EOMV – June, the joys of a new garden #2

It is hot in London, it’s been nice weather for some time but now it’s really stepping up a gear. With 30-35 degrees C in my garden and no substantial rain for months I am struggling to keep all my potted plants alive, all 700 of them. Well there were nearly 700 to begin with, I am afraid some have died due to vine weevils, some have died due to lack of water and some have actually got too much water and drowned. I can’t possibly go around and stick my finger into each and every pot before applying water to check if it needs water or not, I just hose them down and hope for the best - every evening. It is a relentless work and I am determined to get as many as possible through the summer. But a few more will probably die.

I have tried to do a bit more in the garden, usually very late in the evening when it is a bit cooler. Here is a photo from last month of that huge choycia and the lovely Salix integra next to it.

And this is what it looks like today. I have removed the whole choycia, never been very keen on it anyway and I know it would grow back pretty quickly if I cut it back. I have trimmed off a lot of dead branches off the Salix and snipped a bit on the left and right side. Any pruning should happen in winter or very early spring so I will wait with more shaping, but I can’t really see this Salix ever becoming that tightly shaped lollipop I have seen online, it is too big and neglected to ever look like one. That’s OK, I kind of like the look of this gnarly tree trunk with the unruly hair on top :-)

One tree I don’t appreciate as much is the tree in the middle of the garden. I assume it is a second plumtree, but until the fruit is ripe I won’t know for sure. I don’t have a good ‘before photo’ for you, but before I started trimming it, this tree had branches coming out of it everywhere, in all angles, and most of the branches looked completely different to the fruit bearing ones.

I assume this is the grafting point and that no one has taken care to snip off the branches coming out of here in time. The result was a very strange looking tree, and an even more strange looking tree now that I have cut off all the non-fruit bearing branches with different leaves. It doesn’t matter though, I have decided to get rid of this tree as it is right in the middle of the garden and way too big as a centre piece. Just imagine how big this tree could be in another 10 years’ time, it could take over the whole space here.

But it is intriguing to know what’s happened to it and why, if you have a better explanation please let me know. I am also wondering if this plumtree is necessary for pollination of the other plumtree in the garden, which I intend to keep – I might end up with no plums if I remove this one? As you can see it has lots of fruit so having sprouted a lot of alien branches doesn’t seem to have slowed it down.

I have tried to empty as many crates as possible, the crates were very useful when moving and the first few weeks after, but lately most of the plants have grown so big that it became impossible to keep an eye on them in the crates – all I could see was masses of leaves spilling out over the edges. So most of the pots are out of the crates, and just cuttings left in these 6 crates.

Does anyone have need for 100 crates?? I intend to give them away, if you want them please let me know here! If I can’t give them away here I will do it via Freecycle.

I have continued to tidy the end of the shade garden – which turns out to be not so shady after all. I struggle to find defined areas for shade and sun, it is very different here than in my previous garden due to buildings and trees – and lack of them. Even the shady front garden gets sun in parts of the day, after the sun has passed the big trees in the car park, and today the fuchsias were really wilting in the blazing sun and heat for a few hours. I don’t really have a good solution for that as it doesn’t seem to be any good shade areas for mid-summer apart from right under the big ceanothus’ and I can’t see much being planted there.

But back to the Hot Garden, with hot coloured plants – and it was really hot there today, I must admit I didn’t do ANY gardening, I just took my photos and went inside again even though I was out late evening. There are way too many plants here and this is just meant to be temporarily until they all can get a place in the ground – but just wait to all these daylilies are in flower – this area will just explode!

At the moment it is Hemerocallis 'Burning Daylight' and Rosa 'Ingrid Bergmann' which dominates, all the plants here are in red, yellow and orange tones. Well, apart from that blue clematis, it has been allowed to stay for now!

And on the ground the tones are more shock-pink, with the Angel pelargoniums in full flower and the daylilies soon to open too.

This pelargonium is probably going to be one of my favourites – Apple blossom, I have wanted it for a few years and I bought 5 to have in my window baskets on the wall in my front garden – my PREVIOUS front garden. I no longer have a wall so my window baskets are being used as a stand for the kitchen garden baskets, but these pelargoniums need a better home than the cutting pots soon. I have so many plants that need re-potting, I just don’t have enough hours in the day….

And speaking of which – this is what it looks like when turning 180 degrees from the Hot Garden, I haven’t got around to do anything here yet so it’s rather messy still.

