Autumn at The Garden House, Devon

I enjoyed an afternoon coach trip with the local gardening club two days ago, when we visited The Garden House, nr.Yelverton in Devon.  The acer glade was particularly stunning and I yesterday put some of the photos up on the internet as I have a Redbubble account, where greetings cards or prints can be bought of any of my photos, and I haven't been on that website for a very long time so I suppose garden photography rekindled my enthusiasm as I was pleased with some of the results.

The garden itself is small enough to see everything in about two hours yet large enough to get lost in and need a map.  At this time of the year it is worth visiting to see the autumn colours and although many of the plants have finished for the season I would like to go back again in the spring and summer to take photos of different plants, colour schemes and groupings.  They were due to close in a weeks time so will not be open for a while now.

It was interesting that I found myself being drawn to some of the stronger coloured plants, as in my own garden I tend to avoid these for some reason.  They worked very well on a dull overcast day or against the grey stone walls, so I have some research to do to find out what some of these plants were called as not all of them were labelled.  As I have some grey stone retaining walls in my own garden I now feel like adding some splashes of colour there, and the oranges and reds looked perfect against such a backdrop.

I don't have a camera with interchangeable lenses and my current camera is mainly suitable for landscapes, so I don't get those blurry backgrounds when doing close ups of flowers, but I prefer ideas for plant groupings or seeing plants from a bit further away as I can see their form and get a better idea of how they would look in my own garden. Although macro photography would be fun to get involved with, for the purposes of gardening I prefer to see plants from a few steps back and in context with the rest of the garden.  One of the things that has often frustrated me when looking through gardening catalogues or websites was having every single plant photographed in extreme close up. I then have to search through google images to find the plant taken from more of a distance.  

The following red flowers with black leaves worked very well in the garden (alongside the tall grasses), as did the orange flowers with yellow centres.  If anyone knows the names of either of these it would be much appreciated if you would let me know in the comments box.  I also never thought I would ever be interested in dahlias (below) but the deep red 'urchin' ones growing in the walled garden were certainly attention grabbing.  

RED URCHIN DAHLIAS

On the cooler end of the colour spectrum the lacecap hydrangeas are still on my wish list, as soon as I've had a bonfire to clear the space in the 'woodland garden' (the very back which has too many trees for the space) of the felled holly tree branches (see previous post).  I liked the relaxed shady atmosphere of the rhododendron walk, so named on the map although only the hydrangeas were in bloom at the time.

HYDRANGEA WALK

LACECAP HYDRANGEA

The acers (or Japanese maples) were the main attraction in the garden, and I only photographed a few that were there.  The view of the bridge shows various colours together.  

ACER GLADE AT GARDEN HOUSE

More of these can be seen on my Redbubble account (separate categories for flower close-ups and gardens), and these ones are all copyright as they are for sale, and I will be also using some of them for future calendars.  Other photos elsewhere on this blog are not and just require a link back to my blog if the photo is mine.

Now I am off to find some ferns and moss to photograph together for a photo challenge on Redbubble, assuming the ferns haven't all died off by now.  Up on the moors last Sunday they were all brown and dead.  I did buy a fern at The Garden House when I was there as I am collecting different varieties just like the Victorians used to do, so if I don't find any still thriving in the wild I'll just plant my new fern next to some moss in my garden.

For more info about The Garden House see http://www.thegardenhouse.org.uk

Making the most of my Holly Tree

The most exciting thing to happen in my garden recently was having the holly tree felled.  It was growing out of a stone wall on the boundary of my garden where there are many more trees creating a shade tunnel as I have trees on either side of my narrow strip of land.  I wanted to save the dry stone wall which had started to burst apart due to the girth of the tree and let more light in so my plants could thrive better.  The weather had been too wet to burn all the branches so they are still stacked at the bottom of the garden.  Then I had the idea of making holly wreaths out of them, perhaps selling some to the local florists even.  I've not made wreaths before but as there is still plenty of holly growing around here there would be a small supply to continue making holly wreaths in the future should I find I enjoy doing so.

Having decided on this I then regretted having taken off so many of the berries because my first idea had been to make fat blocks for the birds.  It is too early to make the fat blocks but I have a bag full of holly berries, along with some wild bird seed that I bought the other week in readiness for this.  I have also ordered some wire wreath frames from ebay to make the wreaths.  As the berries seemed to come out early this year, they would no doubt be no good come Christmas time anyway.  There are still enough sprigs with berries though and I may experiment with putting clear nail varnish over the berries to see if that helps keep them better.  This years wreath making is an experiment so I'll see what works best.  I am so glad the bonfire wouldn't light the other week when the tree surgeon was here.  It is amazing how things often turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

My poor summerhouse, which is more like a shed than anything fancy, has no roofing felt when it blew away in the strong winds that I get up there frequently in my exposed garden.  I should have put a tarpaulin over the roof when the felt first blew away so I hope I don't have to replace the roof as well now.  With all the holly stacked up behind the summerhouse it was hard to reach from the back to temporarily cover the roof on my own, but that will have to be re-felted as soon as I can do something with all that holly as access around the back of the garden is difficult right now.  Being a very wet year the urgent jobs have been on hold like the bonfire and waterproofing the summerhouse roof, as I need more than just one dry day occasionally to help dry everything out.

I bought another new tool, a maul to chop the wood of the holly tree for my woodburner.  Not used that yet but the wood will not be seasoned enough to use this winter anyway.  I also bought a moisture meter to check the moisture content of wood before burning any logs.  I'll post the results of my wreath making attempts once I have finished one, assuming I can keep the holly alive until December since it was cut on the  9th Oct.  I wouldn't mind having a few holly bushes as bushes rather than trees, so once the remainder of the crown of the holly tree is burned I'll have room to plant a few somewhere, and will choose a couple of variegated holly shrubs as I understand that variegated holly is harder to come by.  All this and I don't even celebrate Christmas!

