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Looking Good 29 July 2019 | posted: 29/7/2019 at 19:27:03 |
A bumper year for soft fruit at Bocombe. The gooseberries have been particularly good. Gooseberry preserve already made some weeks ago and the chest freezer is fulling up with soft fruit of all varieties.
It may have taken a long time to work this out, but when picking gooseberries most of the varieties have their prickly spines pointing upwards, so take the berries from below and avoid the spines!
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Looking Good 22 July 2019 | posted: 23/7/2019 at 19:55:51 |
It’s the time of year for those vast creamy white flowers of Magnolia grandiflora – just what it says in the name…
And our collection of Day lilies (Hemerocallis) are in full bloom, from the palest yellow to deep wine; from the size of an egg to approaching the dimensions of a dinner plate; single (mainly) though doubles too…
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Looking Good 15 July 2019 | posted: 15/7/2019 at 19:53:26 |
Our garden is alive with aromas of the mid-year…. The collection of roses climbing around our White Pergola waft sweet odours on our entrance steps. The climbing roses through our Mazzard Cherry, over Gunnera Plain Steps and the Kiftsgate Rose ascending our largest tree, Eucalyptus gunni, all feed our flower gardens with the soft, sweet scents of summer.
Our garden is alive with the almost sickly stimulation of our Lily collection, most noticeably in the Courtyard. Even the hedgerows are filled with the strong summer scent of wild honeysuckle..
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Looking Good 8 July 2019 | posted: 9/7/2019 at 08:26:23 |
Around this time last year I commented on the long spell of dry weather – and here we are again! This last dry-ish winter has meant that the ground has dried out much more quickly this year.
Parts of our Kitchen Garden are particularly affected. An area that used to grow Raspberries (and a lot of Ground Elder) was the last area to be brought into regular vegetable cultivation. So it was also the last area to have copious amounts of organic matter added! And is the first area to dry out.
It’s under a crop of potatoes this year (in our three year rotation) that were growing very well, but are now starting to yellow and fall over…. Water to the rescue…
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Looking Good 1 July 2019 | posted: 1/7/2019 at 20:14:46 |
A return visit to Lewis Cottage last week - a garden that opens for the NGS too! And in many ways similar to our garden here at Bocombe, but of course, completely different. Similar in that there are many shady and damp areas, so the plants they have are well suited to Bocombe. What’s handy for us is that they sell a good range of their plants!
We came away with two crates of unusual plants such as the true Siberian Brunnera (Brunnera sibirica), much much larger than the usual plant that steals this common name, though in other ways alike. Mukelenia karasuba, for the shady back of our newly revamped Meadow Border, and Strobilanthes atropurpurea, for the shady area of our Yellow and Blue garden.
We purchased too many to list here, catch their web site www.lewiscottageplants.co.uk or better still visit the garden with more openings this summer!
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