Every post I seem to write starts with an apology for the silence. This summer I’ve had very little time to do any gardening except a quick bit of tidying up here and there as I’ve had very little free time. It’s bern very dry here and so my little free time has been spent watering. Despite the neglect and dry weather my garden has done pretty well.
My sweetpeas finished early although they did look and smell lovely when flowering.
I didn’t sow many seeds this year and probably a good job as they would have needed watering. I sowed an annual poppy which was a bit disappointing when it flowered.
The one that got left in the greenhouse has done the best. I also sowed some Daucas (wild carrot), they germinated very well and some have flowered and some appear to be waiting for next year.
Daucas
It has, however, been a great year for roses. They don’t look very healthy with lots of blackspot and the caterpillars have been busy munching too but they have flowered amazingly.
I love white flowers and am always looking to plant more of them. This is one of my favourite roses but don’t tell the others. It’s not the biggest rose and these are probably the only flowers it’ll have this year but they are beautiful
These are the roses flowering in my garden so far this season, there are a few more to come. I’ve named those that I know the names of, some have been in so long I don’t know the variety.
I start once again with an apology for the radio silence. To be honest I’ve done very little proper gardening until this week due to my availability and weather not matching up well.
I did finally get my sweetpeas planted out this week and a few other things from the greenhouse. I’ve also done a lot of weeding and tidying. I didn’t know I had so many weeds til I started looking! I’ve also redone my hanging basket. I even managed to kill the ivy last season by lack of watering (I think). I have, however, taken lots of pictures of the garden so I’ll share a few here.
Newly planted hanging basket Honeybell flower Rose Summer Song just started flowering this week ClematisAquilegia PeonyRhododendron Wooden wheelbarrow Lily of the valley – they definitely have a tendency to want to take-overPinkbells Star of Bethlehem New poppy – flowers have now fallen off Bluebells also with a take over tendency Wild poppy but I love any poppy anywhere so am encouraging themClematisApple tree blossom
I feel like it’s been a long dry and rather hot summer. If anyone says to me ‘we haven’t had a summer this year’ expect me to be cross. I struggle a lot with the hot weather (huge migraine trigger for me) and the constant watering of the garden has definitely been hurting my shoulders and the pain goes straight to my head! I live in the north of England where everyone thinks it rains non-stop, well this year it’s hardly rained all summer! Despite this I feel like the garden has mostly faired pretty well. I’ve done a lot of watering, I know people say you don’t need to water so much but I don’t work hard all year on a garden to let it die because I can’t be bothered!
So the roses have done well and I’ve had just one new one this year called Queen Bee (picture below) although if I see a Queen Elizabeth one I’ll be very tempted to buy one.
I’ve sown some plants from seeds that I’ve never tried before and some I do each year. The cosmos didn’t even germinate, the zinnia did but they were tiny plants and didn’t flower for long. My Ammi, sweetpeas, honeywort (cerinthe), verbena bonariensis (or as someone I follow on Twitter calls it verbena bananarama) and Tithonia have done really well. My sweet William and wallflowers have germinated well and hopefully will flower just as successfully.
AmmiTithonia Sweetpeas grown from seed collected from last years flowers
Fruit wise we have strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, cherries (actually the birds had them all), apples and tomatoes. We didn’t have such a big raspberry harvest this year but it has meant we didn’t need to give so many away as usually we have way more than we can eat or store!
My perennials have faired pretty well too.
As much as I normally love gardening I find this time of year I have such a long list of jobs to do in the garden getting it ready for winter including moving things, weeding, tidying and bulb planting that I don’t enjoy it as much because I’m just trying to complete my to do list. This year I also have 2 bags of bark chippings to spread, hoping this will reduce the need for so much watering in future dry summers.
wendyswonderlandgarden 