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 […]

Trees are down everywhere after the recent storms in the Clonmel area and hardly a laneway has been unaffected and apart from the cleaning up operations some people  are panicking and chopping down  perfectly sound trees which are close to their houses as they have been given a sharp reminder as to power of nature and the damage a fallen tree can do to your  house . That said it was sad to see a group of mature silver birch cut to the ground on our lane which were in no danger of falling and had many years of beauty ahead of them which was a real case of throwing […]

The garden is like a scene from Venice at the moment as large parts of the wood are under water from all the excess water coming off the mountain due to the almost month long rains we have had in Ireland . Water always looks nice in garden photos and in the meantime it won’t do any lasting damage to plants . The hellebores are at their best right now and have many more weeks of blooming left in them . There are still no daffodils in flower just now but they are ready to come on the scene in another week but there is still colour in the garden […]

At last I am back digging in the garden after a brief spell under the duvet during the recent awful wind and rain and I was kicked into action by the kind of gift every gardener loves ….. several boxes of plants dug up and divided by another gardener . My gardening friend brought along some of my favourite plants which  have become congested  in her own garden , dermera and giant primulas  which will go into some wet areas and a beautiful geranium which I had admired in Altamount Garden in Wexford during a visit there last summer . There is also a huge clump of geranium which I […]

I have been concentrating on the specialist golden willows this week first by admiring their deep golden and red bark colour which really stands out in deepest winter where there is little leaf colour around and it is now that the willows and  dog woods come into their own and earn their keep . But I am also examining the branches and shoots for any sign of willow blight which disfigures the plant and it is now that the third part of the pruning mantra …. dead , damaged or diseased … the three D’s as it is called comes into effect . On willows especially the golden and deep […]