Bedmaking

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This year we have enjoyed a bumper crop on the apple tree we inherited. Previously it has produced just a handful of weedy fruit which never came to anything. I picked a few after lunch.

On this gloriously warm and sunny day, Jackie continued with the refurbishment of the Weeping Birch Bed on which she has spent many hours over the last few days. Like many of the beds in the garden, this one has been laid over solid concrete, the soil gradually seeping through the dry brick and stone retaining wall onto the gravel which we laid down a couple of years ago. Most plants were now rooted in very few inches of earth. The Head Gardener has rebuilt the wall; sifted much soil and gravel; cleared an access footpath; replenished the soil with compost; weeded and replanted, along the way digging out stray rocks, including tufa.

Experts are now dictating that asters should now be called something long and forgettable, yet the Autumn Jewel variety now settled in its new home does not bear the new nomenclature. We will therefore continue to term the plants beside the rose that has no name, facing self-seeded bidens across the brick path, as we have done all our lives.

We are enjoying a variety of the once unfashionable dahlias,

some of which,

like these euphorbia and kniphofia, still attract bees and wasps,

as, especially, do sedums, now rivalling geranium in richness of red.

This Small White butterfly rented the verbena bonariensis on a short term lease from the bees.

Geraniums, lobelia, and Japanese anemones continue to thrive;

while, in the Rose Garden, Mama Mia and Absolutely Fabulous are among those furnishing further flushes.

This evening we finished Jackie’s splendid pasta arrabbiata with which she drank Hoegaarden while Elizabeth and I drank Patrick Chodot’s Brouilly 2016.
 

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  5. I wonder how the tufa got there….. Jackie has done amazingly well with a garden made on a concrete base. I inherited something like that here – except mine was packed clay infested with millions of oxalis corms. Eventually, being no Jackie, I had it all removed.

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  7. Your photos are so amazing, Derrick! I love the brightness and detail in them! 🙂
    OH! And it looks like Jackie and the bees and butterflies are busy lovingly tending to the beautiful flowers! 🙂
    The apples look wonderful! Can you eat them as is? Or will they become pies and etc?!
    HUGS!!! 🙂

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  9. It’s all so beautiful, Derrick! “This Small White butterfly rented the verbena bonariensis on a short term lease from the bees” made me laugh. It made me imagine a bunch of insects negotiating contracts. 🙂

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  12. I know the experts need to give flowers really long scientific names that are made from Latin with a little infection of Greek. BUT what’s wrong with ‘snapdragons’ for a name- My favourite name by the way.

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  21. Those apples remind me of my apple tree that died two years ago. I started it as a little sapling and lived twenty years before it succumbed to the apple tree disease. It used to produce a lot of sweet apples. I miss it. 🙁

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