Autumn Cottage Diarist

In the Garden Today - 09 June 2016

No more bemoaning the cold and dark weather that we were 'enjoying' right up to the beginning of June - the last few days have been everything that June should be in England; hot days and balmy evenings filled with birdsong.

Working down by the pond - digging out clumps of variegated bamboo is tough!

I've been using the good weather to get a lot of jobs done - most of which have entailed getting filthy dirty down by the pond, since there is at least some shade down there. The plan is to fill the area around and behind the pond nearest to the summerhouse with all things white, to lend a lightness to the dark and hopefully look particularly lovely in the evenings. Unfortunately, the earth down there is still feeling the after effect of the flood here last month, so is still very damp, along with its usual intransigent stoniness and poor texture.

Rubbishy soil in more than one way - but the answer to that is just improve it! The first stages are to remove weeds, (creeping buttercup, ground elder and cow parsley) - the texture and nutrients will then be boosted with soil improver, manure and leafmould in good quantities.

In temperatures of up to 28C, you can understand why this has been hot, heavy and sticky work; fortunately, the summerhouse has been at hand for 'recovery' purposes - recovery helped considerably by harp, Spanish guitar and Bach on the CD player, many large glasses of chilled Indian Tonic Water and John Stefanidis' entrancing book 'An Island Sanctuary' about his home on the Greek island of Patmos.

The nearest Autumn Cottage comes to Patmos this week is the Mediterranean Terrace, where everything is filling out and flourishing; there is even the promise of a flower on my bargain Magnolia grandiflora bought last year - a fat bud has appeared, watch this space for future developments!

A 'lodger' - the pretty 'sea-pink' Thrift in a seashell pot, on holiday here while a friend moves house

Fat buds, flowers and seed heads already on the Terrace

Allium 'Purple Sensation' still looking wonderful, starting to set seed...

I hope you are all enjoying clement weather, wherever you are - further dispatches from the Home Front when I am not (happily) covered in dirt with a spade and fork in my hand!

Foxgloves peeping over the fence in the evening light - a balmy 'bonne nuit' from Autumn Cottage

 

 

 

Teas at the Lock Keepers Cottage

Another visit to another garden in the National Gardens Scheme on Sunday last. You never know quite what you are going to get, as the gardens range from those belonging to grand mansions, to more modest gardens who may well have teamed up with another one close by to give the NGS stipulated 'Three quarters of an hour of interest'. We had some idea of what the location may be like this time - the name gives it away! The venue was an old canal lock keepers cottage on the Kennet and Avon Canal, (close to the Crofton Pumping Station and Wilton Windmill), where the owners live a self sufficient life 'off the grid'.

On the towpath to the Lock Keepers cottage

We entered the gate in the high hedge (useful to stop passers-by on the canal boats peering into windows nowadays I guess - they would probably not have been there when the lock-keeper was active in operating the locks on the working canal). Walking to our right we found a very pretty and colourful cottage garden - which we did, however, walk around in about ten minutes.

A tumble of Hollyhocks, Clematis, daisies and sunflowers in the cottage garden

Teas under the trees

Cardoons and Cow-parsley - looking out to the surrounding fields

I surmised there must have been more - and indeed there was, at the other side of the house, where we found veggie beds, a tinkling pond (fountain solar powered), water butts, huge solar panels, a shepherd's hut, piles of 'useful stuff' stacked up 'around the back' (who could not live without a carved wooden mermaid in their life?).

Practicality - compost bins and solar panels tucked away at the top of the garden

'Useful stuff' stacked up, along with a dear old rocking horse that had seen better days

A wanton Mermaid, basking in the sun

Toys, puppets and seedheads - inspirational items in the Artists studio

Clematis on the studio wall

We also discovered the gallery of the artist owner (I love how many NGS gardens have artist-owners, who come complete with a gallery for me to browse) and the most delightful and happy bunch of chickens; we spent the rest of our visit drinking tea, eating cake (a most important 'NGS afternoon out' tradition) and talking to the hens - who were far too busy drinking, scratching and pecking to talk to us.

At the shepherd's hut; drink tea - eat cake - watch hens - (check iPhone!)

Happy hens scratching about - stacked logs forming ledges for chooky-apples in the background

We're used to watching but being ignored by the local creatures, though; with flowers, paintings tea and cake to also occupy us, it's still a blissfully happy way to spend an afternoon.

 

Here Comes the Orange Label Lady

This is the refined form of notoriety which I have gained at the local DIY store, which also happens to sell a wide range of plants for - initially - prohibitively high prices; for which you may read 'prices that I am not prepared to pay'.

