Cold & Windy

We seem to have had more gales and wind than normal this year - perhaps its the cumulative damage that is making me think that. Certainly the Magic Garden has sustained more damage than usual and the loss of my fences is still hurting. I miss the familiar scruffy fence with its coating of foliage. I have planted hedglings along the back and some of the side-fence but am impatient for them to grow. There are signs elsewhere that with the lengthening days we are heading towards spring as bulbs push up through. A year ago today I have to keep reminding myself we were under snow so wind chill is less surprising.

I have added a yellow-flowered winter flowering jasmine to hopefully go up the fence between the black elder and the magnolia. It should brighten up that corner at this time of year when the leaves are still off the trees. For all its name includes winter, I think it will be a harbinger of spring, a bit like the now numerous irises all over the Magic Garden.

There is a wee patch of wallflowers coming out at the front of the Magic patch with a mix of yellows, red and oranges. They don’t really fit colour-wise but then nor will the yellow daffodils when they start flowering! I always think wallflowers are less antisocial or shy than the name is used to imply.

The Ivy

I originally planted a common ivy in 2004 when the house and original fence was new. I have removed armfuls of it over the years as it has colonised a chunk of the fence between my neighbours and me & spreads over the arbour seat. The piece that remains is against a piece of the new fence. I think I will give it something to grow its way up.

Mine is a variegated form but large chunks have reverted to a bolder green.

I rather like the way it drapes itself over the arbour seat but I think the seat needs some repair work done before I let the ivy recolonise its sides

Ivy may not be the most exciting of plants but it has a firm place in the Magic Garden both for its symbolic worth & its role of encouraging wildlife. It is symbolic of fidelity presumably because it doesn’t let go easily!. In terms of wildlife ivy not only provides shelter for small birds mammals & invertebrates but also its flowers provide a source of nectar for bees & other insects at a time of year when there are less options available.

Long-tailed Tits

I only ventured very briefly into the Magic Garden this morning as it was very cold & windy. I did though top up the suet balls and then stood back and watched as the family of long-tailed tits arrived and started to work their way through them. Ben has more or less refused to spend more than a minute or two outdoors!

I love watching these wee birds with tails that are longer than their bodies & their undulating flight & noisy family squabbles as they bounce into the Garden.

Heuchera

When I planned the Magic Garden, I intended to have contrast of silver & white against near black. I already had used heuchera in the garden and they had, generally speaking, grown well. They are native to North America & are more or less evergreen although mine do die back in winter.

I have several Heuchera scattered through the Magic Garden but they are all looking a bit scruffy so I suspect some drastic ‘pruning’ will be required to get the clump forming effect back. I have one very large Heuchera ‘Obsidian’ which is much darker than my others. It is currently in one of the aluminium pots. I may try and split it although I’m wary of spoiling a good specimen. I will though split up the trio that I bought last week as a bargain pot & see what I end up with.

Missing the Greenery

Having very visible fences hadn’t been a feature of the Magic Garden for a long time so having new, bare fences seem even more stark than they might do. I am particularly conscious that the large amount of cover provided by the ancient jasmine is greatly missed by the birds.

I’m planning to plant a series of climbing plants to go up the north facing fence at the back and create a new area of foliage for the birds to hide in and to soften the fence. I will have to paint the fences soon before there is too much growth up in front of them, although what colour I’m not sure. The old fence was black.

Centaurea Montana

Centaurea montana is another ‘useful’ perennial plant that I end up dividing and removing chunks of each year. its common form. montane knapweed or perennial mountain cornflower, is a lovely shade of blue. The patch at the front of the Magic Garden os showing vigorous growth already so I may lift a bit soon so that I can establish some elsewhere in the garden. It is very attractive to the bees and is an easy bloomer that can be persuaded to repeat all summer.

Besides the common form I also have a much smaller patch of Centaurea montana ‘Purple Heart’

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!