Even at the height of summer with all the lush exhuberant growth in the garden there is always room for pots or containers particularly if sited in shade … not total shade but dappled . Never use plastic containers as apart from looking awful tatty they heat up too much in hot weather and dry out the plants . Nowadays all pots being sold are generally frost free , that is they take into account European weather conditions where winter frosts can freeze a pot solid for weeks and the days of cheap imported pots from the Far East , Vietnam etc. cracking into pieces are gone and you can […]
My neighbours on the laneway , Michelle and Sebastian , admired the combination of both green pots and planting of hostas and lamium featured in my last blog so off we went to Glenconnor Garden Centre where I knew they still had some of the fabulous egg shaped green pots left and we bought the last three which I planted up with hosta sieboldiana Francis Williams but as the lamiums had sold out as soon as they came into flower a few weeks ago I used white flowering allysum as the underlayer of plants and left an order with Susan , Head Gardener in Glenconnor for some lamium if they […]
Visitors to the Garden this week ! I am often asked by garden visitors about colour combinations in shrubs and flowers and the more technical even mention colour wheels which are the bible for the serious gardeners who think it is heresy to even think of slipping in a different colour amongst all those planting blocks of blues , whites , pinks etc. in case it clashes . My attitude to colour in the garden has always been a bit like that of Joan Collins who at 80 last year married a guy thirty years her junior … but Joan what about the age difference asked the media….. her answer […]
Now that Summer is here or at least Winter has passed gardeners are feeling optimistic and their thoughts are turning to having one last attempt at growing that tender perennial / tree / shrub that logic ( and past experience ! ) should tell them is just not possible in our climate ….. but gardeners always hope and like the iconic “ Next Year in Jerusalem ” for the Jewish People , with gardeners it is Next Year a Tree Fern ! Tree Ferns are fabulous …. in other people’s gardens ….. where they will feed it , water it ( tree ferns are difficult and fussy about almost everything […]
Visitors to the Garden this week The May burst of growth is almost upon us when suddenly everything in the garden takes off whoosh and I really believe that this is the most magical time of the year in the garden when the dark gloominess of winter is finally gone and you see the fresh new growth everywhere . Just now the clumps of giant gunnera , as they unfurl their leaves and start to grow to their eventual height of over two metres , are one of the most dramatic sights in the garden and have burst through the protective covering of last year’s leaves ( which I fold […]
Visitors to the Garden this week …… April 20th 2014 The magnolia trees are bursting into bloom all over Clonmel gardens …. all except here in our garden as I mistakenly planted the variety stellata which is really just a large shrub and the magnolia to plant (and to die for ) is soulangia with its big tulip style flowers . Every year I plan to move the three magnolia stellata I have here to a back of the border position as after its ritual three week flowering period it is a waste of time shrub which looks dowdy and adds nothing to the garden after its brief […]
Spring is definitely in the air this week although the ground is still too wet from all the rain we have had to unleash the mower … more time to admire the lovely colours of the weeping willow and the wall flowers in the front garden . The latest addition to the garden was this quirky one off modern terracotta vase which Snezana fell in love with in the bargain bin corner of Glenconnor Garden Centre earlier in the week . Peeping through shrubs or in a quiet corner the simplest of stone or terracotta pot can brighten up a corner of the garden and bring a smile to the […]
Antiquities in the garden is the title this week …… no NOT me but a beautiful quern stone …. a few months ago I was in Pauline Hegarty’s garden at Kilmacomma just outside Clonmel , a lovely garden which featured in Irish Gardener last year and well worth a detour if in the area as they say in the Michelin Guide . Pauline had just come back from a visit to her childhood home in Clare with a pair of ancient stone grinders and as I admired them so extravagantly she promised to put the word out to see if another such piece came on the market , one such […]
I wasn’t planning to write a gardening blog today but as it is March 17th and every radio station in the world is blaring out a St. Patrick’s Day message this morning so in honour of my irishness here is a short St. Patrick’s Day themed piece ! When living abroad and asked where am I from or when most people pick up on my accent and ask what part of Ireland are you from , the second statement is always “ it is so green ” and I always answer yes it is very green but the price for all that greenness is that it rains every day …. […]
As I mentioned in my last article yellow fever is full on now with daffodils everywhere , 27,000 varieties bred so far and by bred I mean artificially created by specialist growers over the last hundred years , mainly for commercial reasons as the public’s taste changes for different colours and larger flower heads . Different colours really means either variations on yellow or white but for my own taste I don’t take much heed of specialist varieties as in my view yellow is yellow and I just buy in bulk sacks at the garden centres but I do try to keep the colours separate so one area will have […]
