Plant of the week - Miniature rose

A bit of catching up to do with my 'plant of the week' posts - the photos were taken but the posts never made it to being published!

Plant of the week for 17th October is this tiny miniature rose. I can't remember the name of the rose, but it was bought for me by my good friend Sonia. As it's a miniature rose, I planted it at the bottom of the rose arch so that the red flowers would be visible as its base as you walk through the arch. Unfortunately the herbaceous perennials around it overtook it and crowded it out and it was lost.

Miniature rose

It finally got it chance in mid-October after all the other plants had died down, a proliferation of tiny buds appeared - these were the only flowers in my garden this week. Sadly the buds didn't open fully - maybe it was too cold or just too late in the season.

Plant of the week - Chinese Lanterns (Physalis alkekengi)

Just in time for hallowe'en and brightening up the view into the garden with pumpkin-like orange seed pods are this weeks choice - chinese lanterns.

Chinese lanterns - Physalis alkekengi

This was my second attempts at growing these plants from seed - the first year I tried, every plant was instantly devoured by slugs and snails as soon as they were planted out. This year I transplanted the young plants into a pot, protected with copper tape, which has worked well to protect them from hungry gastropods.

I'd also read that physalis can spread rapidly throughout the garden if unchecked, so better to contain them in a pot. That's worked well as they are on the patio and in full view from inside the house.

I got my seeds from Thompson and Morgan and they were easy to germinate in the greenhouse - the plants in the photo are now two years old - so not long to wait to see the rewards. Despite their almost poisonously bright colouring, you can eat the fruit from some physalis species -  they are hidden inside the 'lanterns' - I remember them as being bitter but juicy when I tried, and subsequently discovered that P. alkekengi is not grown for its tasty fruit!

Chinese lanterns - Physalis alkekengi

Fortunately their ornamental value outweighs the inedible nature of this species. And no, I didn't adjust the colour on these photos!

Garden Snapshot - September 2013

Late again - here's the garden snapshot I took in late September at midday. Looking back at the previous month's snapshots its interesting to see the changing intensity of the light, and the longer shadows cast by the plants.

Garden snapshot - September 2013

Not much is flowering anymore in this part of the garden - a few remaining crocosmia, a couple of fuschia, you can make out the orange fruits of the physalis in a pot on the right hand side. There's also a small shrub in the middle that gets a rosy tint to its leaves - haven't been able to identify that one so far. Anyone have any ideas?

Plant of the Week - Clematis 'unknown variety'

It's fantastic that there are still flowers in my garden into early october, it keeps the bees visiting! This clematis was in the garden before I was here and is growing through the hedge by the patio along with a rogue honeysuckle, which is also still flowering. It hides away for most of the year and its foliage and flowers only appear from inside the hedge come early autumn, like a last-minute dinner making a grand entrance.

I have no idea what type of clematis this is if anyone can identify it for me I'd be most grateful.

Clematis - 'unknown'

I love it because its late flowers offer a brilliant opportunity to get some close-ups of the insects that are visiting the flowers. They seem less bothered by my camera lens nosing in on them while they gather pollen and nectar at this time of year. I can sense their instinct that time is running out and their feeding time of year is drawing to a close. Today I saw hoverflies, bumblebees, wasps and several honey bees like the one below.

Clematis flower with honey bee

I'm planning to take several cuttings of this plant so that I can grow one over the fence on the opposite side, which is bare at the moment (my Clematis 'Oberon') seems to have died. The leaves are thick and a beautiful green with a lovely soft serrated edge. The freshness of this plant really stands out in the garden at this time of year.

Clematis 'unknown' - flowers and foliage

First apple of the year

The family apple tree has done really well this year. The tree is about five years old - I planted it three years ago but last year it only produced three apples -all golden delicious.

This is the first Worcester Pearmain we've had from the tree and it was delicious! The flesh is flushed with red inside and it was sweet without being floury and with no sharpness to the flavour. It looks beautiful in the autumn sunshine. 

