Cardiocrinum giganteum

The cardiocrinum  or Giant Himalayan Lily takes from 5-7 years to reach maturity. The flowering spike can be up to 10 feet in height. Ours have been between 5 - 7 feet. The flowers are enormous creamy trumpets with a pink flush.

After flowering the bulb dies but produces offsets and seedlings. Ours are at varying stages of maturity and we hope another one will flower this year. We bought ours at Cluny House Gardens where they can be seen in all their magnificence. http://www.clunyhousegardens.com/

This is the new growth on one of the bulbs.

 

The buds appear

Last years flower spike

The spike turned into this...

The seed head is a work of art.

A Hard Day's Work...

Lots of planting went on in the vegetable garden today.

The onions, the shallots and the garlic went in in neat rows (very Heligan even down to the labels). I had grown all of them in modules and hardened them off so that they are now healthy little plants. As were the peas and broad beans. They were planted over a trench enriched with home-made compost and wet shredded newspaper. We haven't had much rain recently. The dryness and dust-like quality of the soil is a concern as a lack of water at this point may lead to a check in the growth and possible bolting.

I also sowed the first of our outdoor salads, mizuna, rocket  and radishes.

As ever I have grown too much - plenty to give away to friends and neighbours.

 It doesn't look like much at the moment but with some tender, loving, care and a bit of luck we are looking forward to plentiful crops this year.

 What better way to relax this evening than to curl up with a glass of wine, a husband and Monty Don's visits to Italian Renaissance gardens in his new series on BBC 2.

Balcarres Gardens, Fife

Balcarres is one of the best gardens in Fife (and there are several) These are some photographs that I took last year at their Open Day

The herbaceous borders next to the house.

There are some wonderful colour combinations in these borders. The borders are divided using box hedge.

Box and topiary are a feature.

  The garden is on several levels

The Open Day this year is on Sunday 4th September (2pm - 5.30pm)

Changes

Change is inevitable - except from a vending machine.  ~Robert C. Gallagher

The blog is going through a bit of an update at the moment with drop-down menus and other goodies being added. This may take me a little time so bear with me.... and keep visiting.

Jungle plants and exotics....

Since we moved to warmer climes (don't laugh, it really is a bit warmer) I've been trying out some slightly more exotic plants. I particularly like ones that are grown from seed and can be replaced if we lose them over the winter. Pawlonia tomontosa (the foxglove tree), melianthus major,(the honey bush) are two such. Having grown them from seed over the last few years they have stayed planted out over winter with only bark protection. And they are all still there, unlike the seedlings of the honey bush in the greenhouse. They didn't make it....

Pawlonia tomontosa can be grown in to tree or pollarded to make one single stem. It has enormous leaves as big as a hand. This photo was taken in Edzell in Angus and shows an excellent specimen of pawlonia grown as a tree.

Cyperus papyrus alternifolius can be used as a bedding plant in the summer and is very effective.

It's also  incredibly easy to propagate if you know how. Take a stem and turn it upside down in a jar of water. When roots appear plant it in some potting compost and keep it warm and watered. It will happily sit out in a pot or be planted somewhere warm and wet over the summer. It looks very exotic...

 

A good source of exotic seeds is at the following site: Jungle seeds

A Lizard

A Lizard of the Petrified Forest
by: Edward Robeson Taylor (1838-1923)

Upon an age-worn, upright stone
Of gems that once had been a part
Of some great tree's rejoicing heart
A Lizard, motionless and lone,
A glowing, living emerald shone
Of such encrusted, radiant sheen,
He reigned the monarch of the scene--
A creature nature's hand had done
When wrought the earth, and air, and sun,
In most harmonious unison.
He viewed us, as we passed him by,
With calm and yet with questioning eye,
But moveless still, as though the stone
Were portion of his being's own,
And voiceless as the forest is,
Whose jewelled ruins all are his.
The desert seemed to hold him there
As one of her supremest fair,
As one to whom our souls should owe
The best that beauty's love can know,
And with her prideful voice to say,
"See how I gem my breast of gray!"

My husband made this lizard for me at his evening class. It looks great on the wall.

Little Gems...

Sometimes it's good to get down and have a closer look at flowers. The detail is quite amazing. Have a look at the auricula...

