one in this group (and don't forget the copper collar to start with).  Rarely gets clematis wilt, either!

Visiting a garden and finding treasures!

Today it rains...... yesterday it didn't.  So it was a good thing that yesterday I went to see a garden open for the day featured in The Yellow Book.  Look - try as I might, I don't think I am ever going to get into that book, even though 15 years ago when I started this garden that little thought twinkled there in the back of my brain.  But I love the planning of a new bed, or the changing of an old one and I especially love, in someone else's garden, the sight of something I have to have in mine!

And this is what I found yesterday.  It's a mouthful.  Eupatorium Maculatum Atropurpureum.  But it's common name is Joe Pye Weed, and that's what I will remember!  In the garden I saw yesterday it was over seven feet tall, and covered in bees of different kinds.  The owner of the garden says that butterflies love it too.  It was lovely.  So I sat in the sun, with my slice of lime cake and a cuppa (all proceeds for charity), wondering where I could put it.  And today, after much thought I know exactly where it is going!  Now I just have to order three so that I can get a large group in flower next August/ September.

I have a path right up the side of my garden that stretches for about 125 feet.  My next door neighbour has a right of way over it, as his garden is up beyond mine.  My big plan for next year is to set at least 4 arches over that path, and plant climbing or rambling roses and clematis.  There are already 3 birches (2 silver and one red), a black alder and a red smoke tree on that path, and I think this will fit in with them a treat.  But for now, just have a look!

The pic below came from a lovely garden blog  - gardennorthwest.blogspot.co.uk  and I am sure the owner of the garden and the blog won't mind his pic on my blog.  So thank you Rick, and I was pleased to find you!

Garden, midsummer 2017

 Some years are better for certain plants than others. This has been a stupendous year for day lilies..... an apricot one here;  and for crocosmia (formerly mombretia) too.  Sometimes the weather plays a trick on you before you can do anything about it!  The horizontal blue in the pic on the left is Russian Sage.... after two days or pouring rain and a gale force wind - and because I had not tied it up this year. 

I have more pictures of all the new day lilies.... but cameras and computers?  They transfer the pics and then hide them.  For the life of me I cannot find that last set of pics.  Never mind, plenty of summer colour here.



 

Below some lovely Hot Pokers - lovely because of a mini-heatwave this summer so at the time of budding and blooming, no slugs!  Some years I don't get a bloom!

 

I had a new bed to fill this year - and I filled it as much as I could with an assortment of red, orange and yellow   That little geum has been flowering non-stop since the end of May with careful deadheading. 

  So... two of the new day lilies in the new border, red cosmos and a white delphinium there too.

  The orange in the centre of this pic is a perenial mimulus (hardy-ish), so have planted amongst other stuff that is hardy to protect it from frost.



















And below, just before it flowered, a new crocosmia from a private garden open to the public  (The Yellow Book).  The leaves have a grey shading, and this is echoed in the yellow flowers too.  And it is a baby one!  Sorry I don't have a name for this one.

Finally the big boy!  Here's crocosmia Lucifer, which gives a lovely show from the house (100 ft away) because of it's red brilliance.  Some might say "common as muck" and never have it, but I love the show. And to the left, Moorland Sunset, which is half the height of |Lucifer and has bright yellow stamens.

I think I have been very lucky this year.  Loads of colour and more coming.  Clematis Bill MacKenzie is flowering his heart out but I think that's because he heard me telling someone that he has to be moved - he has completely taken over an ornamental tree and several perennials!

Comma butterfly spotted late July

So lucky!  just at the end of July and I have spotted another new butterfly in the garden.  Now when I say new, I mean new to me.  They may have been flitting around for years, but I don't think so - and this is the new sighting - The Comma.

This is the female, pretty wings, the underneath a good disguise looking like a dried up leaf.  See below - and also below the reason it's called the Comma.  See the white "comma" on the underneath?


Photo © Vince Massimo
Polygonia c-album - Family Nymphalidae Rafinesque 1815. 




PS - also today, a Gatekeeper, but that was not new to the garden as I posted about this butterfly last Summer.


Female
Photo © Mark Colvin