Wee White Flowers

In my shopping spree last week I bought a couple of little ‘alpine’ plants. One of them I already had on the east path of the Magic Garden, Pritzelago alpina ‘icecube’. It has tiny little white flowers which have a light fragrance to them and small pinnate leaves, a dark green oval.

I wa pleased to hear and see my robins and the family of long tits enjoying the suet balls. Ben was tucked up indoors so they were having a feast.

The other white flowered ‘alpine’ I bought is a Saxifraga alpino ‘Early White’. Saxifrages are supposed to symbolise devotion, affection and passion which seems a lot to expect of a wee mound forming plant!

Yet more wind!

Although its not got a name this time the wind is back even if a little less fierce than the last 3 storms. I admit to getting distinctly fed up and a wee bit down at the constant damage to the Magic Garden. I also admit to being a bit worried too as the summerhouse has come off its bricks and is walking backwards into a bit of fence that is less strong than the main new fence along the side of the garden.

Elsewhere the snowdrops are doing better upright although the other irises look battered.

I cleared away a chunk of the climbing rose, armfuls of clematis and ivy. Underneath I found some horizontal snowdrops & little irises.

Taking Time to Look Back

Its easy to get fed up at this time of year when there is so much greyness, its still dark at either end of my working day and it promises rain for my day off. Then I look back at photographs from the same week in previous years. The same flowers pop up & make me smile, the same pests come back to visit and ultimately I still have a Magic Garden that even at night is my safe space and somewhere I can dream or dream about.

I would be impressed by any caterpillars around this weekend as it is distinctly chilly. My wallflowers are this year (below) more tatty than when I took my yellow wallflower photographs. Wallflowers are brassicas although I don’t think my pigeons have realised that as they don’t seem to ever attack these plants.

Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to clear more of the debris and start the recovery process for the border down where the new fence has gone in between me and my neighbours.

Getting Back to Normal

I now have a new fence between the neighbours & me and so I have matching on three sides. It looks raw and exposed so I think I will have a long fence painting session. I need to do quite a lot of tidying up with removal of the old arches, bits of debris & pieces of rubbish. The arbour seat is back in position but needs some TLC if it is to remain in place. I couldn’t face doing much today.

Hidden away under where the arbour seat had landed I found two wee hellebore so deeply purple that it looks black.

It was though cheering to turn round and notice that a wee patch of dark blue-purple Iris reticulata have come out. I love these flowers. They are known as netted irises characterised by a fibrous net surrounding the bulb. It is native to Russia, Caucasia & northern Iran.

Not Impressed

Poor Ben is truly less than impressed. The last few days have been full of disruption first with the storms and then with the men working clearing the damage and the houses. He is surprisingly wary of people in the wrong place - he’s quite sociable with people on the footpath but in our Magic Garden, definitely not.

I will have to start a big tidy up when the fence is finally in and the drainpipes re-attached to the house. Meantime like Ben I’m out of sorts

Recovering from Storm Malik

The fence between my neighbours and me is being replaced as Storm Malik had rocked the old one so much the posts were snapping. There was a strange moment this afternoon when it was possible to see across four gardens in a row. I will have to do a lot of reconstruction of the garden in the coming weeks.

Feeling rather down, I decided to go to the local garden centre and have an expensive walk round. I bought two different looking sarracenias as house plants, more thyme to replace those at the centre of the Magic Garden, a couple of bergamot plants & a little lavender, a pair of white-blue lupins and a clearance pot of three different heuchera somewhat in need of care.

The thymes are a mixture of different ones Thyme ‘Doone Valley’, ‘Silver Queen’, ‘Lemon variegated’ & ‘Common’

I look forward to the Thyme zone being at its best again later this year.

Campanula carpatica

I’m going to admit that I have a plant that is in several places in the Magic Garden that I am not entirely sure is Campanula carpatica but I think the original is one patch that is in my ‘alpine’ patch. My ‘alpine’ patch is essentially the spoil from when I dug out the pond - it is essentially rock hard clay.