And then there's the sanguinaria canadensis. This is also known as bloodroot and this is the double form. I don't usually grow double flowers as they tend to be sterile and unattractive to insects. In this case I have made an exception...

It is a wonderfully constructed plant. It emerges as a tube with the leaf is wrapped round the stem and  the flower . The leaf then folds back to reveal a little button flower.  

It then gently unfurls...

To reveal an explosion of tiny petals. 

Exquisite .......

Choocks Away

Our girls. We haven't got names for them. We lost our last four hens (called the four Marys because they all looked the same) in quick succession. So I didn't want to tempt fate by naming these ones. They are all different breeds so there is no confusion.

 

The hen house and run. We put a sedum roof on all our sheds. The hens are allowed out into the work area where the compost bins are. They also have the full run of the vegetable garden in the autumn and winter.

Gaint Hogweed et al

This is Giant Hogweed early in the season.

I know it's a weed and difficult to get rid of but if you didn't know any better wouldn't you think what wonderful leaves if you saw them in someone's garden?

The sculptural leaves are followed by large flowers spikes and seed heads on tall stems.

This is  commonly known as Butterbur and grows along the river banks locally alongside the Giant Hogweed. An unusual little plant.

Fruit blossom and teeny-weeny figs

Our pears are into their third year fan trained along the back fence. They have flowered and produced a small amount of fruit from the first year although the quality was poor. We discovered (thank you Monty Don) that pears have to be picked and ripened in the house. We are growing two types (both of which are fairly readily available in the shops) Comice and Conferance.

The latter was bred by Thomas Francis Rivers at his family nursery at Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire.

He first announced it to the public at a 'Pear Congress' in 1885, which had been advertised as a 'Pear Conference', and which is the name he chose  -  although it seems our best-known pear could just as easily have been called Congress.

The Conferance pear tree is in flower again thanks to a burst of warm weather. The buds start out as pink/white and open into white flowers.

The Victoria plum is also covered in blossom. The Egremont Russet Apple will soon follow.

To protect the blossom from frost we erect home made structures covered in fleece or similar.

 

The Victoria Plum was laden with fruit the first year and although we thinned it out it was still a heavy crop. Last year we paid the price with one small clump of plums. I guess the tree was exhausted. Hopefully this year we will get a lot of fruit without it being too much for the tree

The quince is in leaf and may give us a few more quinces than last year. I believe that they take some time to establish and give a decent crop.I would love enough  for quince jam or membrillo reminiscent of holidays abroad.

The Greengage has grown well but shows no sign of fruit. Other people in the are have been unsuccessful with them. One piece of advice we were given was to bang a rusty nail into the trunk. This causes the tree stress and it then wants to reproduce. Anyone had success with this method? It seems a bit drastic to me.

The fig tree is in the green house in a large pot. It has tiny figs on it and the leaves are starting to appear. It's not a big tree but the crop has always been sweet and delicious.

We're hoping for a bumper crops this year.

Camellias and Magnolias

Our camellia and magnolias are out at last. They take longer than most because of the shade cast  by surrounding buildings. And some times the frost gets to them turning the delicate petals brown.

The pink camellia is the only original shrub left in the garden. When we came to view the house in April 2005 the camellia was in full bloom then. Paul thinks that was one of the reasons we bought the house..... he may be right. Every year it is covered deep pink blooms.

Beechgrove Garden BBC 1

"Beechgrove Garden" the Scottish gardening programme is back on BBC1 tonight.  If you missed Scotland's own "Alan Titchmarsh",  Jim McColl you can catch up with him and the rest of the team on BBC iplayer soon.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0108tmj/Beechgrove_Garden_2011_Episode_1/

The Unveiling Ceremony

We grow some plants that really shouldn't survive in our Northern climes. But with some protection most of them do and look good. It's not much fun having plants that are limping along, obviously unhappy.

I've given up on trying to grow Callistemon (Bottle Brush Plants) which always get leaf burn or die off all together even with protection.

But we do have some successes. So far our tree ferns (Dicksonia antartica) have always survived the winter. Today was the great unveiling ceremony. Let's hope we haven't done it too early.....

All wrapped up...

The old fronds cut off... the straw removed...

It looks healthy enough......hopefully it will soon look like this again...