Journal
Iris chrysographes
One of the things I love about gardening is the plants that tell stories - their own stories and those of friendships.
This amazing iris chrysographes came into bloom in my garden yesterday -
I was given the plant a few years ago by my friend Holly and I have been dividing the clumps, so that this year they are beginning to thread through other plants in the way I hoped.
Every time a plant blooms that I have been given by someone I think of them and their generosity and friendship. It is like a special reminder to pick up the phone, put a date in the diary, a connection between gardens and gardeners, a thread of beauty and care.
It was good timing - these iris grow wild along the river banks in Myanmar - one of the countries that I have been researching this week as my youngest daughter is considering it as a gap year destination for 2017-18.
It has diverted me from reading up about political unrest and unsafe vehicles to imagining visiting water meadows flecked with flowers.
Much better to concentrate on delights over danger.
Naturalising alliums.
Alliums dominate my garden at this time of year.
I used to grow them commercially - they were an easy crop, reliable, happy in rain, great vase life - and now those same bulbs, globes of saturated colour, have moved themselves into every corner of the garden.
It has made me re-think how they can be used.
The orchard here is right at the edge of the garden and you walk through it to get from the drive to the workshop.
It is a beautiful space - where we pitch out tents when we camp in the garden - flat grass that is allowed to grow long for much of the summer, fading out to the boundary where rambling roses climb up the ancient hawthorns that were once a hedge.
The orchard was planted where I used to grow raised beds of flowers - we took away the wooden bed edges and sowed grass seed, before planting out damson and greengage trees.
For the past 5 years ghostly rows of alliums have sprung up - remnants of the old planting - quite happy being mowed down late summer and competing with the grass.
It makes me think that an allium meadow would be possible - it would look fantastic with tall buttercups and dog daisies - wafting in the breeze - all resistant to heavy flattening rains.
I have been sketching alliums for the past couple of weeks - trying to capture their essence, their solidity along with their airiness.
I'm sure that some of the hundreds of drawings will make it onto a product at some point - but in the meantime there are pdfs in the Members area which can be downloaded for personal use.
The meadow gets better and better
A glorious month of dry warm weather has been brilliant for the meadow that we sowed in March on the slope outside the workshop.
The slope is made up of building spoil, excavated when we extended the workshop last year and it borders the path that connects the workshop to the airstream caravan.
It was planted with some left over perennials and sown with a meadow mix of seeds from Wallis Seeds for a total investment of under £30
Much of the meadow has now gone to seed, the birds are fluttering there every morning when I come into work.
My next job is to work out how to get those seeds to take for next year.
It is quite the most beautiful thing.
June in Snapdragon's Garden
This month, as I wait for a good time to weedkill the new beds in the back garden - I am keeping my eyes firmly fixed on the front garden.
This little border runs from the drive to the front door - this photo was taken from the hall.
Last year I dug out the turf and planted an apple tree, a box hedge and some perennials. This year I moved lots of the perennials from the back gardens into it.
It is the most sheltered space in the whole garden - surrounded on 3 sides by beech hedges and backing upwards from the path so that frost rolls from it.
I wanted it to be a haven for insects, away from the winds that buffet the rest of the garden, and chose a colour scheme of pinks and purples with splashes of tomato soup orange to pep it all up.
At the moment it is a wonderful cottage garden muddle, full of scabious and peonies, roses and alliums - all backed by a wall of 8 feet tall delphiniums
With this spell of warm sunny weather you can hear the noise of the bees from inside the house!
It is a good job that I have somewhere else to look while I pluck up the courage to kill off the remaining plants (and weeds) in the back garden and then to cover it all for a season or two.
Wish me luck . . . .
The new meadow - garden transformation June
When we extended the workshop last year we also re-routed the path to make it easier to pull trolleys of mail sacks up to the cars. This created a steep bank of spoil between the airstream and the workshop.
We weedkilled all the couch grass, docks and thistles and began to plant excess perennials from the old cutting garden into it, sowing the areas in between with a wild flower mix for damp soil.
For the past 2 months it has looked terrible - scratchy, scurfy little seedlings coming through the mud and I have been itching to hoe it and tidy it all up.
Then suddenly those little seedlings began to bloom.
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