I try to always use trees and shrubs that contribute a combination of good leaf colour and bark so you get a plant of year round interest and I always use this immediate back garden area to demonstrate to visitors how colour and interest can be achieved without a slavish devotion to flowering shrubs etc. I do admire nice flowering shrubs such as magnolia or rhodoendrom but generally I am not a great lover of flowers or flowering plants as I find the return disappointing as you normally get only three weeks in flower and then you are stuck with this drab looking plant for the rest of the summer .. there […]
Recommended Garden Centres from a personal point of view
As I garden In the Clonmel area I have always regarded Glenconnor Garden Centre as my local and first bought plants there in the 80’s for my garden in Rosslare from Terry who stocked plants that were difficult to find anywhere else . Nowadays like all garden centres they have to rely on the restaurant and peripheral sales of barbeques , Halloween and Christmas paraphenalia to survive and while Terry’s son, Chris , has stepped up manfully and Sharron is a pleasure to deal with , Susan as Plants Manager has a huge gardening knowledge and has kept up the tradition of sourcing unusual plants so I rarely miss a week without […]
This week in the Garden
This week in the garden 25th October …. The season for tidying up , shifting trees and shrubs , dividing perennial plants which is what I have been doing all week . I moved the remaining five apple trees from the top field from their original site as I feel it is drier in the new location , a matter of about 15 meters but a meter can sometimes inexplicably make a difference as to whether a plant thrives or just stays alive and in the case of these apples I feel the wetness was causing them to stand still , we shall see as trial and error is a […]
The Petrovska Garden Story … developing the Garden from the beginning in April 2006 to present day …
We started to build this garden fifteen years ago , the first sod was turned in January 2006 and although a garden is never standing still …or shouldn’t …. this essay , book , call it what you like , is to docuement the developement of the garden and grew out of a presentation I was asked to give to the Clonmel Horticultural Society about the creation of the garden in January 2016 . We bought this house with almost eight acres of land at Old Spa Road in 2000 having decided to return to Clonmel , my home town after 40 years working both in Ireland and abroad with […]
Gardening Philosophy
To maintain a life long interest in gardening you need a philosophy , a theme if you like , that you work towards , not a topical trend as for example heathers … who plants the big expanses of heathers coupled with tall slim line conifers now ? You start out like every budding gardener with annuals and build up to perennials and basically you learn about plants , what they like and dislike , soil conditions and how not to fight nature and try to force plants to grow in impossible locations but then you begin to learn that on the right plant right place principle there is a […]
Latin Names of Plants
It is worth getting to know the latin names of plants as well as the common names as all over the world from the US to China and Japan a plant is known firstly by its latin name which is the linqua franca ( OK the common world wide language !) of the plant world . It may sound pretentious and a little intimidating and I know it did to me when I was starting out in gardening and while local names are fine the problem is that every country has its own local name so it can be tricky to identify a plant you fall in love with abroad […]
Favourite Plants
Favourite plants Bear in mind that my personal style of gardening is “ wild “ gardening and that I like to maintain my garden just at the edge of going over into wildness and my choice of plants , shrubs and trees reflect this . I am not into flowers or flowering shrubs as such as I find them too limited in what you get back over a long period and my view is that if my chosen tree or shrub flowers then that is an added bonus but it will not be selected on that basis . I love big leaved dramatic foliage plants such as gunneras , hostas […]
Favourite Garden Books
My favourite garden books These days google search has taken the place of gardening books and one can find details of a plant or solve a gardening problem at the touch of a button but there are writers and gardening books that the internet can never replace . This is a list of books written by gardeners that I was both influenced and inspired by to become a better gardener . These are books that I reread on a regular basis and am constantly learning from as the writers are inspirational gardeners who are in turn outspoken and not afraid to go against the trend and another word to describe them might […]