Tired out! We are working hard for an Open Day at Coronation Wood on Sunday (click top right). Photos, interviews, cutting, raking, digging holes, collecting wood, collecting information, contacting people, cooking, the list goes on, and every day the wood quietly grows and expands into leaf and blossom, creating its own magic.... More soon!
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One of my favourite things to do in the garden is to sit looking at it! I have seven different sitting spots. This one is just by the door of the shed and gets early morning and evening light.  It's made from a weathered piece of wood which washed up on the shore... and is sheltered by a thick hedge at the back. It's a place to pause between jobs..  like chopping sticks for the fire,  And to watch for the fat buds of some oriental poppies to open, and to enjoy the random plants which self seeded or just ended up here for no particular reason.  It's a spot that wasn't designed, but just happened, and has a relaxed unpretentious workaday pleasure about it. A nice spot.  Skipping over to the content of my Coronation Wood photoblog (see top right of the page) tonight I'm swotting up the difference between our native bluebell here in UK - hyacinthoides non scripta - and the Spanish bluebell hyacinthoides hispanica, which is an introduction that has escaped from gardens and is hybridising with our native flowers. The reason I am swotting it up is that I am being interviewed about our Coronation Wood project for Radio Scotland tomorrow... So, in case I am asked....if the pollen is cream coloured, the flowers have a strong sweet perfume, the petals are strongly recurved and the flower stem has a nodding tip - it's native!
See a short Natural History Museum video about bluebells here, and some photographs of a gorgeous bluebell wood here, and don't miss the excellent Springwatch programmes on BBC over the next few weeks if you can get them..  It's been like a tulip festival here for a month now. We grow them in three big pots and in the cutting patch and have them in every room in the house - tiny glasses by the bed and on narrow windowledges, jugfuls in the kitchen and the sitting room, on the corner of the bath, by the kettle, on the dining room table. Sometimes just one bloom with forget-me-nots....I love how they keep growing even in the vase, and how the colours keep developing and changing....they even die quite attractively, which surely can't be said for many flowers. The artist Elizabeth Blackadder paints them at all stages - fascinating! So here is the final fanfare for this year (I lift them, cutting off any flower heads and let them die back naturally, then plant them in the cutting patch in autumn).       Do you have a cutting patch? (See Friday's post.) A bit of the garden where you grow flowers to cut for the house - a 'permission to pick' area.. I love this bit of the garden and try out different things in it each year..  I got the idea from this excellent book by Sarah Raven - full of inspiration and down to earth instruction. You do have to remember that the author gardens in Kent and adapt according to how far north of Kent you live....  A few years ago I sprinkled some Shirley Poppy seeds in the space in the middle of the sweet pea wigwam - the results were so pretty I do it every year now. There is still time to try it for this year. Just! I've also been doing a very different kind of gardening this week in Coronation Wood (click top right of the page). New seats, the views from them and the latest wild flowers to appear.... You may remember the Duke of Wellington and the demolition site....see here (scroll down a touch). They have given him a high visibility jacket and a hard hat.  Glasgow humour. I like it.
 ..of the cutting patch,  Plant 16 gypsophila 'Covent Garden'.  Add 6 Orlaya grandiflora,  6 Ammi majus,  12 Cornflower Blue Diadem  and 8 poppy Dark Plum.  Use your imagination, hope for good gardening weather, and wait! Still in Simply Grow, and still on about tulips (apologies to those of you who are not gardeners..) Do you remember these?  They turned into these -  almost like a different species from yesterday's tulips,  And almost more animal than vegetable! I don't have the name of this one either as it came in a 'Red Mix' Which do you prefer? Yesterday's or today's? I consider myself quite minimalist - until it comes tulips! This is one of my favourites this year and try as I might I cannot find its name! (I will let you know....)  They start out white then become silvery, like the bleached wood of the table,  with just a hint of lilac and lemon.  Then, out of nowhere  appear pink lines, painted on with a dry brush,  and the inside of the petals slowly and charmingly blush a deeper pink...  At last we've gone for this year's Primrose Picnic!  Up the glen, round two hairpin bends - less than 10 minutes from home....  And we are sitting on the primrose-strewn hillside.  I love eating outside. Do you?  In fact, if I keep the picnic basket ready,  (and get another Tarte aux Abricots from M&S - truly scrumptious, though it fell to pieces on the way up the hill) - we may do it again next week! I mean, why wait another year? Picnic when you get the chance.. with tulips!  Red mix,  pink mix,  and purple.  Sitting on the porch this evening,  revelling in the colours! I've a feeling I'm going to be talking tulips all week.... Click on Coronation Wood (top right) for a little update on the latest progress. Simply Grow probably has more posts than any other of my categories (see sidebar). I spend a lot of time growing things from seed, but sometimes you only have to sow them once, and they then seed themselves. My friend Anna calls these self sown seedlings 'volunteers'. This year we have lots-  The floor of the greenhouse is a favourite place..  I'm glad I left this Welsh poppy to do it's beautiful thing.  You may remember the honesty. I cut it for the vase as I needed the space on the staging!  Geranium robertianum 'Celtic White' seeds itself all around the garden - a very welcome volunteer.  Charming. There are no cowslips nearby....  They don't always position themselves conveniently, but I do love the volunteers.  As we went left, I noticed through the rainy window that LIFE was to the right.... Oh dear.  We continued left, and found this,  and met an alien.  