Plant of the week - Oenothera (Evening Primrose)

There's still a lot going on in my garden at the end of September, but my choice for this week took me by surprise. The evening primrose has had a second wind and exploded in a flurry of large yellow flowers - it had already flowered in late summer, producing blooms at a fairly modest rate, but it looks like this is it's 'swan song'.

Evening Primrose - Oenethera

What's also unusual is that its flowers are open during the day, rather than opening during the late evening as it did during the summer (hence it's name). This means it's being visited by bees rather than moths as you can see on the right hand side of the shot above. It feels like this one was desperate to stock up for the winter months - visiting every flower several times to make sure none were overlooked.

It was hanging around long enough for me to capture some great shots of it, body and legs dripping in pollen, gorging itself inside one of the flowers.

Evening primrose & Buff-tailed bumblebee (queen)

Evening primrose & Buff-tailed bumblebee (queen)

I pinched some seeds that were growing wild by the road at the end of the street. That was last year, and I already have mature plants. I suspect these will be self-seeding and start to pop up everywhere but I really don't mind!

Garden Snapshot - August 2013

Better late than never - August and September were a busy months so I have been playing catch up with my blogs.

Here's the garden snapshot I took in mid-August.

Garden snapshot - August 19th 2013

August is a surprisingly poor month for colour in my garden. The roses have mostly finished, fuschias are on their way out - only the crocosmia and last of the hollyhocks provide a splash of colour. I'll aim to rectify that for next year somehow.

Plant of the week - Cyclamen hederifolium

The first cyclamen in our garden were donated by my Mum - spring flowering - one white and one-pink. I was fascinated by the size and shape of the bulb which didn't seem to correlate with the tiny delicate flowers and leaves of this ephemeral plant, which disappears without a trace after its flowering spell only to re-appear again each year as if by magic.

I immediately fell in love with their delicate tiny flowers, and their early-flowering nature added to their appeal. But buying the bulbs or plants is quite expensive (about £5 per plant or £1 per bulb) so I decide to have a go at growing my own.

Two years on and my hard work and patience has paid off - there are now several of these tiny plants established in secret corners of the garden. I only just spotted these a couple of days ago as I was trudging up the soaked lawn. I was amazed to discover that the flowers appear before the leaves (the leaf in this shot is a fallen hollyhock).

Cyclamen hederifolium

Germination was a bit of a drawn out affair - soaking the seeds, covering with vermiculite and keeping them warm in a sealed plastic bag - but several months later they sprouted, and two years later they are flowering. I'm hoping the carpet of tiny gems will get bigger year on year. This kind of gardening is all about patience! These ones are autumn flowering - so I get two cyclamen fixes each year.

Cyclamen hederifolium

Plant of the week - Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

A belated post from last week - 12th september

Strange to say that I was hard pushed to decide on the plant for this week. It may be mid-september but there's still lots going on and lots of little beauties popping up as autumn takes a grip.

What caught my eye this week was a clump of little nasturtiums tucked away in the strawberry patch and this especially bright specimen (not PhotoShop enhanced honestly!).

Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus)

When there's not much colour in the garden that really jumps out at you, this is a little star. I remember chucking some nasturtium seeds in this spot sometime in June when I was having a clearout of old seeds. They are so resilient they don't need any care and will obviously just grow where you throw them.

They are humble plants and often overlooked, but there are some fantastic varieties about and they will self-seed year on year although I am not sure how true the colours are for second and third generation etc.

The best bit about nasturtiums is that you can eat the flowers! They have a slight peppery taste, but they look amazing in a green salad - just make sure they aren't covered in blackfly as mine usually are if they are blooming in mid-summer.

Plant of the week - Blackberry 'Loch Ness'

This weeks' plant is another edible - as there are plenty of sweet juicy fruit in the garden at the moment!