But from the very beginning of the year, and right up to the very end, my weekly visits inevitably provide me with at least one or two (and sometimes nine or ten) plants that have been marked down for one reason or another; this reduction in price is signified by a bright orange label, which can be seen across the store and attracts me like a butterfly to a buddleia!

The plants themselves might have finished flowering; may be bone dry from languishing at the back of a stand, missing out on watering, or may have suffered a particularly harsh fate - as had the Acer palmatum dissectum 'Atropurpurea' below, which I bought a few weeks ago. It was reduced to one fifth of its original price after being burned in a heatwave and losing all its leaves. But all the new leaf buds are there again - waiting to shoot; perhaps not this year, but they will be back in seven or eight months time. Just a bit of waiting to be done... gardening's good for training me that way!

(It says '£6.99' :-) )

Its always something of a risk to buy 'less than perfect' plants - but it's a risk worth taking. They all go to 'hospital' when they arrive here, placed on the patio under the vine, so in cool shade - and are fairly quickly watered, dead headed or cut back as necessary. Give them a few days and - mostly - leaves begin to sprout again, flowers begin to appear, and/or they are ready to be divided up into many more plants and left to root up again for planting out in the autumn or spring.

With the size of garden that I have, there is no way that I could fill it with full price plants; but with the help of Orange Label days, plus a bit of work dividing and taking cuttings, the gardens are slowly filling up, and its always better to plant out three or five bargain plants rather than one acquired at full price. I am saving plants from the store rubbish bins and my miserly streak is given full rein to come out and play.

It’s a win-win-win situation, isn't it?

Hydrangea 'Black Steel' - a previous 'Orange Label' purchase

Refuge from the Rain

'Come inside...' - the inviting interior of the potting shed at Mottisfont

In the middle of summer, this is the sort of day that holidaymakers hate and gardeners love. It is pouring down with rain, has been since 8 am and is well settled in to go on for the rest of the day.

It can be miserable to be away from home and all that is familiar in this sort of weather, trying to find something to do with the children - or without - that is under cover. But if you are a gardener, you can always retire - to the greenhouse, the potting shed or the summerhouse!

Here are some images - from home and away - of the cosy pleasures that can be gained when taking shelter from the rain. The first are from the walled garden at Mottisfont Abbey, where the National Trust have called in theatrical designers to reconstruct a potting shed; it is part of their 'Storyscape Project' and  many of the articles in there allude to the accomplished horticulturalist and rose-grower Graham Stuart Thomas, who set up the collection of Old Roses in the walled garden at Mottisfont in the 1970's.

Notebooks and illustrations of Old Roses

Terracotta pots and tins for seeds...essential minutiae in old gardens

The second are much closer to home - the latest incarnation of the summerhouse here at the cottage - also, in its own way, a Storyscape; a place where my friends sit with me, tell me their own stories and conjure up new ones from the inspiration they (and I) get there, surrounded by peace, quiet, harp music, wildlife and books.

Some new pictures added to the wildlife collection

'Spring Spirit' - Hares by Jane Keay - a two pound greeting card in a one pound frame...

A place for fairies and fancy - but don't be late for a very important date!

Twinkly lights and candleholders - (new ones bought for pennies, bearing images of my favoured dragonflies)

It's just a tiny space, but I do have such fun creating a place for pondering and creativity. If you also have a much loved little refuge - do tell me something about it!

The most important furnishings in any room...

 

 

 

 

Bees, Beans and Bergamot

A shady spot under the Viburnum, from where the scent of the burgeoning fennel is divine

 I should have been cleaning up my office this morning, but summer and the herb garden waits for no (wo)man; all is buzzing with activity there, as the herbs are all flowering, the bees are thanking them for it - and the beans are turning from flower to food before my eyes. Here are just a few images from today's abundance - oh, and a brain teaser as well - do you think we can squeeze in one last project this summer? The last photograph shows my first ponderings on the possibilities of…well, can you guess what it might be??

Bergamot 'Gardenview Scarlet'

The bean teepees, covered in beany blossom...

...and the first fruits of beany bliss!

A bee supping nectar from the Stachys

A hoverfly doing likewise from the Oregano (which also smells wonderful)

An interim cleanup of the area which will home more alpine sinks in due course...

Hmm...I wonder what this will be??

 

Related articles

Pots of Inspiration

Create a Happy Bee Habitat by Planting a Pollinator Garden - Apartment Therapy

'Where Have You Been and What Have You Been Doing?'

