May flowers in London

For us gardeners it seems difficult to talk about anything else than our gardens and the weather, yet – we seem to have a rather short memory when it comes to past weather. Do you remember what kind of weather we had last spring or the spring before? Well, I do, because I have written it down, but I also do because it was so extreme! I suppose for many of us, EXTREME is the word we could start using to describe the weather by in the future, no matter where we live.

Just to recap, if you don’t remember :-) Last spring was that really cold one here in UK that seemed to go on for forever and meant that at least in my garden, most plants were 4-6 weeks late. The spring before that one was the one that rained away. We had a winter drought and first week of April a hosepipe ban was introduced, 2 days later it started raining and didn’t stop until late August. Well, THIS spring has been rather cold, not too wet, pretty average I suppose, but it followed a really unusual winter where it rained non-stop for 4 months and at least in my garden, without any frost at all. So what has that meant to the plants in my garden this spring? I am pretty much average with most things, not early and not late. Some of the roses started flowering 2 weeks ago, the rest are just waiting for a week of a bit warmer weather and they will all be out. The really unusual thing has been all the plants that didn’t go into dormancy during the winter and therefore has either flowered all winter or started flowering much earlier than normal. More about that later.

Here on my patio is the only really sunny space in my garden, the sun-loving plants are fighting for the space here and apart from the big fuchsia which is soon to be moved down to the bottom of the garden, the rest of the plants have a rather distinctive Mediterranean feel.

Turning around is my seating area, and give it another month and this space will be filled with flowers!

Up from the patio are my nursery shelves. Mine has this rather unique ability to refill seemingly all by themselves whenever I manage to plant some of the plants out in the flowerbeds. I keep looking forward to the empty space on my shelves but as soon as I turn around they are full again!

Many of the cuttings are already flowering here on the nursery shelves, a sure sign they would rather like a bigger pot and a permanent space. OK, OK....can I please apply somewhere for a few more hours in the day? 4 or 5 extra would suit me very well!!

Do you remember the miniature fuchsias from last month? They are all doing well and in full flower, this is Fuchsia bacillaris 'Cottinghamii' and the plan is to turn this one into a Bonsai tree. It will take oh....4-5 years or so, so don’t expect to see any instant result here on my blog!

And this is Fuchsia 'Fuksie Foetsie', another lovely miniature that might end up as a Bonsai, not sure, it grows veeeery slowly, even I might get a tad impatient.

And this fuchsia is probably the most exciting I have bought this year, possibly ever! I am not sure if I can manage to keep it over winter, but that will of course depend on what kind of winter we get – another one of those we just had and it won’t be a problem at all. This is Fuchsia boliviana 'Alba', a fuchsia not really grown for its flowers but for its edible berries. If you have never heard of Fuchsia boliviana have a look at this page and tell me if this doesn’t look exciting?! I hope to be able to grow it in a large container so in case we do get a really bad winter at least I could take the container indoors for a few days, or wrap well with fleece.

Well, speaking of fuchsias, if you have been visiting regularly here on my blog, you will have noticed that all my fuchsias have been in flower since last July or so – right through the winter, and none of them got the dormancy period they were supposed to have, nor did they lose their leaves. I decided not to cut down my fuchsias, and just see what happens. So far that seems like a wise choice, they are all flowering like mad, and it’s been fun having fuchsia flowers at the same time as crocuses, daffodils and hyacinths! This is Fuchsia 'Snowburner'.

I hope you are not tired of seeing my fuchsias, because there is a whole season of flowers in front of us – I hope all my fuchsias are going to continue to flower until Christmas, possibly even longer if we get a mild winter! So yep, I hope you can stomach a few more fuchsia photos :-) This is Fuchsia 'Marcus Graham'.

And this is Fuchsia 'Deep Purple', all these three are trailing fuchsias, which I planted together as cuttings last spring in one pot. It is now a huge plant where all the branches are mixed together so it looks like one plant producing three different flowers. It is difficult to take photos that really shows you what an enormous plant this has become so here is a short video instead. If your download speed allows for it, please view in 720p or higher.

Back to the seating area in my garden and the bench where I often sit.

From this corner, my garden looks rather full already and very different from just a month ago. I can no longer see the path down to the end and the seating area feels nice and secluded.

And how about this shot, this is a view you perhaps haven’t seen of my garden before. The 9m tall cedar tree is so tall that I struggle to get the whole of it in this shot.

And while I am still sitting here, let me show you this lovely Dicentra  formosa 'Bacchanal', one of the best bloomers in my garden. I think it possibly should have been divided earlier this year, I hope it will survive another season in this tub and then I promise to split and re-pot. I could probably get 4 plants out of this one, anyone want a piece?

Next to the bench is also my lovely, late flowering Rhododendron ‘Dopey’, one of the 7 Disney dwarfs. I wish I could invite his 6 brothers into the garden, but I have no idea where to accommodate them so for now it’s just Dopey who resides here.

The flowers are really beautiful, but because it flowers so late, they don’t last very long. My Rhododendron ‘Christmas Cheer’ flowers for several months, but finished long time ago, ‘Dopey’ flowers for 3-4 weeks max, but looks oh so pretty when in flower.

