Johnshaven Community Garden

Our walk today with Freya took us along the old railway line and through the community garden in the picturesque fishing village of Johnshaven. There are other walks here, notably along the seashore.

Small fishing villages are dotted along the east coast of Scotland. All have small sheltered harbours to protect the boats from the North Sea. Johnshaven is home to an annual fish festival which is a community event and takes place in August

Fishing now tends to be a minority occupation with small boats and a few creels for catching crab and lobster piled up along the harbour wall. Nowadays it's a minority industry and  people commute to work in the bigger towns and to the city of Aberdeen.

Many of the  fishermans cottages have been repaired and given a fresh coat of paint. Some of them are built with their gable end to the sea to give protection in bad weather and some also have shutters.

Washing is still dried on the greens in front of the cottages and small gardens with driftwood and  finds from the seashore are built just above the shore. Hardy geraniums, teasels, hebes and a sprinkling of annuals cope with the salt laden winds.

 Johnshaven is is built on a steep slope and has narrow streets. The shoreline is rocky. No sandy beach here.

 

This is the beginning of the walk and the entrance to the community garden which can be glimpsed beyond the bridge. The garden was built by the community a few years ago in conjunction with the Beechgrove Garden Team at Tern Television. The planting is simple and is mainly shrubs that can cope with the  salt and wind.

 Escallonia and spirea and a small hebe dominate in this part of the garden.

 More spirea and senecio sunshine ( now known as  brachyglottis)  and a tiny hebe covered in starry mauve flowers.

The hebe Red Edge

Looking back at the garden from the top of the steps you can appreciate the simplicity and the maturity of the planting. The strong verticals of the phormium tenax contrast well with the soft mounds of the shrubs.

The walk continues down the steps on the other sides and the cultivated garden gives way to a wilder  landscape.

There are some garden escapees such as this geranium which I think is "Johnson's Blue".

and the Himalayan honeysuckle Leycesteria formosa

 The grass path is kept cut by the Council. The spires of Rosebay Willow Herb Epilobium augustifolium on the left is about burst into flower. The trees are already brown and have lost leaves in the last high winds. It feels almost autumnal.

There is still an abundance of wildflowers to photograph. The common Daisy Bellis perenis is often overlooked but has delicate petals and an egg yolk coloured centre.

The white Briar rose Rosa canina

 

 And the pink briar rose.

 Lapsana communis commonly known as nipplewort.

 Wild Angelica Angelica sylvestris

 

The seed head of the red campion Silene dioica.

And last but not least. People travel from miles around to view this plaque on a little building on the shore. Someone in Johnshaven has a sense of humour!

Every plant tells a tale...

I've stopped working in the garden for a few days. This is the time to enjoy, perhaps pick a strawberry or two or deadhead a rose as I pass.

As I meandered through our garden today I realized how many of the plants and flowers have fond associations with people and places over the years.

There covering the ground in a dense mat sprinkled with tiny pink flowers is Geranium Tanya Rendell. 
Richard Rendall ran his own Nursery near where we stayed in Orkney. He told us about breeding this geranium and  the process he had to go through to get it recognized. Richard then named it after his daughter. Hardy geraniums (as opposed to pelargoniums) grow well in Orkney and seem suited to the maritme climate.

The Gunnera manicata is another plant with an Orkney connection. It's needs a sheltered spot to grow there with any success but it does like the rich moisture retentive soil. It's little cousin gunnera magilanica did very well for us as ground cover in Orkney but is not so successful here in the sandy soil of the east coast.

I probably wouldn't have chosen to plant the giant version of the gunnera but it was given to us as a present  by Orkney friends Christopher and Matilda. They have a very exposed site looking over to the Hills of Hoy. The wind would have shredded the leaves. So it came to us bulging out of it's pot, desperate for a bit of space.  This was the one thing in short supply in this garden and the plant needs curtailed the choices even more.

It now sits happily  at the back of part of the shade garden with  plenty of compost. It's put on a huge spurt of growth in a couple of years and large leaves do a good job in hiding some wires and bare wall in the summer. What we do if it grows to full size is a question for another day.....

Then there is the Phlomis russeliana from my Edinburgh gardening pal, Lynn. It's a lovely buttery yellow and has wonderful whorls of flowers up the stem. The seed heads carry on the interest into the autumn. I was so pleased when it flowered profusely last year. This year there are no flowers. I think it's having a rest. So this is a photo of last years seed heads.

My mother was very fond of the double bloodroot Sanguinaria canadensis and we have several plants in the shade border. However she bemoaned the fact that her bloodroot would flower one year and then disappear never to be see again.  Perhaps it wasn't happy where she planted it in stoney dry ground next to the front door for visitors to admire. This is one of ours flowering earlier this year.

