Hemerocallis heartbreak!!

Check out your garden for the nasty gall midge that can attack your day lilies.  Today we had a horrible day going round all the hemerocallis in the garden, of which there are over 30, cutting all the buds off!  Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet and be brave!  Last year we only cut off what seemed to be the infected buds, but it appears you have to be much more ruthless.

According to one article I read it took a gardener over three years of doing this to banish the pest!  Next year we will try spraying Provado in March and April to banish the bug.

Gall midge is a small fly that lays eggs on the developing flower buds.  The larvae inside the buds causes abnormal bud development and infested buds fail to open.  These buds are shorter and much fatter than normal daylily flower buds.  It affects the earlier varieties of Hemerocallis more as they are forming in the egg laying season.  It is worth trying the spray provado ultimate bug killer when the flower spikes are emerging.

Our beautiful English Rose

After my last blog about snakes (which it seems some of you are not so enamoured!) I thought I would show off some of England's best.....

Seagull

Brother Cadfael (A real Stalwart - flowers until Dec)

Rosa Hansa

Paul's Himalyan Musk (Heavenly scent)

Graham Thomas (keeps on and on flowering)

Rose Ispahan (Smells divine)

Max Graff  (Eye catching)

Penelope Rose  (Whole shrub completely covered in blooms)

Rosa Rugosa

Nevada (One of the first to flower)

Gertrude Jekyll

The slippery garden slope!

 Most days we set out to work with a rough idea of what the day has in store for us - but just sometimes – we are totally unprepared!

I thought I saw a snake at the castle two weeks ago whilst showing our NGS county organiser round the garden.  We were just rambling down some steps and into a shaded area when movement on the ground caught my eye – I was so shocked I jumped out of my skin so unfortunately didn’t take a very good picture (I though it might be an adder!).  you can just see it under the Alchemilla leaf.

 Today we were pruning roses back from a small cottage situated at the end of a long track next to a lake, so, right off the beaten track.  We had been told there were snakes in the area but didn’t take much notice as the cottage was under restoration and full of noisy workman.

After finishing our task we walked along the side of the lake, I went down the bank to study an unusual flower on the waterline and found more than I bargained for!  Sunbathing on top of a stump was a lovely dark coloured snake.  Martin kept watch while I ran to the car for the good camera and bingo – not a bad shot ..

Martin had been spraying some nettles off earlier in the week and thought he had spotted one at the other end of the lake – so off we went.  We found two more coiled up next to each other –  very carefully I crept up on them to get the perfect shot and promptly trod on another one!  I was guilty of letting out a very girly squeal!  I always thought our English snakes were rather small and insignificant – not any more. 

We must have seen more than 15 snakes all sunbathing on the side of a bank.  The young are no bigger than a pencil, the older ones have a girth the size of a 10p piece!

How fantastic is that!

Lincolnshire Show - A woodland Walk!

Well have we had a bit of fun this week!

As my local followers will know the Lincolnshire Agricultural Show starts tomorrow and for the first time Applewhite Garden Design have been involved!

Our brief:  Can you do something with this!.... and make it look good all year round...

We only had a few weeks to think about the project.  Having just watched the Chelsea flower show I had loads of exotic ideas in mind, but sadly not the Chelsea Designer budget to go with them - so no grand statues! 

My first call was to our nursery Welland Vale to see what plants they had in stock, and suss out which ones would look their best in a few weeks time. My second call was to Green Mile Trees to see what could be made available for the show.

Armed with this information I set about planning a design.  

I was faced with a large Eleagnus shrub (in the middle of the picture), not a favourite of mine and a rather unruly euonymous.  The latter is a great shrub for any garden; comes in many variations, small or large, evergreen and can be clipped.  

With only one free day to plant up and Martin on another garden project, Kerry and I set off at the crack of dawn.  First stop was at Pete's who tipped a load of bark chippings in the back of the truck with his forklift and then we were on our way. 

