Generous gardeners.

Had a busy day splitting more hostas at my parents. Chopping a mahonia and budlia down and pottering about their garden.

I was also waiting for a plant delivery from a local nursery. One we always use for bedding plants for my parents. Also got some for friends that aren’t able to go out.

I only took a picture of this lovely alpine phlox in flower.

When the plants arrived I sorted them all and delivered the majority to friends. How time flies!

As I dropped them off I was given some sweet peas, a miniature water lily and a miniature fern!

Gardeners are so sharing!!!

I got back home just after seven o’clock and just in time for our weekly quiz.

I’ll promise to take more pictures tomorrow.

Plant frenzy yarden jungle

We haven’t had any rain for some time and it has been so warm that all the plants having been growing faster than I ever imagined!

Space in our yarden is getting more and more sparse! Though I can always fit in just one more plant.

Lately I have had lots of deliveries and at one point I thought that I got a delivery every day of the week!

Here are some plants that’s have arrived recently:

In a clock wise direction. Setaria palmifolia, Impatiens tinctora, Canna x ehemanii, two Eucomis pole evansii and Hedychium yunnanense. This was literally when I had just unpacked them. They are all doing great now.

I bought the impatiens as this is a white variety and is meant to have an incredible scent. The canna is meant to grow huge! These Eucomis are meant to grow really big too and the Hedychium has luscious leaves and hopefully will have beautiful white flowers. Fingers crossed!

I am really lucky that one of my friends was recently holidaying in Cornwall and she was generous enough to get some plants from my wish list whilst there. Here is another Setaria palmifolia, an exotic grass that has palm like leaves, giving that truly tropical feel and Zantedeschia ‘White Giant’, a much larger version of my already much loved Zantadeschia aeotopica, I’m hoping that this will grow to to about 4.5 feet in the next couple of years.

Also I am so pleased at how the plants have been flowering; if you have read some of my previous posts you may realise that I tend to grow more leafy plants; yet I have had great pleasure in some of the recent colour, variety and most of all scent that they have brought to our tiny yarden.

I thought I would share some of these flowers.

I fell in love with this tiny flowered shrub when we visited Kefalonia last summer. This is Cestrum nocturnum, which although has greenish insignificant flowers, more than makes up with an intoxicating scent that gives the air a Mediterranean summers evening; even here in Stockport!

The lovely white flowers of these cosmos are brightening up a darkened area of the yard and bees love them!

Here are the Zantedeschia Aeotpica I mentioned earlier, these are a real statement plant and already stand about 3 feet tall, I can’t imagine what the ‘White Giant’ is going to look like in the hopefully near future.

This tiny annual is called Alysum, and though I never set out on using this in my yarden, a recent visit to a plant nursery changed my mind! Another scented plant and invaluable to accomplish my goal. Basically the lesson here is don’t be a plant snob!

Another of my favourite species of plants has to be geraniums. They are tough, hard working and give you lots for your money! In this case, this stunningly tiny white flowered geranium was given to me by a friend. As much as I think I have planted it in the wrong area, this is definitely an accidental keeper! I’m expecting it to self seed all over. It reminds me of gypsophila and bouquets of flowers.

You all know I love hostas and I love everything about them, here is Hosta ‘Queen of the Seas’ with lovely white tubular bells, again another regular stop for the bees.

You may have noticed, I generally grow blue and white flowers and perhaps some black, but these are harder to come by. This is Allium carulem, it is only a very dainty flower but added colour nonetheless.

I may have mentioned these beauties before, but I cannot get over how blue and stunning they are. They keep growing, flowering and though they do not provide scent like many other sweet peas I guarantee they will make you smile.

Another amazing scent in my yarden is this small alpine plant that I bought from a plant fair. I had never come cross a Zaluzianskya ovata before; I had to give it a go and the evening perfume is heavy and unmissable.

Apologies for the delay in publishing this, I am currently on holiday in Skiathos, Greece. I am currently taking lots of pictures of the amazing plants out here and will have another blog soon.

Enjoy your green space!!

Scorching weekend and Wales trip!

Hi all, I do hope you have all had a great weekend, rating weekends, I’d say mine was pretty good.

I managed to do a fair bit in my yarden, it really is turning into a bit of a jungle. That is the look I’m going for by the way.

Other than pottering about, my friend and I had planned to go to a plant nursery that I’ve wanted to visit for some time. So on Saturday we set off at nine o’clock for North Wales.

After a quick coffee stop we realised that we were close to an old nursery I used to visit regularly when I was younger. So we decided to take a bit of a detour and allowed ourselves half an hour at Aberconwy Alpine Nursery.

Aberconwy Alpine Nurseryis a small family run plant nursery that specialises in alpine plants. It is a little hidden gem, they have been growing and selling these tiny alpines for some time. Due to ill health it’s not as packed as it once was, yet they still have some lesser known varieties and it is still worth a visit. I’d recommend calling ahead if your visiting on a weekend.

Needless to say between my friend and I bought a fair few plants, here are two of the twelve we bought between us.

Sempervivum ‘Cmiral’s yellow’

Aeonium sedifolium

Leaving here we set off for our planned destination, and only half an later we arrive to another out of the way plant specialist. Crûg Plant Farm is not what everyone is looking for, more for the inquisitive, I’d say. They have unusual plants (and some more well recognised) and an interesting garden of lesser known plants that’s worth a wander round, with this in mind the rarer plants have an understandably higher price tag. Sadly we were both a little disappointed with our visit, they didn’t have many of the plants that I was hoping to buy and it’s much smaller than you’d think. I put this down to going too early in the season. Again I would call ahead and check before making the 220 mile round trip. Saying that I’d definitely be back, hopefully I’ll meet Sue and Bleddyn next time, as they were enjoying Chelsea Flower Show.

Still we managed to buy some plants of course!

Hedychium villosum x tenuiflorum – a white flowered ginger

Holboellia brachyandra – a highly perfumed edible fruiting climber

With the visits out of the way we headed to the Black Rock Beach for a quick picnic and even had a little paddle.

I will keep you up to date with some other little projects later on. Have fun, enjoy the sun, and don’t forget to keep your plants well watered!