Everyone loves blackberries and we all have childhood (or even adult) memories of picking brambles and cramming them into our mouths, coming home with fingers stained in the deliciously tart purple juice. They are a key ingredient in many a fruit pie and one of the true edible wonders of the British countryside.

Brambles grow everywhere in my garden, I have tough job getting rid of them as they are so invasive. For a couple of years I let them get on with it in one or two remote parts of the garden so that I could gather the fruit for a crumble. But what I didn't like was the scratches and cuts from the thorns. So I invested in a cultivated variety...

Blackberry - Loch Ness

'Loch Ness' really does produce amazingly sweet and juicy fruit, the blackberries are a gorgeous rich velvety black (almost tar-like) colour, and the fruits appear in proliferation. It's thornless, so even little ones (or careless big ones) can pick the fruit without worry of a scratch, its just the spiders you have to watch for when you pop them in your mouth - better to rinse and be safe.

I got mine from Crocus, about 3 years ago, and this year it has really come into its own and produced a bumper crop - the first two years were a bit disappointing, but there are already promises of a good crop next year from the tall strong news stems that have appeared this year. It fruits on the previous year's growth, so once a stem has fruited it needs to be cut back to the ground - taking care not to remove the new stems that will produce fruit the following year.

It doesn't seem to mind the shade - as its growing on a north-east facing wall along with a loganberry. It makes good use of the shady fence that would otherwise be bare.

Bowl of blackberries - 'Loch Ness'

We've already had about 1kg of fruit from one plant - and there are more berries to come. And as if that's not enough, the maple-like leaves become a vibrant shade of orange in autumn before the leaves drop! You can't go wrong...

Plant of the week Blueberry 'Bluecrop'

If I had to recommend just one of the edible plants in my garden then there is no doubt that it would be the blueberry. Even if you have small garden or patio,  there's no excuse as they don't take up much space. Blueberries can be quite expensive in the shops but the plant itself requires very little care other than the acid soil it grows in so growing your own is cost-effective.

I've had mine for about 4 years now and like all fruit bushes, it produces more crop year on year. It's outside in full sun in a pot filled with ericaceous (acid) compost and I only ever water it with rain water (tap water is too alkaline I read somewhere). I do feed it just as its flowering with an ericaceous plant feed.

Blueberry 'Bluecrop' - in a pot filled with ericaceous compost

 I got this plant from Crocus - it came in a small pot - the plant was about a quarter the size it is now. I selected this variety for its heavy cropping and the fact that it self pollinates. I'd read that some blueberries need a partner to help them produce fruit but this has done well all by itself!

The wood pigeons love them - there are a pair of fat ones nearby who are always looking a bit pleased with themselves - probably responsible for eating the entire cherry crop too. But despite this we still managed to get a few bowls full of berries - probably about 1.5kg all in all.

A bowl of delicious blueberries!

Best of all they taste delicious - I only pick them when very ripe - so each one is full of flavour - unlike the supermarket packs which sometimes have 50% bland tasting berries - we have them in crumbles and best of all - with greek yogurt and honey.

Go on - try one at home - I promise you won't be disappointed!

Plant of the week - Crocosmia

There are two important things that I don't know about the crocosmia in my garden. First off, I don't know how they got there, and second, I don't know if I actually really like them. Let me explain...

Crocosmia

I didn't plant any crocosmia, and there weren't any in the garden when we first got here. But then suddenly I noticed them on their silent invasion, in a couple of spots in the garden, unobtrusive, but biding their time.

Then one year I noticed that I was having to pull a lot of the blade like shoots up from various places around the garden, I kept pulling them up - they kept re-appearing. It seemed like they were coming in under the neighbour's fence (or were they actually escaping from my garden into theirs). I'd been throwing them in the compost, but they were surviving and actually growing in the compost. Action was needed - an extermination program.

