Tag Archives: Clematis

carnage

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Waking up to grey skies and the tap, tap, tap of rain on the skylight is really getting me down. For a while I comforted myself with the fact that the garden is looking greener and fuller than it might otherwise be.

But on the downside, and it’s a downside that to my mind completely outweighs the upside, the slugs are out in force. I have been out each day, picking off the slimy blighters and flinging them in buckets of water or leaving them out for the birds. But still they keep coming, more and more of them.

To date they have claimed all my sweet pea seedlings – I now need to start again, but with the terrible sense that it is utterly pointless; they have destroyed an entire clematis, montana ’Warwickshire Rose’ (above) – every bud, flower, leaf and shoot has gone, just bare stems remain; I have lost most of my alliums, each one nothing more than a slimy stump.

The clematis was the biggest shock – stripped over the course of two days.

Slug pellets then. Never used them before. But from today it’s war.

getting to grips with the garden

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I spent a couple of  hours on Saturday morning weeding, tweaking, cutting back, digging up, dividing, and generally getting to grips with the plants that looked in need of attention. I love unplanned gardening sessions like this, ones that happen because the sun is shining and for once, nothing else is demanding my attention.

This sort of  slightly unfocused pottering is exactly what I need in order to reconnect with the garden when I’ve been feeling a little gloomy about it. As I work, I invariably spot things I’ve forgotten about, such as the little clump of violets above. Someone tied several bags of them to their railings last spring, with a note saying “take me”, so I took some and stuffed them in the corner of a bed without really thinking – I don’t even think I knew what colour they would be.

And I also find myself delighted by the sight of new shoots on plants I feel sure I’ve butchered or neglected – Clematis ‘Madame Julia Correvon‘, pruned to within an inch of her life, or so it seemed, just a month ago, is already on her way up the back fence. And C. Texensis Buckland Beauty, is showing signs of life too. Above is how it looked in July last year, climbing up through the Macleaya. I moved it at the weekend, so this year it will ramble through R. Veilchenblau instead.

Working in this way seems to free the mind and, more often than not, I find that by the end of the morning I have had at least one eureka moment regarding some aspect of the garden. And so it was on Saturday. Halfway through what was meant to be just a two hour session, a rather hazy idea that I’d been kicking about for some time now, came sharply into focus: wouldn’t it look wonderful, I thought, if I planted a row of Amelanchiers in front of the top level of the terracing.

Two hours later I was at Brackenwood Plant Centre wrestling four seven foot trees into the back of the car, along with a tray of fabulous Hellebores which had called out to me as queued to pay. You know how it is with garden centres. I dithered for a moment, winced at the price tag and then I had another eureka moment (aka clever bit of justification for overspend): if I planted them in and around my tulips, the razor-edged leaves of these big, well-established plants, would keep Sybil at bay.

It’s hard to take an interesting or informative photograph of a tree that is still pretty much only one step on from being a twig. But there are lots of buds, so photos of blossomy loveliness will follow soon. Hellebore photos even sooner.

inspiration for the weekend

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Here are a few of the plant combinations that I’ve been photographing recently. Some are pairings that I noticed this time last year, failed to capture then but went out and bagged them this time. Others are new to me, but I’ve been a little more on the ball and snapped them straight away having learned how quickly things change, disappear or die. The first photograph is from my favourite part of the Botanic Gardens – a woodland area that changes week to week and that I’ve recorded several times on this blog. The next two photographs are from a trip to Wells a couple of weeks ago. The first is of part of the Cathedral complex, and although I don’t normally go for yellow tulips I loved these against the acid froth of the euphorbias in the background.

The lilac and clematis (a montana I think) were tumbling over the railings in one of the gardens around the Cathedral green. The light wasn’t great, so it was hard to capture the full effect, but I like the way clematis can be grown through so many other shrubs. Below is another montana with shrub, this time a vast tamarisk round the corner from our house. Tamarisk is a shrub that seems to do remarkably well around here, I don’t remember coming across it at all in London.

It was rather windy when I took this, so difficult to get exactly what I wanted, but I think this gives a sense of what, to me, is a rather wonderful combination. It is growing on the side of an old annex at the old Fairfield school, and has not been tended for several years.

preparations

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As the start date for the work on the garden draws closer, so my shopping list for the garden gets longer. Today I added Ranunculus, inspired by this beautiful bunch, which were a gift from friends who came to stay for the first weekend of the Easter holidays.

They have three daughters which works brilliantly, and usually all six children disappear to their bedrooms the minute they see each other. But the arrival of these heavy oak sleepers, which will form the retaining walls for three terraces, proved far more exciting than Sylvanians, nail varnish and videos. Instead of the usual disappearing act, the girls spent most of the weekend digging in the mud with Sybil and building dens on and around this huge oak platform.

Work on the garden starts next Monday, so this weekend I will start lifting and dividing the few plants that survived both my autumn cull and the winter. The list is not that long: nepeta, sedums, geraniums, poppies and a huge clump of macleaya which has already started its annual bolt towards the heavens. I’m not sure how well they will take being moved as they’ve all gone from dormant to turbo-charged over night. The lilac is probably my biggest concern: I like it, and want to keep it if possible (the flowers are already bursting open and filling the garden with the most delicious perfume), but it’s in the wrong place and I have a horrible feeling that now, while it’s in bloom, is absolutely not the time to move it.