12 hours later... and with heavy aching limbs we had finished our garden.  But the best part of the whole experience was all the help we were given.  Our dear friend Jane drove from Hough to bring the Bee Hive, 3 Show Stewards helped clear all our rubbish away, one steward bought us both an ice cream, two plumbers set up our watering system, one steward washed our bee hive and Andy the police dog trainer helped alarm our Bee Hive.  Did I mention that Kerry was tall and blond!

A big thank you to all....

Martin and I finished off the next day, including giving the Police dog garden some extra bark!!!

www.wellandvale.co.uk
www.greenmiletrees.co.uk

Guru in the Garden

Today was a real treat for me.  Charles Williams came to visit Belvoir to give us advice and help on a new planting scheme.

Charles owns and runs Caerhays Castle Gardens in Cornwall and is a senior partner at Burncoose Nursery.  His great grandfather bred the original x williamsii strain of camellias at Caerhays in the 1920s and they are the holders of The Plant Heritage National Collection of Magnolias.

It is over a year since I have seen Charles so there was a lot to catch up on.  First visit was the Japanese Garden and the camellias he planted 6 years ago.  Most of these are looking good and have survived our last two very cold winters without too many causalities..

Our next stop was the Spring Gardens.  My biggest problem was curtailing the thousands of questions I had for him, to a few hundred.  To make sure I didn’t look a complete numpty, running round the garden with a clip board, I resorted to making discrete notes on my mobile.  What I hadn’t bargained for was my mobile phone being on predictive text! Instead of having a comprehensive list of latin names I have a complete load of rubbish ......  It was a fun day!

Here are some of the views on our travels

Charles’s last visit was in Spring 2011 when we planted over 250 rare and unusual acid loving trees on newly cleared sites.  These were planted in the baking hot sunshine so there was a serious worry about watering.  The day we finished, the drought was announced and as we all know, the heavens opened – although disappointing for us - it was probably a life saver for those trees.  We have only lost about 5, which is good going. 

I think our Guru was pleased!

View from the far end of Spring Gardens

Early Summer Cottage Garden flowers

At last the ground is warming up and the plants are putting on tremendous growth, making up for the cold early spring; alas hot on their heels are the weeds.  In an ideal world by now your borders should be so covered in flowers that weeds struggle to find room to grow.  The theory is good, but I still seem to be filling up wheel barrow after wheel barrow with cleavers, nettles and the infamous ground elder!

But here are a few treats from the early flowering summer borders:

Pink Hawthorn

Sambucus underneath a silver birch with pink persicaria 

The lovely tall white allium 'Everest'

I think this is Allium Aflatunense

The more unusal centaurea montana Purple Heart

Davidia Involucrata

My favourite Tree

I'm afraid I am guilty of boring everyone to death about this tree -but if you look at these pictures - I hope you will see why, it really is a stunner.....

It has many common names including The Dove tree, Ghost tree as well as handkerchief tree, all of which are obvious choices considering its habit.

This beautiful tree was introduced to the West from China in 1904 by Dr Ernest H Wilson, who had been commissioned by Veitch's nursery to collect propagating material for "this most wondrous of species". (See below)

 All of the tree's common names refer to the spectacular white hanging leaf bracts that appear in late spring.

Specimens of Davidia involucrata had been sent to Kew, and nurseryman Henry Veitch expressed an interest in obtaining some seeds from which to grow the tree. In 1899, he commissioned a young botanist called Ernest Wilson to go to China and find the handkerchief tree. Having never been abroad and not speaking a word of Chinese, this presented quite a challenge for the 22-year-old Wilson.

With only a hand-drawn map and a few written instructions to guide him, Wilson set off into the remote Yunnan region of China in search of the single specimen known to exist. On his way, he escaped local bandits, survived a potentially deadly illness and nearly drowned when his boat overturned in a rocky river. When he did finally find the location of the tree, Wilson was mortified to discover that it had been cut down and used to build a house. Fortunately he did find other specimens and sent the seeds back to England in 1901 before going on to spend many years in China, finding hundreds of other plants and fame in the process.  (Kew Royal Botanic Gardens)