A seasonal delight – in winter.

23 Saturday Jan 2021

Posted by Brian Skeys in Gardening, Guest publisher, Our Garden@19, Plantlife, The Life of Brian.

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Guest Publisher Leonie Creighton.

Leonie is a knowledgeable and enthusiastic gardener she is the minutes secretary to the Black Pear Gardening Club. I have invited her as guest publisher for this seasonally appropriate article she wrote for the club newsletter.

IRIS UNGUICULARIS.

One of my favourite plants at this time of year is IRIS UNGUICULARIS (I.stylosa) Algerian Iris.

This lovely flower is native to Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey , Greece and Syria where it grows in light scrub,open pine woods and rocky places.

It flowers from late autumn to early spring when so few plants are in flower. The flowers are beautifully scented, in shades of lavender to deep violet with a yellow throat.

This winter flowering Iris is easy to grow in well drained soil in full sun. Plant near a wall to help maintain the soils heat. I grow it in a raised bed that’s in full sunlight for most of the day, but that said I also grow it in a woodland area in partial sunlight and it is still happy but doesn’t flower quite so well. It is also useful to grow at the base of clematis as they like their heads in the sun and their roots in shade and it helps to hide the bare base of the clematis and keep its roots cool.

Plant it so that the rhizomes are just below the surface of the soil and 10cm (4in) apart.

It produces an evergreen mound of narrow, arching grass like foliage. This foliage does become brown and bit untidy but can easily be trimmed back to keep it looking good.

A top dressing of bone meal or potash in either autumn or spring is beneficial but look out for snails hiding among the leaves.

It dislikes being moved, but if you have to disturb it do it in spring after flowering. It may sulk for a while before it starts to flower again.

This is a long lived plant. I grow the species variety from divisions taken off my mother’s plant that has been growing in her garden for probably fifty years.

Two other very nice named varieties are ‘Mary Barnard’ which has a lovely velvety blue-purple flower, a much more intense colour than the species.

Also, ‘Walter Butt’ a ghostly pale grey-blue , but with a heavenly scent.

Flowering: November-March

Hardiness: Fully hardy

Height: 30-45cm

Did you Know : Iris was a Greek goddess, the personification of the rainbow, which she used as her pathway though the sky.

Leonie Creighton.

December 2020

22 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Brian Skeys in Gardening, Our Garden@19, The Life of Brian.

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Christmas, December, Winter

This December has so far been very mild here in Our Garden@19 with only one frost.

The cannas and dahlias are all lifted…..

….safely stored in the garden shed with fleece covering for the cold nights.

The tender plants are divided between the two greenhouses…

Two small areas have been planted with Tulips also Foxgloves, Wallflowers and Forget-me-nots, along with several pots in the hope that we will be able to join the village church open gardens in early May.

The majority of the pots are stored over winter on the patio in the hope that the squirrels do not find them!

One of the many ‘Estate’ maintenance jobs for this winter was to replace the trellis fence between the White and Green garden and the Blue Borders…

It edges the path where the badgers enter the garden, I was concerned, due to its poor condition, they would push through into this area of the garden instead of following their usual path via the ground bird feeder.

With help from my brother, we managed to replace it in one day with Rebar steel mesh normally used in reinforced concrete, without doing too much damage to the climbing Iceberg rose.

I have used Rebar before it is an excellent replacement for trellis.

In The Oriental Garden the Magnolia ‘Stella’ fury buds are forming.

One of my aims within the garden is to try and have something in flower or of interest in the garden throughout the year, this month it is the Hamamelis Moll Pallida (Witch Hazel).

Below is the last garden tour video for 2020, here’s hoping for a better 2021. Please turn your sound on select full screen, play and enjoy.

A Winter Project and a Wildlife Friendly Experiment.

31 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by Brian Skeys in Gardening, Our Garden@19, Plantlife, The Life of Brian., Wildlife

≈ 14 Comments

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Grasses, perennials, Prairie planting, Roses, Wildlife, Winter

When we purchased the house, I designed the garden and the rear of the main border, now named the blue border, was planted with climbing roses, trained to rope swags. Unfortunately, the rope soon rotted and was replaced with trellis. Now several years later the trellis along with some of the posts required replacing this winter. With a coil of blue rope already in stock, I have gone back to plan A. The posts have been replaced, painted to match the colour scheme and furnished with new fittings. I also took the opportunity to remove two of the oldest roses. They came with us from our previous garden and there are still two identical ones elsewhere in the garden. Managing so many vigorous rambling/climbing rose was becoming quite hard work. (Old age, mine not the roses). These will be replaced with clematis, joining some already there.

You may notice, in the picture above, lots of plant debris on the garden. I recently read an article about the Melinium Garden at Pentsthorpe Natural Park in Norfolk, which we had visited in 2012. This garden was designed by Piet Oudolf, the internationally famous dutch nurseryman and garden designer, known for his prairie style planting. Historically, the many perennials and grasses were not cut down in the garden until February, to provide winter shelter for insects, and then removed to giant compost heaps. According to the article, they now cut it all down in small bites, or pieces, leaving it on the ground as a mulch, to continue providing homes for the wildlife.

While I do not claim this border to be ‘prairie planting’, it does contain perennials and grasses so I decided to experiment with cutting it down in small bites, leaving it as a mulch. I did this using garden shears if you had more to do you could use a hedge cutter (Mine has broken).

I will add my usual mulch on top of this in March, I do it then to smother the chickweed, which germinates here around that time. It will be interesting to see how it develops, I don’t think it will suit the tidy gardener. However, we are constantly being advised that as gardeners we should be a little more untidy to help the wildlife.

I will record progress with photos and publish them later in the year.

Have you tried this in your garden?