06.08. Another garden movie

I have been filming in my garden again; this is the third movie I have made from my garden this year and I think I will continue doing this for a while. The differences between the seasons are so immense and although I take pictures every month, the movies are a much better way of documenting the horticulture events and sometimes miracles in my garden.

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Here is this month’s movie, from my garden which is looking greener and lusher every week. At this time of year, many plants are starting to look a bit tired – from lack of water and nutrition and perhaps some should have had a bit of pruning too. But the overall impression is still a lot of flowers, even if we are in August, the quiet month for flowers. Sorry about the slight wobbly camera here and there; I am still on crutches after my hip operation in June and it was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be to film with my camera in one hand and a crutch in the other hand.

And here are a few pictures if the movie went too quickly, or if you skipped the movie; this is my garden today, Saturday – just look at the plant on my arch, it has become a bit of a monster plant! This is the Dregea sinensis that I have written about before, and posted pictures about before, as early as in January the 30th when I gave it the yearly pruning. Back then I wrote that even though I thought I pruned away too much, I probably would wish in August that I had taken off even more. And true to words; that’s exactly where I am today! I could have taken off much more, and still have had a beautiful arch. It is so heavy now that it is groaning when it is windy, and I am afraid the weight is going to pull it down. Next winter I will cut it down completely. I have never done that before, always left long lianas all along to the top, but I have decided now; this winter the whole thing is coming off!

And look at my roses! They are still going strong, even if August is a bit of a quiet period for them usually. The lack of water gets to them, so they usually flower more when we get to September/October, when the temperature is lower and we have more rain. The roses flowers all year round, they only take a break when I cut them down in early spring. Depending on what weather and temperature in the spring it might take between 4 and 8 weeks before they start flowering again after their spring pruning. It is amazing to see them flower in the coldest part of the winter; just before Christmas for example :-)

Here is the latest addition to my rose collection, another freebee from the online company I order plants from: they freely give out bare-root roses, but they are not very good at labelling them; according to the label attached to this rose it was supposed to be a Large-Flowered Rose 'Candy Stripe'. Looking up this one on the Internet it actually looks stripy and nothing like my evenly pink rose. It is supposed to be scented too, but mine have no scent at all. Well, it is not the first rose that turns out to be wrongly labelled; I have planted a rose in my neighbour garden which was called Betty Uprichard – supposed to be salmon coloured, but mine is bright red! You could possible argue that a rose is a rose….but sometimes I plant according to a colour scheme and then it actually matters whether the flowers turn out to be red or pink….and even if I got them for free I still think the company need to get the labelling right. Since this has happened twice now I might drop them a line and let them know. They might send me the correct roses if I am lucky!

The last photo is of my dahlias, these ones are called 'Sunshine', for obvious reasons :-) I bought a small pot of dahlias in 2005 for 50p in B&Q, from their reduced section, and the plant was in a really sorry state, hence the low price! It was late in the season, September I think, but it came up next spring with lots of flowers and because of where I have placed it, around the roots of the big conifer, I don’t need to lift the tubers in the winter. But I have lifted the clump once, a couple of years ago, to divide it and split it into three plants which have happily grown into big healthy bushes. With regular deadheading throughout the flowering season, these dahlias flower from June to early November. Not bad for 50p! I have tried to grow dahlias in other parts of my garden, but they have not survived the winter – probably because the area has been too wet during the winter and the tubers therefore have rotted. Where these are planted, under the conifer, between the tree roots, the soil will dry out even during the winter rain, and keep the tubers nice and dry.

That’s it for tonight, folks. More next time, take care.