I always feel the Irish and UK gardens are at their very best in June with the longest day of the year and everything fresh and at the top of their game and we as gardeners feel fresh too as all the hard work of the Winter months has paid off and we can sit back , briefly , and enjoy !
I love using big architectural leaf perennials and of course as these prefer dampish to wet condition, our garden at Old Spa Road is perfect and now we have enough mature trees to give shade where needed and although Irish conditions are not exactly Mediterranean light wise I believe all plants benefit from some shade and that full sunlight is not a great position for any plant .
Our big four architectural plants would be the gunerra , darmera peltata , american skunk cabbage and rodgersia … garden centres rarely stock darmera or gunerra so your only chance is to get a division from another gardener or keep an eye out at local plant sales as these are a great place to pick up hard to get and unusual plants … back in the late 1970’s I bought my first euphorbia characais wulfeni from an older lady gardener in a plastic coffee cup at a charity sale . Rodgersia is widely available but strangely seems to be out of fashion these days which is a pity as it is a fabulous plant especially the red and oak leaf varieties and a clump of rodgersia in a border is a real show stopper … easily diviseable in spring as are all of these perennials if you get a clump established .
I don’t grow roses since forty years ago in my first garden in Rosslare where they broke my heart with black spot and mildew and the daily chore of dead heading to keep a succession of blooms … however one rose I make an exception for at Old Spa Road is rosa rugosa , a semi wild rose which comes with either white or pink flowers … rugosa is literally as tough as old boots with beautiful olive green leaf and gets neither black spot or mildew and you can hack it to the ground in autumn and it will come back in Spring like a brand new plant … easily slipped and again not widely available as rose fanciers prefer the sexier new varieties which like hostas seem to have hundreds of new hybrids every year hoping to catch the eye of gardeners thoughout the world .
We spent some time in Croatia in late June , horrendously hot with plants hunkering down for what looks like a scorching summer ahead in the Adriatic … having learned over the years I limit watering as tough love is what is needed with the local shrubs like lavender , rosemary and santolina and I used the opportunity to dig out some seven year old rosemary bushes that had gone a bit woody and leggy … I find in situations like this that there is no way back with either rosemary or lavender and if you lose control of their pruning over a year or so it is best to dig them out .
Not for nothing is pruning described as an art and you need to be ruthless with none of this ah sure it’s lovely at the moment as before you know it the plant has gone semi feral and leggy … and here’s another cliche … the old saying you need to be cruel to be kind is so true in gardening !
I have five remaining lavender bushes in Gornja Podgora and these because of their location and strict pruning several times a year are very healthy and productive . Lavender absolutely prefers full sun and dry stoney ground with no watering and I harvest bundles for the house in Late June just before the flowers have peaked at full bloom , early morning is best for cutting and I let them dry in the various vases although NEVER harvest after rain when the bushes are wet as rot will set in … there is nothing like the smell of dried lavender throughout the house .
I will go over the lavender bushes in September with a light pruning and then in April I give them a hard clip to keep the bushes in a nice compact shape and with this three times cutting regime your lavender will last virtually forver … properly maintained lavender looks good in all seasons but of course lavender in full bloom is show stopping .
I mentioned last month about growing oranges and lemons and personally although I love gathering the fruit I am not a fan of either tree for the garden as they are not pretty trees and the only thing going for them in my book is the fruit and the thrill for a gardener like me from Ireland in being able to harvest lemons .
Both trees are basically crop trees and both always look semi starved with nothing attractive about the leaves so I grow both in out of the way corners of the garden in Gornja Podgora where I give each a gallon of water with a foliar feed mixed in every day I am there and over the six years planted they have put on good growth and the lemon tree is over six feet high and wide .
Kamenica … old stone olive oil storage amphora
For over thirty years I have admired the antique stone Dalmatian olive oil storage vessels or kamenica as they are known locally … common in the old days as large storage jars for the family olive oil and usually kept in the cellar or kanoba and carved with hand tools from solid blocks of stone usually from Brac Island .
I sourced our only large kamenica over twenty years ago outside an abandoned old stone house in a mountain village in the Biokovo mountains above Makarska . I found the owners eventually , two twenty four year olds who were clearing out the house , the kamenica belonged to their grandfather and they were not sentimental about it as it was too large , I did a deal and then needed to hire a JCB and a truck to get it to the garden in Gornja Podgora ten miles away .
For many years now these old stone amphora have become increasingly collectable and hard to source although every house in our village of Gornja Podgora seems to have one the size of a large bath stored in the cellar … I have enquired many times discretely if anyone wanted to sell but nada and a kamencia has to come to you if at all .
That was the situation until last week when a local friend who had bought an old stone ruin near the village contacted me to say that in clearing out the cellar he had found three kamenica of varying sizes , all over 150 years old cut from Brac stone and was I interested … the photos did not show any great detail of size or condition so we went to have a look , fell in love , agreed a price and took all three stone kamenica .