Roses! - Paul's Himalayan Musk winding through the Weeping Pear; Gertrude Jekyll in the flowerbed

...I ask myself this on a daily basis as I ponder writing another post here; how can I possibly cover all the 'stuff' that has passed by - that's fit to print! - and not feel that I am serving up a trivial and superficial skim that will be of no interest to anyone. But I miss writing - and one or two of you have contacted me to say that you miss reading - so here I go again - and if you *do* find this superficial, I hope you will forgive me.

Unsurprisingly, when I look back over the last couple of months, time spent in the garden - my own and other people's - seems to head the top of the list. Just trying to take advantage of the good weather and long evenings while we can!

In the garden here at Autumn Cottage, I'm still doing a lot of heavier, harder landscaping jobs - harder for me, anyway. Still much digging and planting to be done in different areas, though I have had the assistance of a local handyman and his team for the bigger jobs of reinstating the pond in the herb garden (the one that cracked, emptied and then 'rose up like the sun' out of the ground after 24 hours continuous rain in a high water table area)...

The dire state of the old herb garden pond

The new liner going in - using the old shell underneath for protection

Raw and 'unsettled' - but the new pond is finally a friendly place to sit again

 ...and - biggest of all for this year, the new pergola along the back of the house. We've become rose enthusiasts after the glorious showing of Paul's Himalayan Musk along the trellis and over the loo this year (must have been 20 feet of growth from a little cutting given to me three years ago by my friend Shelley - since when it is informally known as 'Shel's rose'), so decided to give ourselves and the house a present, (we've been here for 30 years in October), and also provide a proper support for the wisteria, which was Alec's 60th birthday present this time last year. (We sure are good at finding excuses when we want something new for the house!).

Before the pergola arrived...

...and after - now all we need are roses, roses, roses! (and more plants where the new bed has been cut, where at the moment only those two pots stand)

In other people's gardens - we have decided to heed the words of UK gardening guru Monty Don and get out more - to see other gardens for inspiration, and to stop us doing nothing else but working on our own. It can otherwise become obsessive, exhausting and introverted if you don't watch out. Many gardens each week open here in the UK under the National Gardens Scheme - all so different - humble and grand, big and small, expensive and created on a shoestring (though all adhering to some strict criteria for safety and interest). Each visit offers opportunities to build a library of inspirational ideas which might be incorporated at some time into one's own garden, and at the same time raises millions of pounds for charity.

The pigeonnier and terracotta pot collection in the herb garden at Dipley Mill

A dazzling corner at Wickham House

A quiet little corner in a local village garden

But more than just creating a garden for our own pleasure, however, I have a very strong desire to create a therapeutic space here; I'm very conscious of the healing power of being in nature - of just sitting by a pond, or inhaling the scents in the herb garden…watching a bee fossicking for nectar or a kite gliding and swooping overhead. They are all such restorative experiences for me and I want to be able to share these experiences with others, through the writing and expressive arts workshops that I have run over the years. I've taken a break from those recently - but as the new academic year approaches in the distance, they will be back on the agenda again. Meanwhile, it's back to the spade, fork and hoe for me - to make the place even more welcoming for visitors.

Now where could I squeeze in another statue, I wonder? 

The 'Mediterranean' Terrace - hot and protected from the wind, a happy home for the orange trees, wisteria and fig

Pots of Inspiration

The First of June - already - though outside the clouds are grey and the wind is rising. O, our British weather!! We are warned of winds of 60 miles an hour this evening - but also given the promise of rising temperatures and the arrival of 'proper' summer by the end of the week. Something to look forward to in sybaritic terms - I look forward to basking in the warmth on the 'Mediterranean terrace' at the back of the house (my fanciful description of 'the hot bit' where I keep my more tender plants) - but also a reminder to get as many plants in the ground as I can before the soil becomes hardened and unworkable and wilting is more of a problem than waterlogging!

Five weeks lost to being medically poked and prodded (outcome positive, with some provisos) at a time when the most work needed to be done in the garden was frustrating, but priorities change when health issues call; I am just happy to now be in the position of being able to get digging, planting, propagating and harvesting with full enthusiasm once again.

For a break from all the gardening work, however, we made a journey last week to a place I have been longing to visit for twenty years. Whichford pottery is not at all far away (about an hour), situated in a very pretty little village on the edge of the Cotswolds and has been making high quality terracotta garden pots for nearly 40 years. I bought the book -written by owner Jim Keeling - on the subject of terracotta container gardening twenty years ago and since then I have only developed further my passion for growing things in pots; the more varied the pots, the better.

A feast of possibilities - gallery in the background

Whichford's website will tell you all about the process and their history - what I can tell you is just what an immensely friendly place it is to visit. I was positively encouraged to wander through the potting sheds and past the kiln, to see the various stages in the creation of some of the most beautiful pots I have seen, all very subtly different as is to be expected from hand thrown pottery, but all of the very highest quality. Not cheap, but you very much get what you pay for here; in these pots I feel I am getting something which will in time become loved family heirlooms.

