A few weeks ago on a visit to the Clonmel Garden Centre Snezana fell in love with two pots which had only come in the previous day ….. lucky for us as these pots , greek amphora style with handles , are difficult to source and are of a type I have been searching for over the years but never came across since I last saw one for sale in Dublin in the late 1990’s when I was between gardens . They are show stoppers and immediately found their place in the garden … careful positioning needed as I like pots not in your face but to come subtly into […]
It is July when traditionally gardens are at their peak , the perennials are in full flower , shrubs in blossom and the trick is now to keep it going until the first frosts in November ! Rodgersia and hostas are at their best in July and although both like damp conditions I have these planted in dryish soil in the front garden although I water regularly on hot days . Well the new paths in the lower field have been inspected by Snezana who is currently home on leave from OSCE duties in Eastern Ukraine …..and who reluctantly conceded that the finished project which had gone ahead without her […]
Early June and gardens are approaching their peak and if you have chosen the proper tress and shrubs for leaf colour now is their time ! Even though it is mid summer you still have time to plant for autumn colour with either wild flower seeds of cosmos or nigella both of which if sown directly into the soil now will give god flowers from September to November and you can also inject some instant leaf colour into your borders by buying in some pots of cannas or even the exotic Ethiopian banana and placing them in between established plants as I have done here with some purple canna and […]
Early April in the garden is hosta time and by that I don’t mean that they are in their full classic pomp with huge leaves …. no far more important than that as it is the time they first start to show above the ground when the new leaves peep out and there is an entire army of hungry slugs all lined up for their favourite meal of young hosta leaves ! At this time I patrol the garden each morning to see if the new shoots are coming up and then douse them with a slug killer like slugtox …… this statement is usually met with howls of indignation […]
We have an ongoing project in the woodland area where over the years we have been thinning and tidying up the conifers planted by the original owners of the land back in 1985 and a few weeks ago in March we had Peter with his chain saw for two full days ….. back breaking stuff as the blocks and cut branches have to be collected and stored . Poor Peter who is more used to dealing with me when working here and Irish style has plenty of tea breaks and chat however the wood is and has always been Snezana’s project (which she is very proprietorial about so hands off […]
It is early March and suddenly overnight the front garden has erupted with the first crocus’s of the year and they are hot on the heels of the snow drops which kicked off last week and almost ready to break into flower are the miniature daffodils , tete a tete , so from now until end of April will see a succession of bulbs coming in to flower …… now is also the time to mark out mentally the empty spaces between bulbs so that you can plant up next autumn with extra bulbs for next Spring . This morning the first frog spawn of Spring arrived overnight in the […]
February so far has been cold and overcast here at Old Spa Road but one morning the sun shone … briefly … in the Conifer Wood . A question most gardeners ask themselves , especially at this time of year in cold , dark,wet February days , is why do I garden ?? Clinically mad is one answer , joking of course but you get the point . Thomas Rainer , a US landscape architect based in Washington , describes himself in his CV as “ architect by profession , gardener by obsession ” which about sums it up and he has written which is for me the best definition […]
After the usual Christmas over indulgence in eating and inactivity ( OK if you insist on the truth … slumped by the fire watching back to back editions of Strictly come Dancing ! ) it was good to get back to the normal day to day routine of a working gardener again and first up was a cutting back of decidous trees at the front and side of the house . It was a job I had been postponing for a few years and one I remembered each summer under the heading should have cut those during the winter ! A few common sycamores and some variegated ones were fairly […]
Still some colour in the garden mid December Inspiration in the garden can come from many sources but I find most of mine in gardening books and articles while the occaisional feature on Monty Don’s Gardener’s World BBC programme also contributes …. and of course you learn from other gardens and gardeners . These days gardening books are being published less and less as the knowledge available on the internet is now the main place to go for information on plants however this week I saw a collection of twenty year old garden books for sale in a local charity shop window … sad really as it was obviously a […]
People when they hear that I have worked and lived for two years in the Seychelles Islands are always asking what it was like from a gardening perspective to live somewhere so exotic …. well it was a tropical paradise , a real Garden of Eden experience where the main view was just greenery everywhere on an all year round basis and something I wouldn’t have missed for the world . My house was set high up in the middle of a rain forest built on a rocky clearance looking out over the Indian Ocean and in the garden there were no seasons and the plants flowered every six weeks […]
