Making the Best of It... (Was 'Blog from an Untidy Garden')

[tonyg]

Spent a couple of hours in the garden today   A rare occurrence   But the sun shone and it was good despite the cold!

Cyclamen coum at its best now is seeding around very freely since I reworked the front garden ... in two or three years time the patch will be twice the size!
Hepaticas raised form seed a few years ago are flowering now.  Not a special form but a pretty harbinger of Spring.  A closer look reveals the crop of new seedlings here also.
Tulips can be planted after Christmas and grow OK.  However these Tulipa sprengeri were put aside late autumn and forgotten when the snow and ice arrived.  Now discovered, they seem firm and are beginning to shoot. I planted them today, noting that those planted in September are above ground in good leaf already.  I'll report on how the late arrivals get on.

[angie]

Tony that Cyclamen coup is amazing, what an amount you have and what a great display

Angie

[tonyg]

Thanks Angie - once I realised that they like to be in a fairly sunny spot here they have thrived with very little help attention.  Anything that has survived the ravages of time since we had the children is tough indeed!

The garden time was split between working on further clearance for our long awaited outdoor seating/dining/entertaining area and clearance in the greenhouse.  Several trays of winter casualties have been removed.  As I mentioned in a previous blog some plants are dying slowly even now two months after the freeze receded.  Some Cyclamen graecum plants which had earlier seemed to have survived are now collapsing, examination of the tubers reveals soft areas.  There has been frost damage which has in turn led to rot setting in as temperatures rise.  Perhaps I could recover some by cutting the damaged areas away and treating the remains with fungicide but I am seeing this as an opportunity to have a drastic clearout, creating space for new (hardier!)  things raised from seed which are waiting in frames outside.  I will installing soil warming cables before installing the new plants next winter!  Sternbergias struggled with the cold in the greenhouse, although as yet the foliage has not rotted off.  In the garden they seen fine ... a learning point

To end on a bright note Androsace carnea has come into flower early in a trough, I last saw it in flower at 10,000 feet above Zermatt.  Finally, another look at Primula marginata, more advanced and in a different light.

[tonyg]

A hard frost earlier in the week.

Three bright and sunny days have seen many pots in frames get very dry as many bulbs are now in full growth.  First use of the hose this year.

[tonyg]

I usually close my crocus lecture with the comment that "as the first pulsatilla raises its head to the sun the crocus season is almost done."  Well here is the first pulsatilla this year ... and very early it is too.  Albeit the crocus in the front garden are mostly tatty now, there are a few nice ones still coming out in the frames.

Last spring I featured Corydalis malkensis and a little later sought to capture the seed which threatened to ripen while we were away at Easter.  I did manage to harvest some good seed (green pods taken from plants before we left) and here are the resulting seedlings which have emerged at exactly the same time as the parent plants came through.

Tulipa (Amana) edulis is always the earliest tulip.  Prone to flop in dull weather it is very hardy and makes a good show even in my overgrown 'meadow'.  In the greenhouse Chionodxa cretica is a tiny relative of the more showy garden plants.  I remember Vic Aspland talking about finding this in the wild while on a Cyclamen expedition, the bulbs were over 12 inches deep in the ground!

Finally, it is our local AGS show on Wednesday 16th (at Hethersett near Norwich) and although showing has taken a back seat lately I have a few pots in a shady place in the hope that the flowers will hold for a few more days.  It has been bright and sunny today, quite warm sunshine, quite unlike what folks up t'north are experiencing.

[tonyg]

Belatedly here is the show report from Norfolk AGS group Spring Show on 16th March.  The evening was enjoyed by all, as is often the case there were only a few exhibitors but the display was very colourful.  My brief return to the show scene was conspicuously successful although the bizarre awards ceremony saw myself and the show secretary presenting each other with the two awards!

Chionodoxa cretica made a rare appearance on the bench, the flowers are very dainty, dwarfed by the flower of Chionodoxa lucilliae added for comparison.

Back home the greenhouse display is muted this spring after the damage dome by the intense pre-Christmas cold.  However Fritillaria atroviolacea raised from seed collected in Iran by Kurt Vickery seems undamaged.  Only about 12cm high this is a dainty little Frit.

[tonyg]

With the warm weather comes germination.  Not all of the new arrivals are welcome .... weeds galore in the garden.  However I have something to celebrate.  Firstly the biennial Campanula formaneckiana left me a crop of its offspring in a pot which by rights should have been emptied and disposed of by now, if I were a really tidy gardener I would not have these seedlings  

The big celebration is the arrival above ground of Trillium grandiflorum seedlings.  A gift from forumist Kristal Walek, I followed the instructions to the letter.  The fresh seed was sown in a woodsy mixture and kept in a cool North facing frame.  I had to cover the pot with something to stop blackbirds foraging in the mixture.  The instructions said the seed would make roots the first winter and only appear above ground after the second winter.  Lo and behold, exactly as Kristal advised, here are seedlings.  I will keep them in the same frame for now but the next challenge is to grow them on into mature plants.  If you have any advise on Trillium from seed please post it here.  I have never grown them successfully before (only tried twice) as we have an unsympathetic garden and climate.