Looking down in my garden, the camellia still have some flowers left, although the masses of flowers it had last month is gone. I also gave it a hard prune 3 weeks ago which did away with a lot of the flowers, but the prune was a rather overdue one. It looks so neat and compact now!

Just to remind you, this was the camellia a month ago. I filled 3 big rubbish sacks full with leaves, branches and flowers from the camellia and a lot of it was dead branches just hanging on the underside – good to get them off.

The hard pruning made the camellia go into to a frantic new growth, there are new shoots on every tip I have cut. Since I have done the pruning so early, each of these tips will produce flowers for next year and even such a massive prune won’t affect next year’s flowering, on the contrary actually. In the past when I have done similar pruning, I have had even more flowers the following year. But I think pruning like this has to happen early enough, even if it means sacrificing some flowers. I prune the camellia every 5 years or so, just to maintain shape and keep it from toppling over - it grows against a fence  so it really is just ‘half’ a camellia or a half-circle and when in full flower I am afraid the sheer weight of it one day will make it simply topple over :-)

Standing next to the camellia and looking back towards the seating area, the flower beds are filling up so quickly!

Did you notice the beautiful new collection of Heucheras I have? Some of these come from my blogging friend Angie’s garden when we did a plant swap earlier this year.

And this little beauty is Geranium sylvaticum 'Album', also one of the plants from the big English/Scottish plant swap :-)

Oh, more fuchsias to show you! In this bed I have 4 Fuchsia 'Annabel' in amongst the other plants, they were considered tender originally, but I think they have been upgraded to ‘semi-tender’ as people have found them more hardy than originally thought. In my garden the 4 'Annabel' plants have been green and sparingly in flower the whole winter and now they have stepped up a notch and are covered in buds. I never cut these down, but normally they lose their leaves and grow new ones from June or so and then flower from July to frost. It will be interesting to see how long they will flower this year when they haven’t had a break at all – I have no idea, I have never had ‘evergreen’ fuchsias before!!

'Annabel' is a beauty, and the leaves are a bit unusual too, with that zingy, lime green colour.

OK, enough about fuchsias for a while, let’s talk roses! I wish I could show you a garden FULL of roses, but I am afraid it’s a bit early for that. I have had all roses in flower before end of April in previous years, but that’s a good few years since last time. The mild winter hasn’t affected the roses, but the cold March and April, especially the cold nights and mornings has. They are not exactly late, last year they were late! I had just a few roses for the GBBD post in June last year, now we are in May so a month earlier and at about the same stage. This is ‘Rob Roy’, not usually an early one but he has been flowering for a good week already.

My trusty pot rose has been flowering for about 10 days and has lots of buds, too many to count!

This is Rosa 'Susan Williams-Ellis'  here with the first fully open flower.

Although there are lots of buds on 'Susan Williams-Ellis' too. I like the buds on this rose, it’s amazing that they can be pink with red stripes - and then open as completely white roses!

My ‘Crimson Cascade’ is usually one of the earliest bloomer but the squirrels have eaten all the new shoots so there are no buds at all on the top! This one is far down and away from the fence so the squirrels could not reach it. The rose is putting on new shoots so I hope that means new buds too, ‘Crimson Cascade’ is my pride and joy of the roses, it would be sad if I had to be without any flowers a whole season. Pesky squirrels!

I am afraid there isn’t any more fully open roses, they are all at the same stage, waiting for a good week of warm weather and sunshine – which we are promised now! Just not in time for my photos. This is my pink pot rose, a beautiful, strong growing rose.

And this is Rose, 'Mildred Scheel', I guess you can see the theme here, lots of buds ready to pop, but not quite there!

OK, final rose almost flowering – this is Rose, 'Wildeve', another one of my David Austin roses.

What about peonies? Nope, they are tall, very tall. Note to self, must stake them soon!

But not flowering yet. A good week of nice warm weather and sunshine – oh, you get the drift!

Something that is flowering for a change? This is my tender geraniums, 'Pink Chiffon', which originally were in the window baskets in my front garden. I dug them up in December when I planted my winter bedding plants (yes, I know it’s late, but I go by the weather, not the calendar!) My plan was just to keep them in these pots until they died, instead of chucking them straight away, at least I would get some joy of them until winter took them. Except that never happened – winter I mean. These 7 geranium pots stayed outside on my patio all winter, since I don’t have a greenhouse I didn’t have a choice in where to keep them – and they never died. They didn’t even lose their leaves. And in March they started to put on new growth so I cut them down by half. The result is that I now have tender geraniums in flower in middle of May. These were new last year, bought as small cuttings in March and last year they started to flower in middle of July.

Another plant in flower is my lilac. I have raised it from a tiny seedling and I am not entirely sure what type it is, except it is NOT a Syringa vulgaris. From photos and info I have found online I think it possibly is Syringa komarowii reflexa, does anyone know this lilac?

The flowers are rather different to the common Syringa vulgaris and the scent is different too.