Whatever it really is, I like that it has produced a lovely little mound that seems to have had some bloom on it all year although its at its best in the early summer. At the moment its occasional bloom cheers me up

Aftermath of Storm Malik

I am trying to feel positive about the bower seat. I have righted it and I think it is fundamentally ok albeit minus a few more bits of its roof. I have had it for more than a decade - the garden rocking chair pre-dates it by a few years but it has seen off at least two garden benches in the meantime.

The bower seat is positioned to get the morning sun in time for coffee and its a favourite place for Ben to soak up the rays, keep an eye on the Magic Garden and keep me company.

Maybe I’ll give it a good coat of paint as a reward for surviving!

Storm Malik

I had been planning a relatively quiet day, pottering in the Magic Garden & taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch count. Instead after a night of howling wind, bangs and bumps, I woke to more destruction this time from Storm Malik. My neighbours had definitely come off worse this time but nevertheless I’m picking up the pieces again in my re-distributed garden.

The feeders on the old pole are mostly intact but the ones that were on the rowan tree are not and I will need to buy replacements. I did get a moment or two to enjoy the birds though

Cotton Lavender

Cotton Lavender is Santolina chamaecyparissus. I grow it for its silver foliage which has a rather pungent aromatic smell to it. It does flower with yellow pom-poms but I must admit to have always been rather underwhelmed by these.

Mine has got very scruffy as I’ve failed to cut it back but my goldfinches seem to like it which has stopped from pulling it out so I will just be cutting it back to base & seeing if it will come again

The cotton lavender has featured quite a bit in my wildlife camera photos and video clips and these show how much the plant seems to shine with its blue-silver foliage. I think I can forgive it having boring flowers when its foliage sets off the flowers around it so well. I also have realised how big the plant has got when I see the size of the hedgehog against it.

Snowdrops

I love snowdrops as an early harbinger of spring in the Magic Garden, the flower that breaks winter’s spell releasing spring. I have three main sorts - ones that start the season, the ones I’ve naturalised from my parents’ garden in the NW Highlands and new ones that seem to come a bit later and are bigger than the others. With a little bit of doubt, I have identified that my early ones are Galanthus plicatus as the leaves are flat opposite eachother. I have sporadic ones all over the Magic Garden which I planted in November 2020 as bulbs.

The bigger snowdrop has wrap around leaves at its base so I think its Galanthus elwesii or one of its hybrids. I plan this year to get some more ‘in the green’ & plant them in the centre of the Magic Garden. This is supposed to be the best way of planting them & is how I planted the ones from Badachro.

Gorse

When I bought my native hedging plants to go along the new replacement hedging plants I saw a gorse bush advertised . I instantly felt homesick as the yellow flowers smelling of vanilla & coconut are a feature of my favourite evening walk up behind my parents’ house to a wee lochan and opted to buy this tiny bush.and plant it where it will have suitably poor conditions to ensure it thrives..

As its a favourite too of the bumblebees I’m hoping that before its very big it will start flowering. I suspect its unlikely that our local stonechat population will copy this from home and raise their young within its prickles.

A New Christmas Rose

I got round to planting out a little Hellebrous niger Christmas Rose today that had been sitting in a plastic pot ever since I bought it last year from the supermarket next door- it was rather pot-bound & its little while flower buds were distinctly scruffy. I then had a look for the white one I know is there already. I was pleased to find it is coming on well now. I have two large hybrid ones in the front garden I bought last year which I hope will be in bloom before long.

They earn their place in the Magic Garden as their blooms ward off evil spirits. Apparently they are used to create invisibility too - not tried that yet!

Christmas Roses are in fact members of the buttercup family rather than roses but gained this common name from an old legend that the flowers sprouted up from the tears of a girl who had nothing to give to the baby Christ. Mine never flower in time for even the old Christmas date in January

Sunny Afternoon

Today I only spent a few minutes in the Magic Garden as the lure of a walk in the sun proved too strong. I did though note the occasional daisy responding to that sunlight. I was also cheered by one of the scruffy wee violas I put in last autumn. Their wee faces do make me smile. I have winter pansies out the front which are distinctly blousy in comparison but equally scruffy! I confess I didn’t even bother to get the ‘proper’ camera out so these will have to do!

