Friday 13th December 2013

Last Friday group of the year - no gardening today just our group Christmas meal. Amazingly we did get 26 people seated and served a 3 course Christmas lunch. Lovely food everyone and a great way to end our first term of the 2013/14 Friday gardening group. The pictures give a good flavour of the event.

                                                              Happy Christmas!

                                                               

Friday 6th December 2013

Cotoneaster Rothschildianus

Our last opportunity to get out and do some gardening this year as next week we will be celebrating a busy first term of the Friday group with our Christmas lunch and probably a seasonal horticultural quiz.We had some discussion about the planting of herbaceous perennials. Perennials are plants that have a life cycle of more than 2 years -the term herbaceous perennial  narrows the group to plants with soft, green stems that die back to the ground in colder climates. Trees, shrubs and other woody stemmed plants are excluded. Perennial vegetables are jerusalem artichokes, globe artichokes, cardoons and asparagus.

Activities in the garden this week:

• Bubble wrapping the inside of the greenhouse and putting more of the plants that are not frosty hardy into the protection of the greenhouse
• Digging up and sorting out the chrysanthemums so they can be protected over the winter months and cuttings taken in the spring. Chrysanthemums are good grown for cut flowers - they were slightly overshadowed in the garden this year by the cosmos that grew so abundantly. See RHS page for advice on care of chrysanthemums.
• Further work on hard landscaping the area outside the compost bins
• Planting up the Grand Soleil D'or narcissus bulbs
• Pruning the rose that grows over the arch in front garden
• Leaf raking
• Tidying up the yellow bed near the shed

Mahonia media 'Charity'

Plant ident:

• Thuja plicata 'Irish Gold', Western Red Cedar. Thuja are fast growing evergreen trees and can be grown as a hedge.
• Taxus baccata 'Fastigiata', Irish Yew - a large bushy upright evergreen shrub. Conifers can provide important winter structure in the garden.
• Mahonia media 'Charity' - Mahonia are evergreen shrubs with yellow flowers that are pollinated by moths. 'Charity' is an upright shrub that can grow to 4m with clusters of flowers in late autumn/winter
• Cotonesater 'Rothschildianus' - a large deciduous or semi evergreen shrub that grows to 5m with small white flowers in large clusters, followed by pale creamy-yellow berries.

The guerilla pruning team! 

Friday November 29th 2013

Plants for the big border

A big task for the day was planting up the main border with perennials that will look great in summer/early autumn. Now is the time to plant perennials before the frost compacts the soil. Paul arrived with a van load of compost as well as a selection of perennials for the border. The compost could not be dug into the bed as this would disrupt the bulbs that had already been planted. However compost can be laid as a covering on top and will be integrated into the soil quite quickly with the help of the worms.The new perennials included Veronicastrum 'Fascination', Rudbeckia, Phlomis, Althea, Nepeta, Helenium, Miscanthus, Iris siberica, Pennisetum & Asters. Dianthus would be used as edging plants at front of the border. There was also the last of the tulip bulbs to be planted and all the perennials that had been lifted from the border needed sorting out.

Veronicastrum

 

Dinah on compost delivery

Barrowing in the new compost

Paul in charge of plant placement

Ann & Sue on a plank

 

It will look amazing  next year

Mandy, Julia and Catherine dividing and potting up