It took four people to get them into a van and they arrived at the house where locations around the garden were agreed … we are talking huge weight here and once in position kamenica are not easily moved … so none of the usual up a bit down a bit here and once dropped in postion it stays …. old fashioned ropes , wood and sweat were used to get them up a series of steps and slide them into position and taking stock afterwards they look as if they were always there … so the kamenica found us !
In case you thought I did nothing throughout the moving … I was Director of Operations & Posing !
Balkan Sanctions Memories
When stationed with the EU Sanctions Mission in Montenegro in 1996 I was based in Niksic , a horrible town with a huge violent crime rate and local people who hated us for being there enforcing EU sanctions against Serbia and they used every opportunity to let us know that we were hated and did I mention the Mission had to stay for our own security in the Hotel Onogast which we christened Hotel Holocaust and where our local Mission staff refused to eat at the same table as us on what we suspect were reasonable grounds that we were being fed food that was how shall I put it slightly off ?!
Niksic was the one posting in the ICFY Mission based in Belgrade that everybody had said to avoid if possible as it was a real shithole of a place to work in , full of nationalistic serbs ( Radovan Karadzic was from the area ) , full of sanction smugglers and dangerous …. dangerous in a way of an average of 10 murders every week and known as the murder capital of the Former Yugoslavia and where the international officers could not walk outside the hotel on their own and most of the restaurants in the town were off limits as they were regularly fire bombed …. but apart from that it was fine !
In Belgrade at the initial briefing the UK officer in charge of Customs operations for the ICFY Mission said they needed someone of my experience of Balkan sanctions in Niksic on the Montenegro / Bosnia border … a nice way of saying that his wife , a Northern Ireland Unionist and myself had a falling out over dinner the previous night and traded insults about paddies and black protestants … which was how the next night I found myself boarding a Jugoslav Airlines flight to Niksic on January 5th 1996 in the middle of a snow storm . To add to the misery there was a real feeling that this was an airline and an airport operating on a shoe string … lighting was kept to a minimum and torches were being used on board due to the tightening sanctions against Yugoslavia which I was not about to advertise was the reason I was on board although everybody knew why a foreigner would be travelling to Niksic during the war .
I had been told I would be met at Tivat Airport by a driver with my name displayed which I thought might read O’Riordanski or O’Riordanov but f..k it was totally in Cyrillic but luckily he was the only guy waiting with a sign so relatively easy to decide he was my guy !
My first impressions were recorded in my Diary and re reading them I am reminded even at this distance the sheer horror and abandonment I felt !
Sun. 07/01/96 Nicsic , Montenegro
My first feelings are what have I left myself in for ?! Nicsic sounds like a BAD town and this is before you hear all the firing of AK47’s, pistols, shotguns etc. as the locals celebrate Orthodox Christmas and New Year. Apparently two occupations which are highly respected around these parts are smuggling and being a warrior — and the two fit like a glove here which can make it dangerous for Customs Officers ! Veteran staff here are telling me all sorts of horror stories which I never heard in Belgrade, shots being fired at the office border caravan during the night ( entire wall raked by automatic fire ), threatened with pistols by drunken Police ( observer had a gun held to his head but as it was badly cocked, the pistol did not go off ). As I write it is Serb Orthodox Christmas night, and the guns are constantly firing outside, perhaps I am being a tad nervous !
The flight from Belgrade airport was unusual – it was snowing and my nervousness at the conditions was not helped by the fact that looking out before take off I saw four guys walking up and down each wing sweeping the snow off with brushes – the plane was full , all seats taken and in the normal way it prepared for take off when suddenly the doors opened and a stream of farmer types struggled in clutching bags of cabbages, long sausages ,tins of feta , the usual Balkan domestic products while some in addition to that were balancing chicken cages ( full of squaking chickens and rabbits ) on their shoulders – they took all the standing room down the center aisle hanging on to straps like on a bus — bad enough to die in a plane crash with all these mad Slav fuckers but with chicken shit all over my shoulders – beam me up Scottie time ! The plane took an age on the take off but finally made it off the tarmac where immediately all the airport lights went out just like a sudden power cut – apparently sanctions ensured that the power could only be kept on for limited periods – no great consolation to me the only European on the flight and a Sanctions Officer as well – if we survived a crash landing in the wilds of Montenegro I can imagine who would be eaten first .
The plane circled for a long time on arrival over Tivat until suddenly the lights went on down below and we swooped down and yes as soon as we landed all the lights went out and everybody else on the plane was equipped for this , all those frequent flyer miles you know – and produced torches and we stumbled off to be surrounded by these great big hairy guys with macho mustaches – we had to locate and carry the luggage off ourselves and I found myself in this long unlit customs hall at 1 am no clue what to do except that I was supposed to be met by a driver – among all the hairy types I saw one with a stick with a name in cyrllic on it – I made up my mind there and then whose ever name was on that stick , OSCE, UN – he was my driver and he was !