A short walk today at Benmore Botanic Garden. Sheer delight, and we seemed to have all 150 acres to ourselves in the late afternoon sunshine!          A new way to support sweet peas? Liz gave me some branches of twisted willow, salix tortuosa, and I thought that instead of strings around the wigwam of painted canes - these would serve the purpose better and look much more interesting too. It was easy to push them into the ground and weave them in and around the canes to make a fairly strong structure. Of course the risk is that they will all root! Part of the simple charm of the garden just now is the variety of green in the new leaves....  Unfurling ostrich fern,  chocolate coloured markings on geranium 'Samobar',  spotted pulmonarias..   and the beautiful veining on Brunnera 'Jack Frost'.  Inspired by Monet's garden and by the parterre at Garsington Manor near Oxford both of which I've been lucky enough to see at tulip time....  I'm already planning for next year. (Gardeners are like that!) The photo is a bit of a cheat as I picked the tulips from another part of the garden and stood them among the forget-me-nots to see the effect. A useful way to plan - and next year I will definitely plant them together. I might keep the blue and the pink forget-me-nots separate and put a dark plum tulip with the blue....or a pale lemon? Or peach?  As a landscape designer, I'm interested in the design of public urban spaces..  I think St Andrew's Square in Edinburgh is a really successful design.  The circular cafe,  seen here from the inside looking out, is simple, smart and functional (and serves good coffee).  The seating is perhaps not particularly comfortable, but for a quick perch with your lunchtime sandwich is fine, and on a dry day people sit on the grass. I like the integral lighting in the slits between the blocks, and the quality materials will stay looking good for a very long time.  They have kept lots of mature trees as well as planting many new ones. Blossom in spring, shade in summer and habitat for wildlife.  Differential mowing (grass at different heights) gives visual variety and texture, allows insect habitat and wild flowers and bulbs, and reduces maintenance costs..  St Andrew's Square is in the Georgian part of town and although it doesn't refer directly to the architecture (there are buildings from many periods around the square) I think it has a simplicity and elegance of proportion that is appropriate...  What do you think?  He likes it! And you can tell I do, because I'm not finished yet...  There are some nice details..  They are having some trouble maintaining the grass edges, but look at the neat way the drain cover has been incorporated....  It's a pity the same designer wasn't commissioned to design litter bins  I'm sure he would have done better than this!  All in all, elegant, simple, functional and green! You can't ask much more than that. Whew! Long post! 
There is a moment every year in the garden when the bright yellow daffodils are over and the colour of the massed perennials is still to come, when all is calm. Many shades of green, and tiny flecks of blue forget-me-nots and blue and pink pulmonarias, pure white daffodils and creamy white tulips...It's like that little pause when the conductor raises his baton....before the symphony begins. An expectant hush. A short quiet interlude on the blog too, till Tuesday...have a lovely week-end.  ....of the floral kind. My husband woke me early, because the sun was shining. I made a pot of coffee, had a wander round the garden listening to the birdsong..  enjoying the warm sun on my back, and the remarkable colours of these little violas.  I don't know their name, but they must have a touch of Irish Molly in them. I was glad of the early rise as after that first blissful hour or two, it rained for most of the rest of the day. 
I love daffodils. Doesn't everyone? The ones on the banner photographs are Thalia - so dainty fluttering under the pretty new leaves on the horizontal branches of Cornus controversa variegata, also known as the Wedding Cake Tree. I also grow Jenny and February Gold, though the latter didn't flower till April this year. I'm especially fond of the jonquils and tiny ones which follow on from the others. If I tell you that the 'vases' are actually little shot glasses you will have a better idea of their size! I grow Tete a Tete, Suzy, Triandus, Jack Snipe and Minnow among others. 
Tete a Tete are not usually this tiny. These ones were bought already in flower, three bulbs squashed into a 7cm pot with very little soil. I shall put them into the garden for next year and they will be twice the size, though still miniature. 
This little beauty is Segovia. I have used this photograph for one of my cards (see top right). The leaf is from Geranium Samobar which has lovely leaf markings. 
Another little beauty in the garden today....
 Yesterday: First hot day First swallows over the house First cuckoo in the forest First orange tip butterfly First evening glass of wine sitting on the porch.... I expected to be truly colourful after recently falling on my face, but frequent cold compresses and applications of arnica cream and there is barely a bruise. Amazing. (Arnica is also a very effective painkiller for me.) 
Safer than running round the garden with a three year old. I slipped and fell on my face on coarse gravel! Cut cheek, a lot of bruising and sprained wrist - I may be gone for a few days till the swelling and pain subside. Am hoping that the bag of frozen sweetcorn applied to face will mean I won't be too black and blue tomorrow.... Oh no! It hurts when I smile!!  Spotted from the bus...which was heading to the Rest of the World.. Do you like to spend time alone? See this post by Marcie Scudder. It resonated with me, and the photography is superb. I'm enjoying reading Barbara Sher's It's Only Too Late If You Don't Start Now. Very thought provoking, and quite amusing. And now for something completely different! Choosing shoes....I am greedy and would like nos 2,7 and 12 please. Which three pairs would you like? Thanks for the link Lynne.  Fuchsia 'Checkerboard' in the greenhouse this morning..  Adorned with beads of water.  So beautiful, and functioning so perfectly....  A seed of Honesty germinated in the gravel on the greenhouse floor - I had to separate the slats of the staging to let the flower through! Serendipity. Nice. |
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