There is an attached art gallery, displaying other potters' work (though I got so excited at buying our own particular pots that I did not even make it around the gallery!), whilst outside there are several different areas of garden, each with planted-up pots inspiring you to have a go at making your own little pieces of Paradise. That is the joy of 'pot gardening' - even the smallest spaces can be enhanced and made into little havens of pleasure, which can be easily changed around as the seasons pass.

Enjoy the photographs, which will give you just a flavour of our day - centred on the pottery, but also enhanced by our ramble around the lanes of a particularly beautiful part of the English countryside, at one of the loveliest times of the year.

Inside the Pottery - one of the workrooms, used for storing moulds

Loading the kiln by throwing pots down to the loader from above; much confidence, co-operation and knowledge needed here!

One of five different 'Shakespeare' pots,  all bearing quotes from The Master

On the left, 'Acorn' pots - one of which  came home as a gift to Autumn Cottage

Even the smallest garden could find room for a corner like this?

In the village - Whichford church

So many textures - old tombs and gravestones, a dry-stone wall and burgeoning flora

Much scratching and scraping could be heard as I entered the church...

This was the reason - restoration of 14th century painted glass

...the skilled craftsman placing the precious glass back in place

A wisteria in full, glorious flourish on a barn conversion gable end, opposite the church

A reminder of my childhood - overflowing hedgerows of Queen Anne's Lace, Campion - and a newer addition -escaped rapeseed

Back at Autumn Cottage - two more pots which came home with me.

Now about that return visit...

May Flies By!

Hello again, friends, after far too long. I was so looking forward to sharing the slow unfurling of Springtime here at Autumn Cottage but then - to teach me a lesson in making assumptions - along came a bunch of annoying health issues, including a nasty virus, to knock me over and keep me away from the keyboard and the camera for over a month.

I've been sneaking out, though, to capture a few images of spring and early summer creeping in here; well - creeping in a month ago - now it is galloping about. Not many words today, but here are a few pictures to keep you up to date. Doesn't everything look GREEN??!!

The 'Garden of Shame' - now 'The Cottage Garden' - new planting going in

The very old Laburnum tree in flower

The weeping pear - Pyrus salcifolia pendula

A little book-nook under the tree

St Francis has taken up his place by the pond again, after spending winter in the summerhouse...

...which is now fully 'open for business'

Another book-nook - under the apple tree; all that blossom will hopefully give plenty of apples for chutney-making in the autumn...

For UK readers - I've been able to indulge my dragonfly obsession at Matelan, with this lovely throw (£5.00) and cushion (£10.00) - now I await the return of dragonflies around the pond

...and as always, Pip is available to ornament the scene!

 

 

Up They Come for Saint David's Day!

First, there was just the new fence and a lot of bare earth (minus two wheel barrows full of stones)

Then came 200 bulbs...

...which were scattered amongst the lavenders, which were planted first, a few days before...

Then came a series of big holes...

into which the daffs were buried, 3x their length, deep down.

Then we waited...through November...

...and December, and January..

.

Lo and behold! The First of March - and the first flowers are (just!) opening ...

...Daffodils for St David - Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus!

What's in a Name? So Many Memories...

Clearing the winter leaf blanket as the daffodils shoot up

We both chuckled when Alec came in yesterday morning, togged up for a spot of gardening. He has lost weight recently, so thought a little assistance would be useful in the holding up of  his gardening trews. He had found a pair of brocaded braces in his cupboard, so, thinking them suitable for gardening duty, (very sartorial, is Alec!), had hitched up his pants and was ready for work.

But as he was finishing his coffee, prior to foraying out into the far reaches of the garden, he mentioned that he had noticed that the name 'Latham' was written on the inner side of said braces. How on earth had that got there?? Then their origin dawned on me; they had last been worn by my father, in his final days in a nursing home, an establishment  that - of course - required all garments to be labelled.

My poor old Dad, who prided himself on his smartness of attire, who ended up in quick-change trousers, with no thought to their appearance. My Dad who so dearly loved his garden, until Alzheimer's struck; then interest in gardens and life slowly dwindled away. You realise these things looking back; in reality, he didn't 'lose' interest - interest was stolen from him by the ravages of that horrible disease. Now - 20 years later - the gardener's braces were in service again, put to work in another garden. It was a fitting usage for them.

And later, we raised a cup of memory to him, for the sake of Auld Lang Syne. I wonder if he's pruning the roses in Paradise?

Snowdrops up - crocuses waiting in the wings