We arrived outside Onogast Hotel in Niksic at around 3 am – no lights on of course , the usual power cuts and it took an age and lots of kicking at the door accompanied by loud swearing in Serbo Croat for the driver who didn’t have a word of English to alert the night clerk – who promptly lost interest in me when I didn’t take up his offer to change dollars for dinars . Eventually after a lot of swearing , this time from me , I was assigned what was euphemistically referred to as a room and I staggered in the dark up four flights of stairs with my ten bags , backed into the room , no light of course , which from what I could see was about the size of the single bed — then the shooting and rocket launchers outside the window began – Serb Christmas – I sat on the edge of the bed thinking it cannot get any worse than this and asking myself in a whining way what the fuck are you doing here when the bed collapsed into the wall — I made an executive decision , wrapped my overcoat tightly around me and rolled into the bed half of which was sticking up in the air and thought FUCK IT !
The Hotel, which I had been warned about, is called ONOGOST but is referred to by all the Mission as Hotel Holocaust … the rooms are tiny, the toilet doesn’t flush properly, there is no hot water, most of the light fittings don’t work, and the electricity cuts out now and again, and before I forget — the food is awful, bed and breakfast with dinner rate is 42 german marks while FULL BOARD is 43 marks …other than that it is not too bad !
My first few days in the new Mission confirmed my suspicions that neither Niksic or Sector Charlie was the place to be and only Terry Reid , a likeable cockney UK customs officer , was a friendly face as the 45 man contingent contained only three customs officers with the rest made up of army, police and assorted civilians most of whom kept to themselves in small cliques .
Our job in the IGFY Mission was an EU political band aid for the Milosovic regime in Belgrade whereby Serbia pretended to the world that they were not supplying the Bosnian Serbs with arms and supplies in their efforts to set up a separate Serb state within Bosnia and we were supposed to stop all such traffic manning as we did all border crossing points from Serbia and Montenegro into the Republica Srpska part of Bosnia . The reality was that the land border was porous as are all land frontiers everywhere in the world and we could not man all the unapproved crossing points and the other reality was that Belgrade continued to supply the arms etc. via smuggling routes with the connivance of the local border police and customs .
The local people in Niksic and throughout Sector Charlie hated us as we were perceived to be anti serb and stood in the way of the great nationalistic ideal that serbs should never be separated . The serbs are a unique people but they like nothing better than when their paranoia convinces them that they stand alone with the world against them so that they circle the wagons and hurl defiance at everyone .
The atmosphere in the town was dour and you could feel the hostility and this extended to the hotel staff where we were staying ( it was not allowed to live outside the hotel ) and long time members of the Mission felt that they were being poisoned and refused to eat in the hotel restauarant and cooked in their rooms on little electric stoves .
I hated the entire place from the beginning , the town , the locality , Hotel Onagast and the Mission itself which as I said was full of cliques and not very professional or effective .
Mimosa tree
Anyway I digress and in the middle of that awful working environment we woke up one morning in February 1996 to find the whole town decked out in ribbons and bundles of a fantastic looking and sweet smelling yellow flower … everyone was in great form and gone were the usual dour slavic scowls as they were celebrating Mimosa Day a tree I had never seen before .
Fast forward twenty years to 2016 and we were enjoying ten years of our own mimosa tree in the Gornja Podgora garden … sadly it didn’t survive the construction of the new stone wall and had to be removed but this June I managed to order a mimosa tree from a garden centre in Makarska and we will take delivery and plant it in October .
Changing the front garden planting
As a gardener you have to evaluate the planting and lay out every few years and if something isen’t working or the planting is beginning to intrude then you need to be bold enough to change things around and while I have always been slow to adapt and follow my own advice … well there is always Snezana harping away to cut this or cut that which is probably in some way why I am so slow to move on as she will be in there with a chain saw in a heart beat !
We have transformed the front garden in the past few months with the new patio and in May cut back the Mountain Ash while in in June I softened the new edges of the grass with ferns including clumps of crocosima and some Roxanne variety ground cover geraniums saved when we removed the planting around the old garden pond … in the next phase we will thin out the ivy around the base of the front garden trees and over the winter fill any empty spaces with hypericum .
Hypericum is my go to favourite garden shrub for most locations apart from wet water logged conditions and it grows equally well in shade or full sun and a great feature of this terrific shrub is that it self seeds prolifically which in the winter months you can just dig up and plant out immediately .
Generally the shrub version is from a UK semi dwarf variety bred at Hidcote however if left unchecked hypericum will grow into a rounded shrub two metres high and wide … it is commonplace all over Ireland and the UK and perhaps because of this is not appreciated enough but I love it for it’s masses of yellow flowers and it’s forgiving nature as you can hack it back without finesse and it will grow back within months and of course the fact that it will self seed in your ear as they say !
New garden pot in June
Bought it in white a few months ago , beautiful shape and size so went back in June for it’s blue sister !
And it has found it’s place planted up in the Front Garden
Colour in the garden in June 2025
Last week I was tidying up after a spell in the garden , washing down the spade , the wheel barrow and saw Snezana watching so I says this is in case you wondered how the wheel barrows etc. are always clean and she says no never noticed … same way you never wonder how all the windows in the house stay clean … have to say the girl is quick !
In Croatia Snezana feeds a small army of cats and there are usually four adults and a litter of kittens at any one time who find a variety of sleeping nests including my helmet !
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