Posted by sarah in Garden Blog
on August 5th, 2013 | Comments Off on Red leaved banana of my Dreams
It’s my plant of the summer, August 2013
It’s a red leaved banana, green leaves with red stems and herring bone veins, glossy, impossibly imposing, its central shoot scrolled into a beetroot spike before loosening into a funnel then relaxing into leaves beneath another shoot.
Everyone says how splendid, and then, when’s it going to flower? Which it won’t, it’ll be dead long before it has a chance to consider this. It’s enough that now, every day, it is here, revealing a fresh leaf and spike every few days. The sun shines through the leaves in late afternoon, making it...
Posted by sarah in Garden Blog
on July 30th, 2013 | Comments Off on The Goddess in my Garden – what is her name?
This is the goddess of my garden. She oversees all, winter and summer, the blue anemones below her in spring, the birds and snails, the falling leaves, the depredations of winter. In summer you can hardly see her peering out from the dogwood which has grown around her. She keeps the garden in order. She gives and she takes. Her smile is the careful smile of a Victorian lady.
She watches over the snow, the slush, the winter nights, the stars, the straw yellow lawn of summer. The dog, the children, the silence, the birds. She’s my garden spirit. She’s terracotta, and...
Posted by sarah in Garden Blog
on March 13th, 2013 | Comments Off on BOX PEST
Better No Plants than Sick Plants!
Eighteen months ago box blight descended. Either side the path I had low rows of dwarf box, Buxus suffruticosa, and beautiful they looked too. Then in the cold damp summer my bright green box turned dull brown. They became two rivers of death.
Box blight attacks box leaves and stems and is caused by two fungi specific to box. Dwarf box is particularly vulnerable, but the common box, Buxus sempervivens, is more resistant, and my topiary balls of ordinary box emerged virtually unscathed. The blight is spread by wind and rain. It has plagued the whole...
Posted by mark in Garden Blog
on February 18th, 2013 | Comments Off on Off with their Heads!
Peter Wake who grew roses at Hambleden used to say he never picked flowers because ‘it’s like cutting off the heads of friends’. But where would a house be without flowers, and many plants the more they are picked the more they produce flowers.
Wanting to learn more, I went for a day course by Sarah Raven’s on cutting flowers from the garden. We usually think flowers from our gardens won’t last as long as florist flowers. Sarah said, not so!
She gave us some golden rules. Pick at the right time of day, she said. First thing in the morning is best, and second best is late...
Posted by mark in Garden Blog
on November 24th, 2012 | Comments Off on CUSHY SUCCULENTS
SUCCULENTS
I must have about fifteen different succulents and the odd thing is, when I think of the dozens of plants I’ve managed to kill over the years, I’ve barely lost one. I love them outside in bowls in summer, but particularly I love them now, indoors on the window sill. They include include several sedums, stonecrops, agaves, aeoniums, echeverias and more. Each bowl is a garden in its own right.
They cope with drought by storing water in their leaves. They are sun loving, and come in subtle shades of blue grey green.
I started with an echeveria which I bought by chance, because I liked the...