Aside from the two 'managed' clumps in the garden, I now treat crocosmia in the same way I treat bindweed - all traces of them go to the tip rather than the compost, but its still an ongoing job to keep them under control. The second clump in the garden started off as a couple of leaves which I left as it was in a good spot. A year later and its a huge swathe of leaves and fiery orange blooms.

Crocosmia

So why is such a troublesome specimen now 'plant of the week'? Well secretly I actually love it, its foliage is a great colour, the leaf shape contrasts well with the other plants around it, and it provides a bit of fiery colour at a time when other flowers in my garden are fading. I love its tenacity and hardiness - in the same way a naughty child might always be causing trouble and be under your feet but is still secretly your favourite.

I have a crazy fantasy about digging up a clump and dumping it by the side of the railway cutting by the station, and that in a few years time commuters will be confronted with the sight of a bank of flaming crocosmia on their way from Brighton to London. So if it ever happens - you know how it got there!

Well I don't know how it got into my garden, but I'm kind of glad that it did.

Don't buy the corms - I'll happily send out what I dig up!

Plant of the week - Rose 'Patricia'

I prefer rambling old-fashioned style roses as a rule, but this rose has a special meaning in our house.

The colours really are amazing as you can see from this photo. The blooms are intensely salmon-pink, almost red in the bud, and as they open they show an array of hues from lemon yellow, peach, salmon and fading into a delicate pale pink.

Added to that they smell absolutely delicious!

Floribunda rose - 'Patricia' - blooms half-open

It's a hardy floribunda rose, mine's in a pot and stays outside over winter and has always survived well. Like all roses its prone to the odd outbreak of greenfly, but this year I have been careful not to overwater or overfeed (which encourages rapid growth of soft tasty shoots that greenfly love) and I haven't seem any greenfly on it so far. Maybe the exceptionally dry weather has helped.

Floribunda rose - 'Patricia' - blooms fully open

I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has some organic tips for dealing with greenfly. I've heard that introducing ladybird larvae can help but if anyone has tried this and can recommend I'd love to hear about it.

I bought my potted rose about five years ago from Country Garden Roses.

Garden Snapshot - July 2013

Here's the garden today. The dry weather means the delphiniums are wilting somewhat. The bindweed is starting to take hold and some self-seeded hollyhocks are starting to dominate the view.

The fuschias are just starting to open and the cream rose has passed its best, although a splash of colour is provided by the sweet williams and the pink rose on the rose arch.

Garden snapshot July 18th 2013

Plant of the week - Strawberry 'Cambridge Favourite'

Everyone knows you can't beat British strawberries when they are in season. And even better when you can pick them yourself and eat them within seconds of them being picked! Much tastier than the supermarket varieties which have been chilled, travelled and sat around in plastic punnets, the taste of warm fresh strawberries reminds me of going on 'pick your own' expeditions as a child, where the object was to eat as many strawberries as you could without being sick instead of popping them in the basket to pay for them.

I bought three strawberry plants from my local garden centre 'Garden Pride' four years ago. From cultivating the runners and allowing them to spread, I now have a 3 metre long bed full of strawberry plants - the result of my daughter planting twenty plants in the ground two years ago.

First bowl of strawberries 2013 - 'Cambridge Favourite'

I don't give them much care, although they do get attacked by slugs - the wet summer of 2012 meant that most of the strawberries were eaten before they were ready to eat. This year the slugs haven't had much of a chance as July has been exceptionally hot and dry, instead there are a plethora of woodlice eating themselves little hidey-holes in the delicious red berries - disappointingly, some of the reddest berries turn out to be hollow on closer inspection! They taste delicious, even when they aren't quite the traditional pillar-box red - but have to be eaten quickly as they don't last long chilled.

I read that strawberries aren't technically berries. I remember learning in school about the anatomy of a buttercup flower, which is related to the strawberry I think - where the seeds are on the outside of the enlarged flower receptacle. Strange but true!