Whilst I put my head in the sand about its future, Dan Pearson’s Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City is proving to be the perfect distraction. His account of the development of his garden in Peckham is incredibly inspiring, not least for his candour regarding mistakes and failures. I am also re-reading Beth Chatto’s fabulous book about her dry, gravel garden. Although Bristol gets far more rain than the South East, I still feel there are lessons to be learned about selecting plants in order to minimise the need for watering. Certainly, in my front garden in London I tried to get by with as little watering as possible and my experiments provided me with a good list of plants that could cope with limited rations. I am hoping to replicate the planting which included Euphorbias, alliums, california poppies, nepeta, Verbena bonariensis, a wonderful agapanthus, Nigella, a couple of roses, and on the railings an Akebia quinata intertwined with a beautiful rust-coloured clematis, the name of which I’ve forgotten. Typical. Though I expect it’s probably a long dead cardinal or bishop.

signs of life

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The glorious blue skies and sunshine of the last few days have been replaced with grey cloud and persistent drizzle. All the same, I ventured into the garden to check on trays of seedlings, and to make a note of the plants that I’ll need to lift in preparation for the terracing which starts in two weeks’ time. It feels wrong to be planning such major destruction when there are signs of new life in every corner of the garden.

Most of my Euphorbias have survived the winter though I am down to only one Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’, where once I had three. It is also rather surprising to see that it is flowering this early, when my memory is of having it come to life a little later in the year, around May or June. I have several Euphorbia characias of which I think the one at the top is subsp. wulfenii (though I can’t be sure), and I prefer it to the one with the dark centred flowers, below, which I find slightly sinister looking.

At the end of the garden, the two clematis, C. Nelly Moser and C. Madame Julia Correvon, are both looking very healthy, though I need to get my act together and provide something for them to cling to – unlike the Euphorbias, my ramshackle arrangement of canes and string did not survive the winter. Fortunately these plants won’t be disturbed by the terracing as the level they are on will remain the same. I am also hoping that I can work around my Euphorbias as my attempts at moving them in the past have never been very successful.

And finally, despite Sybil’s best efforts, my tulips are beginning to emerge, though I have no idea what any of them are as she made off with the labels weeks ago.

The fact these tulips have raised their heads at all is amazing since she’s dug them up at least three times. I’m sure Carol Klein’s dogs don’t behave that way.

surprise

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This is Clematis cirrhosa “Ourika Valley” and according to its label it flowers from mid-summer to early autumn. Only this photograph was taken this morning. It is freezing out there. No blue skies today, just a grey blanket overhead and a light dusting of frost on the ground. I planted this last spring as it reminded me of something I had in my old garden, probably Clematis Bill Mackenzie (now that I have done my research, I realise how one’s mind blurs memories – they are not alike!), which I valued for its abundant, bell-like flowers which appeared in the summer. Anyway, I was delighted to see these this morning, but began worrying that by the time it’s meant to be doing its thing it’ll be too exhausted. I wondered how this had happened as, although there were no flowers this summer, it was looking wonderful in October and November – lots of these pretty, nodding, unshowy flowers. I decided that I needed to check my books on climbers, thought that perhaps extra feed of some sort later would help. But, ah! the wonders of the internet … a little googling and I found this article which explained why this plant is looking so peachy in these bleak conditions. The label is wrong, it is meant to be flowering now and should continue until the end of February. It probably took a little break over Christmas, and is now back on form. Phew!

Off now, to make this year’s marmalade.

happy easter

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Easter means lots of things to me. I am not religious, but it is a celebration I always enjoy. Easter and Spring are bound up with the sense of renewal, of making a fresh start and finally shaking off the gloom of winter. New Year, although technically the start of the year, always feels too bleak to me and comes as a false start rather than a joyous leap into action. This must in some part relate to the fact that the garden is dead in the winter. Every January I wonder whether I will actually bother with gardening again. But four months on and  new shoots and unfurling leaves remind me that I love being in the garden and that this garden (which is fairly new to me) will gradually blossom into something lovely – though there is a lot of hard work to be done before that can happen.

For the last three Easters our garden has always smelt, if not looked, wonderful in the spring – the scent of the Clematis Armandii wafting in through open windows and, on the little lilac, wonderful cones of tiny buds awaiting their turn in May. Not this year though. On the first day of the Easter holiday there was no sign of the Armandii, the branches of the little viburnum I planted last summer were bare and the lilac looked as though it might give this year a miss. Off to Wales in a rain shower for a week of chocolate and walking and, unexpectedly, glorious sunshine, and we returned to find that spring had sprung.

Other reasons I enjoy Easter: each year it involves one birthday party and a spring-related birthday cake (the bunny at the top of the post was for Pin the Tail); a simnel cake; chocolate nests – which are something of a family tradition (my mother would make them for us every year); Lindt gold bunnies and finally, a mad dash around whichever garden is available in a frenzied search for little chocolate eggs. This year there were Easter bonnets too and a delicious dark chocolate Easter tart made by my friend Rachael.