 

The other plant grown by my mother (and her father before her) is the annual scarlet flax Limnum grandiflorum. It was such a part of the gardens where I grew up as was the pink phlox. For my opinion of pink phlox see my earlier post Blunt Spades and Pink Phlox

 I usually scatter a few seeds of scarlet flax in a pot or in some open spot but I forgot this year. I do miss the delicate scarlet flowers waving in the breeze. Perhaps this post will jog my memory next year.


Several plants (and the sails over the table) remind me how much our garden was influenced by our two trips to New Zealand to see family in Christchurch. There are some great plants people over there and they seem to have ideal growing conditions for so many different varieties of plants.

In this garden we planted a Tea tree having seem them in New Zealand. It limped along for about eighteen months only to give up the ghost over the winter. we haven't tried one again.
We were  impressed by the oleanders growing to huge heights in peoples gardens and covered in blossom in South Island. 
You can tell that I've thought this through. As the oleander is very tender it has to stay in a pot in the greenhouse most of the time and then be lugged outside (no mean feat) for a couple of months at most if and when the sun shines. The plant (or my back) may not last! But look the flower is worth the effort.

These associations do make a plant even more special.  What memories do your plants evoke?

Wordless Wednesday

Beautiful Moths and Butterflies

I've been taking photos of butterflies and moths for the past couple of weeks. Not so much in the garden where they are few and far between at present.  I expect to see more with some sunnier weather and the blooming of the buddleias and the verbena bonariensis.
The images were taken on walks with our dog in the Angus countryside

 Meadow Brown Butterfly

.

Burnett caterpillar on Ragwort buds.

Burnett moths on a thistle

 Burnett moth on ragwort

Common Blue Butterfly. a British native

  Exquisite fritillary on a thistle

Today's the Day!

Well actually it isn't. The grand opening of local gardens was yesterday and I was just too bone weary by the end of it to lift a finger, never mind write a post.

The day dawned clear and sunny. Fantastic! It makes a big difference to the number of visitors if we have fine weather.

Step ladder, signs and banners were put up first thing. I want to award a gold star to whoever invented plastic ties. We would have been lost without them. String tends to be a bit fiddly. The marquees were already up at Dorward House.

 These sort of events gain a momentum of their own and the time went in so fast.  A lot of people went through he gates, a lot of teas were served, plants bought, ideas exchanged. I even met a fellow blogger. That was a highlight. But mainly it was about local people enjoying a day out. Thanks to all for participating.

What the discerning lady gardener is wearing...

For those opening their gardens on Sunday and are in a quandray over what outfit to choose, can I suggest that you take inspiration from the following?

Valerie Finnis

Beatrix Havergal

Lady Birchfield

Vita Sackville West

Dogs are optional.

Horticultural Hoard

As some of you may have realised I spend lot of time propagating plants and amass quite a hoard. I've tried many different methods but often the simplest are the best. Plants that self seed like astrantia major and other plants that set out runners and root into the ground wherever they land are just the best for potting up for plant sales.

I was excited to see new growth popping up from our three year old Rhus typhina (sumach) a few feet from the parent plant. Oh goody, another plant. We had been given dire warnings from a friend along the lines "Oh you planted one of these, have you? I remember one in my parent's garden that came up everywhere..... what a nuisance."

Then there are all the plants grown from seeds and cuttings. Just where are we going to put the giant echium or the three horse chestnut tree seedlings which are already four feet high?

The answer is to put them all in a plant sale and hopefully pass them onto a suitable home. In the case of the horse chestnut that had better be a country estate.

Anyway these are some of the plants that are going to be on sale at the Garden Open Plant stall this Sunday. In the cold frame there's a few giant echium (I'm pretending we live in sunnier climes) some melianthus major (sunnier climes again but will do with protection) some abutilons and some grasses.

There are pots of perennials along the sheltered side wall...

and by the fruit cage....

They all have to be tidied up and labelled. The brown foliage and weed seedlings that seem to grow like cress need to be removed from the top centimetre of soil. Then there are some I'm slightly ashamed to say have outgrown their pots and have rooted into the soil below. Oops! So I tend to take these and pot them on one size just to tidy them up a bit.

The labelling this year was done with marker pen and lollipop sticks. I've tried so many pens (and pencils) over the years and still find lettering becomes illegible, the marker isn't fine enough or it's too difficult to clean for re-use.

 Then all the plants have to be moved up the garden for pricing. We've gone for a simple colour coding this time. Each label gets a coloured dot and is priced according to size and type of plant.

And then they're ready to go.

 

 And now the horticultural hoard is gone and I've got a bit of space I can start propagating again. I've got some lovely penstemons that are ideal for cuttings.....