Plant of the week - Delphinium 'Pacific Giants Mixed'

I tried growing these delphiniums from seeds when I was about twelve years old and can still remember my failure and disappointment to this day. Nigella and calendula were my limits of horticultural expertise way back then.

So of course there's a little bit extra in my smile when I look at these now in my garden, having managed to successful germinate and nurture them to bloom at the age of erm.... twelvety-something. Delphiniums are not the easiest to germinate, but after following the instruction to cover with vermiculite, place the seed tray inside a clear plastic bag (and then kept inside) eventually paid off. I now have about six handsome specimens, which somehow all appeared as shades of blue despite the multicoloured affair shown on the seed packet.

Delphinium 'Pacific Giants Mixed'

My trick to keeping them going has been to protect the young shoots of the plants every spring by means of copper rings. I now have a fine display of blues at the back of the border.

Best of all - bees love 'em! I got my seeds from Thompson and Morgan.

Plant of the week - Sweet William 'Sooty' - Dianthus barbatus nigrescens

Sweet william is a favourite of mine, but this variety puts a twist on the traditional cottage garden classic. I originally bought seed packet of both a mixed assortment and this 'black' variety. After the initial wait of sowing seeds and nurturing them to their first bloom in their second year, they now seed themselves and appear in the garden in various spots spreading their cheery pink, white and red cushions of blooms which of course are a magnet for bees and butterflies.

Sweet William 'Sooty' - Dianthus barbatus nigrescens

The rich velvety tones you can see in this photo are actually from a third generation sowing of 'Sooty', so this offspring is not true to the darker blacker originals, but it has a beauty of its own making, a deep intense red that Anish Kapoor would be envious of. The stems have a dark ruddy-purple hue as do the leaves, making them a fantastic plant to contrast against a pale foliage or white flowers.

I don't treat these as biennials, but more like the perennials they really are, so I keep them going for a few years. They do get a big straggly from their third year but if they are mixed in with other similar hight plants (mine are next to the crocosmia and contrast well with their dagger-like leaves) then you wouldn't notice their raggedy behaviour.

I bought the original seeds from Thompson & Morgan.

Environmentally-friendly slug and snail deterrents

If like me you have an abundance of snails (and slugs), then you will have probably experienced that 'Aaaaarrrghhh!' moment when you take a tour of the garden and see the delphiniums/hosta/iris/bean plants that you so loving nurtured from seed having been reduced to stumps overnight by those pesky blighters.

If also (like me) you don't relish the idea of serving them up with garlic butter as a way to control their numbers, but also hate slug pellets that are bad for the environment, the soil, pets, wildlife, food crops, in fact bad all round then you will have doubtless looked for an alternative that doesn't leave agonised gastropod corpses scattered around your patio like an invertebrate graveyard.

I started off by trying organically approved 'Growing Success' Advanced Slug killer, but its messy, unsightly and takes re-application.

Copper to the rescue! I took the plunge and bought some copper Slug Rings online, which despite the initial financial outlay end up as being good value for money. I've protected my irises, hosta and delphiniums with these. Success!!

Copper Slug Ring protecting a bearded iris from slugs and snails

As you can see from the photo after a year or so the copper dulls and ends up blending in with the soil. Just make sure there are no plants around that can act as ladders to allow the smarter slugs to valut the copper ring.

Taking it one step further, if you have any tasty specimens in pots, you can easily protect them with copper tape. You can buy Vitax Copper Tape online. I'd keep the pots on a tray or paving as those earthbound slugs can still get up inside through the holes at the bottom.

Vitax copper slug tape

Here you can see it guarding a physalis (although something has still managed to have a nibble).

What I love most about these ideas is that its a one-off set up - no more shaking those slug pellets every couple of weeks - and no slug deaths on your hands!

Plant of the week - white bearded iris

This majestic bearded iris was given to me by my mother about 4 years ago. I'd never grown irises before so was surprised to learn how tasty slugs and snails find them!