One big decision I need to take soon is what to do with the Parthenocissus on the wall at the bottom of my garden. This is the sunniest part of the garden and the view from my living room window. I can’t make up my mind what to do with it. Keep it? Remove it? Remove just the left side of it and keep the part next to the shed? Just trim it? The plan is to make the bed deeper here, and it would look lovely to have roses and clematis growing up the wall, that is the brick wall under the Parthenocissus – but I am not sure what state the wall is in. And I am not sure if I should remove such a magnificent cover, I know what it looks like in the autumn! But I have to make a decision soon about where to put my roses, they are not happy in the containers and need to get in the ground soon. The Parthenocissus grows from the shed side towards the left and have runners all the way round up to the back door. I am inclined to remove half of it, just as a test, it would at least grow back if the wall behind it looks awful!

Another thing I wouldn’t mind losing a bit of is this huge cherry tree. It is in the corner of the carpark next door, at the community centre but it kind of is towering over my garden. I don’t know if it was planted or just self-seeded and someone just decided to allow it to grow there, but it is way too big I think. When I sit in my garden it rather dominates the whole space and I have cherry seedlings of various sizes all over my garden. I don’t get to enjoy any of the fruit though unless someone has a tip for how to get cherries down from such a huge tree without using a ladder. I am no good on ladders anymore. And hiring a cherry picker is out of the question :-)

I actually have a cherry tree inside my garden, here, this is my cherry tree, but it is behind the shed so I can’t get to the fruit here either. I suspect this was certainly self-seeded, I can’t think why anyone would plant a cherry tree here.

And speaking of trees, this photinia might possibly be in for the chop too, it is growing next to the Salix and it has hardly any leaves on one side. It has probably not been pruned so it is growing in a vase shape from very low – that would make it difficult for me to plant anything under it. I might give it a severe haircut and see if it comes back, if not, well, then it will be off to the council’s composting service.

I’m sorry if I sound ruthless, but I have so many plants waiting for a space in the ground so I can’t keep old things that aren’t looking very well. And here is my plant graveyard, all the pots that so far have died while waiting for me to start planting. It seems like it is slowing down a bit though, hopefully the vine weevil treatment has worked so it won’t continue at the same rate. I have saved all the pots and intend to re-use the compost as soil improver, once I am sure all sign of vine weevil grubs are gone.

But let’s finish with some roses, they are a bit parched in the heat despite being watered every evening. This is 'Scepter'd Isle'.

And this is the new rose I bought for the arch I no longer have - 'The Generous Gardener'. I am not so sure I like the way the flowers open, but that can be the hot weather that does it – they look off before they have even opened up fully and start to drizzle petals at this half-open stage.

And last photo, my Lilium regale have started to flower, I have nearly 100 of them, although I am not sure how many I managed to lift and take with me. I counted all the lilies in total when I staked them, and I have 164, but I didn’t count how many of each. I can assure you these lilies are the strongest scented lilies you can imagine, and one of the easiest to grow. Here in my new garden they have been in pots in the only space where there is complete shade, that’s where they are happiest.

I have made a video this month too, short and sweet, only 3:18 minutes, filmed late Monday evening this week – please adjust settings as my videos are best viewed in HD.

That’s it for today, I am slowly trying to make the round and visit all of you, especially you who have commented on my previous post. I will get to you all eventually, I just have a million things to do still and so many things to sort out with the house. I so appreciate all the comments and tips I got in my last post and I hope there will be just as many suggestions and tips this time. Thanks for all the good help, until next time, take care.

I am linking this post to Helen at The Patient Gardener’s Weblog.

UPDATE, 1st July:
Just a short update about the heatwave we are currently experiencing here in London – a record breaking 36.5 C degrees at Heathrow today, but in my back garden there was 44 degrees C late afternoon due to the tall fences and all the trees and surrounding houses. It was like standing in the middle of an oven, not much sun, just really hot.

I took the photo on the left at 4:30 pm and the bottom temperature is for the outside, in the front garden, which is much cooler than the back garden. That’s where the cat camped out most of the day. And the photo to the left was at 9 pm, when it was still 30 degrees outside at the front. Note also the indoor temperature, the one in the middle, British houses don’t normally have air-condition so it was 30 degrees indoors too still at 9pm. Rather hot! Next week it is probably back to mid-20s, I can live with that :-)