For some reason I have the idea that the local florists may be interested, and if not I can always sell sprigs of it, along with my wreaths, from my front garden or even on my blog.

On Tuesday I am due to go on a coach trip with the gardening club to Garden House.  This is on my links list of local gardens to visit so I'm looking forward to getting some photos of that to post next.  

Chemtrails and Rock Dust

It has been ages since I posted anything on my gardening blog although I have managed to get out there occasionally when the weather has been more cheerful, like yesterday.  I decided to move a spiraea 'little princess' shrub to the back garden from a pot in the front garden, and ended up creating a whole new flower bed along the edge of the lawn before replanting it.  Previously the lawn reached up to the stone wall of a raised bed, which made it difficult for cutting the grass and usually was full of weeds there anyway and wild stawberry plants, the latter having a habit of popping up in the middle of my lawn.  So the new narrow bed will help with lawn mowing and also soften the appearance of the stone wall.  I have ordered some more Spiraea shrubs from Amazon to fill the rest of the row, and found two unnamed Hebe plants in Morrisons' supermarket for £2.00 each, which I also planted in the new border yesterday.  

I then got carried away and decided to cut an even narrower bed all along the pathway as the lawn gets scruffy along the side of the path with really tough long grass that doesn't pull out easily.  Tomorrow I am going to order some very low growing plants to fill that gap before more weeds take up the space and decided on Sedum Purple Carpet (Stonecrop) and Hebe pinguifolia Pagei (evergreen, with grey green leaves and white flowers) to line that edge of my small lawn, which at least gets some sun during the day.

SEDUM PURPLE CARPET

Anywhere north of the lawn tends to be in too much shade because of the tree canopy, so it made sense to create more growing areas where there was a bit more sun than elsewhere in the garden.  In two days time a tree surgeon will hopefully be felling one of the holly trees, which being evergreen creates continuous shade as well as causing the stone wall to collapse that it is growing out of.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the weather will be fine enough for him to carry out the job on Tuesday.    Whenever we get a nice warm day with blue skies the planes are usually out spraying their chemtrails all over the sky for weather modification, and this has been going on all summer.  Some of my plants didn't bother to bloom at all this year, presumably still waiting for summer to begin.  My heart sank when I saw those planes up there again while I was enjoying gardening and the warmer weather.

I grabbed my camera and took some photos as I'm keeping a 'before and after' record of this whenever I notice it.  I don't have a strong zoom on my camera to zoom in as close as I would like, but the results are always the same.

Both (above) taken from my garden on Saturday (Oct 6 2012) when I first noticed them doing it.

And the sky the following day (Sunday) which is nearly all white, taken around noon.

And despite the sky being nearly totally covered with cloud, they were still spraying today - I guess there were still too many blue spaces showing up there.  I realise most people know all about chemtrails but exposing this is the only way I know to voice my opposition to it.  I watched a youtube video today where someone was showing us what we can build to knock them out of the sky, but I have enough trouble assembling flat pack furniture, so a Tesla coil or whatever it was is way beyond my building capabilities.  I was pleased that there were things around though that caused chemtrails to break up, so I'm hoping some scientist makes them commercially available in this country.

There was also mention of basalt, amongst other things, as being good at breaking down heavy metals in the soil, as the chemicals will land on our gardens.  This is what reminded me about buying rock dust for the garden to improve and re-mineralize the soil.  I'd heard about it ages ago and then forgot all about it.

So I ordered two different brands, one of which contains basalt.  Autumn is a good time to apply it, along with compost/manure.  I will probably have to wait a few months after applying it to see if I notice any difference.

There is still a huge amount to be done in the garden because I haven't been out there as much this year.  I swept the first lot of leaves and erected my new leaf cage, but will wait for the rest of the leaves to fall before sweeping again.

Cleaned and oiled the garden furniture to store away, not used once this year.

This happened to be the first year I really saw the appeal of bulbs, and my saffron crocus bulbs have started to come up already in the utility room.  I'm looking forward to collecting my own saffron to cook with rice.  They were free with my order of other bulbs, which I have yet to plant when the weather inspires me to go out there again.

I'm experimenting with coir compost for the bulbs, as a change from John Innes compost.  My aloe vera plant wasn't so keen on it though when I repotted it.

I planted lots of different bulbs in pots and also in the 'woodland garden' area at the very back.  The ground is very hard and compacted there and dry because of the trees taking up all the moisture, as well as being on a slope so the rain runs off.  I'm not sure where I'd be without a mattock, much better than digging with a spade.  In fact you can't even make an impression with a spade in that area.  When my rock dust arrives I'll apply the manure at the same time, and I still have gypsum to put down which I forgot to use last year, which help break up the soil a bit.  The leaf mould won't be ready for another year though, but it is primarily for this back end of the garden which I also want to create more of an acidic soil for.

Yesterday I also bought a new shrub, Sarcococca confusa (or Sweet Box), to put in a container by the front door.  The man in the market said it was his favourite shrub and convinced me I wouldn't regret buying it because it has a strong perfume that fills the garden in winter.  

I wasn't initially attracted to it as I was on the hunt for plants with white flowers for the 'woodland garden', especially viburnums and white hydrangeas.  He told me I was too early for viburnums and too late for hydrangeas, so I bought a few more white cyclamen plants and went back for the shrub later to give it a chance.

Not much point in planting in the back garden as I'm rarely in my back garden in the winter, and this one flowers from December to March.  It prefers moist soil and shade, and also copes well with dry shade and urban pollution too.  As most plants in pots are coming to the end of their flowering season now in the front garden, it seemed like a good idea to have something evergreen by the door.