White flag iris

The blooms really are stunning, with delicate papery white petals on a stem 2 feet high. Each flower-bearing stem has about four blooms, they are each only in their prime for a couple of days before they wither and its neighbour comes into its own.

They aren't without problems, slugs and snails (a real pest in my garden) love the sword-like leaves and will eat the whole lot if they aren't protected. I use copper rings to protect my vulnerable plants as its more effective, more environmentally-friendly and in fact less effort than slug pellets, although the initial cost may be off-putting, the rings last for years. The tall stems are also at the mercy of heavy rain and wind, but I may not have planted the rhizome deep enough to make them stable.

Last year I managed to divide the one plant into two, one of which I planted in an open space away from other plants of a similar height (the one in the photo) and one among the delphiniums and poppies, which was a total mistake as the slugs used those plants as ladders to hop over the copper ring and reduce the iris to a stump. You live, plant and learn.

Plant of the week - Poppy 'Coral Reef' (Papaver orientale)

There was no contest for the entry for plant of the week this week. I had to choose these beautiful and delicately coloured poppies because they are so magnificent and because their glory is so short lived.

Poppy 'Coral Reef' (Papaver orientale)

Their colour is so clean and clear while they are opening as you can see from the photo above. The delicate petals are like ruffled silk and tissue thin - at this stage their colour is at its most intense.

Poppy 'Coral Reef' (Papaver orientale)

The point at which they open to reveal the magnificent deep crimson markings inside, the petals are already fading in intensity but the massive blooms open to about 5 inches across. Sadly the weight of the bloom combined with the English rain and wind does mean the plants can get flattened.

Poppy 'Coral Reef' (Papaver orientale) - seed head

Finally when the petals drop (sometimes in a matter of a few days), the emerging seed pod is revealed, topped with radiating sweeps of velvety purple and trimmed with intense purple stamens. This I think is even more beautiful than the bloom itself.

I bough a packet of seeds from Thompson & Morgan two years ago, and in their second year, the plants are really well established and have numerous blooms, many more than compared to last year.

Despite their glory being short lived, I would be without them in my garden now...

Garden snapshot - June 2013

Each month I'll be taking a snapshot photo of the garden from the same angle to show what in foliage and in bloom throughout each month. Part experiment and part my own interest.

Garden - 14th June 2013

Plant of the week (belated) - Poached Egg Plant (Limnanthes douglasii)

A little belated, but plant of the week for week ending 14th June 2013 is the humble poached egg plant. This little self-seeder appears everywhere in the garden now and I usually leave it to its own business. It seems to prefer drier stonier places in the garden where other plants find it hard to survive, like gravel borders and has even colonised and survived uncared for in the dry gravel floor of the greenhouse.

Poached Egg Plant (Limnanthes douglasii)

It's a modest little plant but bees love the cheerful yellow and white flowers, which makes it a hit in my garden.

I got a single seed packet from Thompson & Morgan a couple of years ago, but never had to buy seeds again as its now established itself in the garden without any additional help!

Plant of the Week - Purple Sprouting Broccoli

A little unusual perhaps, as the broccoli season is now well and truly over for us. However we couldn't keep up with the amounts of broccoli being produced by a mere 6 plants in the raised vegetable bed, and eventually we had to admit defeat and stop having broccoli with (almost) every meal.

The end result of course was that the broccoli started to flower and actually produced an amazing show of yellow blooms that the bees were going crazy for.

Purple sprouting broccoli in flower

Growing the broccoli from seed to cropping was a lengthy affair lasting from June 2012 with the first broccoli heads being harvested in February this year. However the flavour and tenderness of the heads was unlike any shop-bought broccoli I had ever had, so I would highly recommend trying it if you have enough space.

The seeds were bought from Thompson and Morgan.