I couldn’t persuade Ben to stay out once I was home - he clearly felt a couple of hours fresh air was quite enough! He will suddenly decide that out is better and I will know that spring has arrived!

Purpletop Vervain

Purpletop vervain, Verbena bonariensis, is a lovely perennial that doesn’t seem to live for many years but does come easily from seed so is something I try and put a few new ones in around the Magic Garden. It is a lovely graceful perennial with three waving heads of clusters of little purple flowers

I love it as it stands clear of the crowd but fits in perfectly. Its unusually good in staying upright in our gales. Its also this year one of the earliest plants to be stirring with fresh growth. It is also a favourite of butterflies and bees alike.

All in all a good all-rounder, Verbena is an appropriate name too for a plant in the Magic Garden as it means ‘sacred bough’, coming from a Celtic root.

Signs of life

It’s been a beautiful day, clear with sunshine, cold & dry. I spent most of the day outside but not that much in the Magic Garden. I did though have a look round to see what’s stirring and also thinking about tidying up. I love seed heads and dead flowers but I am thinking about cutting back now new growth is showing through.

The rudbeckia are probably the most dignified of the ddad flowers in the garden and their centres still suggest promise but the real promise is present at their base with new growth showing through. These are new in the Magic Garden last summer & I am really pleased with the response of pollinators to their splash of colour. I’ve put several through the Magic Garden and the surrounding borders. These are under the black elderflower.

Thinking Ahead

Late home today to a pile of mail - instantly cheered up by the wee collection of seed & plant catalogues that have arrived this week.Ben likes being involved with all stages of the garden development

I also end up with windowsills full of seed trays and now I also use the summerhouse & cold frame to raise young plants once they are past their more fragile state.

Time to inspect the seed collection and start thinking of what I might start sowing soon and what new seeds to buy. I will probably buy more plant plugs this year as I have found in the past I’m marginally better at keeping them alive than raising seedlings. I usually have greater ambitions in what I think I can grow than reality usually proves to be the case.

In the Magic Garden Today

I had a day off work today so tried to get on top of gardening tasks - the most basic was just clearing more of the debris after Storm Arwen’s visitation. I’ve had to remove a lot of the twisted remains of the jasmine. I am very sorry to have lost this as it made a wonderful place for the birds to hide.I still need to take two of the arches down as they are beyond repair. I have bought a new one so that the will be something for my perennial sweetpea to clamber over.

Ben kept a weather-eye on me while enjoying some wintery sunshine. He likes to be around me in the Magic Garden but is always wary of getting stuck out in the cold at this time of year

When I cleared away some of the debris of the sweetpeas I could smell the most gorgeous scent even though it was difficult to identify exactly where it came from. It is the scent that belongs to my apricot coloured agastache as seen her below the white perennial sweetpea. I plan to move the latter as it drapes itself over the rowan tree rather than its metal arch.

Lamb's Ears - Stachys Byzantina

Another the silver foliage plants I added was Stachys byzantina. I brought in some cuttings from my allotment where they had been originally planted by a predecessor and had rapidly become established. It is the furriness of their leaves that gets them their name of lamb’s ears or less poetically woolly hedge nettle. They multiply easily and can be a bit scruffy but their flowers are attractive to bees & other pollinators so I am inclined to let them spread..

I keep a corner of them on the south corner as well as in the oak tree’s pot.

Globe Artichoke (Cynara scolymus)

When I planned the Magic Garden, I chose plants with silver grey foliage and providers of pollen & nectar. One of my choices was ornamental globe artichokes. I had seen these in Kew & loved their statuesque presence. They are a bit too big really for where they are so I have thinned them out more than once but even in winter I love their appearance. From the dead heads it is only a short time to sprouting new foliage and then the classic buds which open out to a lawn of nectar for visiting bees

A cycle that repeats & is reliable in its beauty