Down at the bottom of my garden it is seemingly green, green and more green!

But there are other colours here too, these two dicentras make a good effort and with the support I set up this year, none of them has had any amputations by passing cats either. Hurrah!

This is Dicentra spectabilis 'Valentine', a favourite of mine. Did you know Dicentra spectabilis has changed name? To Lamprocapnos spectabilis. I hate it when plants get new names! Anyway, for me they will always be Dicentra.

'Valentine'

And this is Dicentra spectabilis 'Alba' or Lamprocapnos spectabilis 'Alba'.

'Alba'

There are other flowering plants down here at the bottom of my garden, some of them considerably less showy than Dicentra, but that doesn’t mean they are not exciting. This is a small clump of Arisaema amurense. The mature plant has the typical leaves with 5 leaflets whilst the baby next to it has only 3 leaflets and will need a good few more years to reach flowering age.

The flower of Arisaema amurense is rather special, with like a little umbrella over the opening to cover from rain!

The colours are rather amazing too, and in the autumn it will develop bright orange berries which develops into more babies.

There are more plants in flower down here at woodland area, and oh, more fuchsias! I promise this will be the last fuchsia today. This is Fuchsia 'Mrs Popple' and she was the only one of the fuchsias that got cut down to the ground in early March.

But being such a fast grower it doesn’t seem to have hurt at all, 'Mrs Popple' is already flowering again.

Last month I showed you my Acer in flower, something that has only happened once before.

Well, here is the result, the seeds of Acer palmatum 'Garnet'  looks just like any other Acer, just rather small. I wonder if I will get any seedlings this time, I didn’t last time.

Stepping back a bit, the bed where the Acer is growing is also filling up very quickly. Right behind the acer are two of my clematises and despite both being pruning group 3 they are both in full flower. The are both 10 years old and way too big for the obelisks I have them on, I really should have given them some taller and wider support as I don’t really get to enjoy them much the way they end up growing.

But let me first show you what’s growing under the clematis and camellia in this bed. Not easy to show you the whole lot, but here is a photo of one of them - Lily of the Valley. They are in full flower now.

Back to the clematises, not easy to photograph but these two are a right tangle already having grown to the top of the obelisks and then toppled over, growing together and then reaching for the camellia. Last year the camellia was full of clematis flowers – but that was long after the camellia flowers were gone. This year I have two types of clematis flowers in the camellia at the same time as the camellia is flowering – that’s new :-)

Taking photos of the ‘Niobe’ is becoming a challenge, and by the way, I agree with those commenting on my last post that this might not be ‘Niobe’, I have wondered myself for years as ‘Niobe’ is supposed to be much darker red. I hate it when nurseries are wrongly labelling – I still have the label where it says ‘Niobe’ and where I bought it!

But the flowers are lovely whatever they are called, and now that they are a bit tricky to reach I make sure to have some on my table too.

The second clematis here is Clematis texensis 'Gravetye Beauty' and this one I am sure has the right name, it is such a distinctive one. If you think it looks very much like ‘Princess Diana' it does, another texensis clematis.

And this is a newcomer in my garden that I am expecting a lot from,  Clematis 'Mon Amour'. I looked for a long time after a blue clematis, and found one as blue as possible, this one. But now that I have seen its first flower I don’t really think it looks blue at all. A new search reveals that different websites show this clematis in rather different blue/purple hues. It is pretty enough, but not exactly blue!

And here is another new purchase from last autumn, Aquilegia vulgaris 'Ruby Port'. It is rather young still, with only one flower stalk. I hope it will grow bigger over summer and plump up nicely.

I haven’t showed you my front garden yet, to be honest there isn’t much difference here from a month ago, the fuchsias are flowering like mad and the window baskets on the wall are full of flowers – although the winter pansies are getting a bit leggy and tired now so I will soon change to summer bedding plants and chuck out all this.

And today the summer bedding plants arrived! It is always exciting when deliveries turn up but I can’t think of a more exciting delivery than plants. This is from a company called plantmenow.co.uk if you live in UK and haven’t used them yet, here is my absolute warmest recommendation. The plants are great quality, much bigger than you get anywhere else, and delivery....oh well, if every company used a delivery service like them there would be far less frustrations in the world!

And here is what’s destined for the front garden wall in a few weeks time. I’ll tell you next GBBD post what they all are :-)

All photos were taken during Tuesday 13th and Wednesday 14th this week, Tuesday was particularly challenging as the weather kept changing every few minutes and the wind that has plagued us for weeks on and off was pretty bad. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to try to take close-up photos of plants in windy weather! And every now and then the heavens opened up to all manner of precipitation…..

But the weather hasn’t been all bad, and starting from tomorrow and lasting a whole week we are promised some really good weather. My roses will  like that!

The sunset tonight gave the assurance of good weather tomorrow.

That was some of the plants in flower this middle of May, I have many more but I simply can’t show you all of them, I don’t want to keep you reading into next week! If you do want to read some more you can head over to Carol at May Dreams Gardens, where you can find gardens from all over the world and see what’s in flower right now.

Until next time, take care.