Plant of the Week - Family Apple Tree

Blossom has been late this year due to the late onset of spring, so I have just managed to catch the blossom on my family apple tree while the sun was making a brief appearance.

I wanted to get a family apple tree as we only have a small garden with room enough for one apple tree, but sourcing one with the exact varieties you want is harder than I thought. With the only other option being to attempt some DIY grafting, I found a happy medium online at Blackmoor Nurseries which had two of the varieties I was after (Worcester Pearmain and Egremont Russet) with a compromise on the Golden Delicious.

My tree is on M9 rootstock and is now in its third year in the garden (I believe it was two years old when I got it) and has come into its own this year with masses of blossom. Last year we only managed to eat three apples from the tree, which I think were all Worcester Pearmain (and deliciously sweet and sharp).

Family Apple Tree in blossom

I read somewhere that the late spring could be a boost to fruit crops, but to the detriment of wheat and other grains, so I am hoping to have a bumper crop this year - watch this space!

The direct link to this tree on the Blackmoor Nurseries website.

More flaming parrots

While I'm here I thought I'd post a newer photo of the flaming parrots now they are open in all their 'St George's Cross' glory.

Plant of the week - Tulip 'Black Parrot'

I have to admit that I have a bit of a thing for black flowers, I've tried a few over the years and of course none are really 'black', but this tulip has a lovely deep velvety dark plum colour that is far more exciting that just plain black. The fringing on the petals gives an amazing texture to the flower and it opens right up into a sort of 'bird-of -paradise' shape.

My tulips in pots haven't done that well this year, the foliage has gone brown and some of the flowers never made it to fully opened but I managed to snap the best example at its full openness. You can just see a couple of its less resplendent neighbours in the background.

Again I got these from crocus (no I don't work for them!) and can be obtained at the link below.

http://www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/tulipa-black-parrot/classid.1000000303/

Plant of the week - Clematis Alpina 'Frances Rivis'

As clematis go, this one is pretty amazing. The problem I had was a north-west facing slatted fence right by the house that looked pretty ugly. What could I grow up it to break up the hard lines of the fence that would survive in the shade, have good foliage foliage and provide some colour.

Then I stumbled upon this clematis while looking for a variety that would thrive in the shade. In the space of three years it has scaled the the fence stretching for the sunlight on the other side and covered about 10ft of space horizontally.

It's done less well in the last two years despite being hardy, I think caused by a period of harsh weather/frost that came late in the spring after the new buds had already started to grow. Despite this setback its still a mass of colour and bees love it - its right by the house so the delicately shaded mauve flowers can be seen while I'm typing this from my dining room table.

If you have a shady wall that needs colour I would really recommend giving this a try!

Again I bought mine from Crocus - here's the link to buy it on their site.

http://www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/clematis-alpina-frances-rivis/classid.856/

Plant of the week - Tulip 'Flaming Parrot'

My first plant of the week is this fantastic tulip - 'Flaming parrot'. I really do love tulips, and I have a few different varieties in the garden. This beauty caught my eye this morning as it had just opened the day before. I love the boldness of the colours and the texture of the petals. My daughter also commented that if you look straight down into the flower it almost looks like the English flag!

I've naturalised these at the edge of the lawn and purposely avoid mowing that area (there are snakeshead fritillaries growing there as well) and they seem to be happy being left in the ground throughout the year.

Much more exciting than those boring old red tulips!

I usually buy my bulbs from Crocus - the quality of their bulbs is excellent and they come lovingly packed. The link to them on their site is here: 
http://www.crocus.co.uk/plants/_/tulipa-flaming-parrot/classid.2000014411/

My very first post!

Each week I will highlight one of the plants in my garden, with a photo of it at its full glory, and let you know a bit about why I chose it and why I love it.

I'm not an expert just a keen enthusiast who loves all things that grow, so these are my own trials and tribulations, advice and experience, recommendations and warning.

I hope some of this will be useful to someone out there...