Another forumist due my thanks is Lesley Cox from NZ.  She sent the Crocus biflorus ssp alexandrii which first flowered here in June 2010.  Now in their second season since returning North they have almost turned around.  Hopefully this lovely form will bulk up as well here as it has for Lesley.

A year ago I replanted an old trough with new plants and a piece of weathered tufa.  The little saxifraga cuttings are growing slowly in the tufa, here Sax x apiculata.  The Primula marginata flowers in thius trough have been hit by a couple of frosts in the last 10 days.

Finally a shot of Narcissus bulbocodium in my big raised bed.  This form has always been a really good doer in pots, even winning a Farrer Medal for Lee and Julie Martin to whom I gave a few.  It has never persisted in the garden but as I had some to spare last repot I am trying again.  This time they are in a net pot which I can easily lift to divide them and refresh the growing medium in summer.

[David Nicholson]

........Finally a shot of Narcissus bulbocodium in my big raised bed.  This form has always been a really good doer in pots, even winning a Farrer Medal for Lee and Julie Martin to whom I gave a few.  It has never persisted in the garden but as I had some to spare last repot I am trying again.  This time they are in a net pot which I can easily lift to divide them and refresh the growing medium in summer.

Tony, just to show you that your progeny does well where ever it is here's a pic of the six pan class that Lee and Julie won at Exeter last Saturday. Then one of my friend, Mike Quest, with a 30cm(ish) pot full that,word has it, he just missed out on the Farrer at the same Show. Followed by my little pot that Mike passed on to me.

In at least one Nursery it has been listed as Narcissus 'Lee Martin' but my understanding is that Lee didn't name it as such and it was listed like that by mistake.

[tonyg]

David - I believe Lee & Julie have won Farrer Medal with two forms of N bulbocodium.   The one in the six pan is the one originally from me while the 'obesus' which you have is the other. 

Here there is much promise of the flowers to come.  I love watching as the plants awaken after their winter sleep.

Gentiana acaulis, Saxifraga paniculata, Saxifraga callosa, Saxifraga cotyledon all promising flowers sooner or later.

Campanula cochlearifolia, two small potted of seedlings released a year ago now make a spreading mat.  Curiously two more released in the rear garden raised bed at the same time have dwindled to just a few rosettes.  The soil there may be more compacted, this is a plant that likes to run in a loose substrate, the front garden bed is younger and less compacted.

I have already referred to many Cyclamen coum seedlings in the front garden, now my eyes are picking out some newly emerged seedlings of Corydalis malkensis too

[tonyg]

Iris bucharica is the stand-out plant in the slate bed today.  The flowers will not last long in the very warm weather but it is a fine clump.  I think they will need lifting and dividing this summer.

[tonyg]

And in the greenhouse, last autumn I planted my collection of juno irises into part of the plunge bed.  They do not do so well in pots inder my careless handling so I decided to release them into a suitable 'bed'.  Here they are in a strip of plunge separated from the sand by some slices of slate.  Definitely better than pots.  I would also like to try them in a bulb frame like Darren has shown us .... watch this space.
The plants are a mix of Iris vicaria forms, Iris magnifica and Iris x Warlsind.  I also show my plant of Iris caucasica, blooming for the first time under this regime.

[angie]

Love the Juno irises. I think  a lot of us are looking at building bulb frames. Darren has got us all hooked.

Angie

[tonyg]

What a difference a day makes.
Tulipa greigii: Saturday morning in bud, Sunday morning .....
These are raised from seed given to me years ago by an octogenarian AGS member, Reg Greenhill.  Another old friend remembered by the plant they gave me

[tonyg]

Mothers Day outing to Cromer ... after I had cooked Roast Beef, Yorkshires and roast potatoes, her favourite.
Amy is a little ray of sunshine ... and our resident butterfly expert.  She recently co-presented a short slideshow at her first Butterfly Conservation meeting   (No emoticon for 'Proud Dad')  She would quickly identify the Comma and Orange Tip seen in the garden here this week.  Back on Cromer cliffs there was a huge patch of Ranunculus ficaria just yards from Cromer Pier where someone bought Chips for tea ... so much for the roasties!

[tonyg]

Back home and the Spring will be very short if this heatwave continues.  Primula auricula copes better than most.  I have seen this growing in very exposed places against rocks in the Alps.  Iris suaveolens flowers are much more fleeting, lasting just a few days in the sunshine.  The anemone pictured was raised from seed as A coronaria but most of the plants resemble Anemone x fulgens as I have grown it in the past.  Cyclamen repandum is often seen in semi-shaded humus beds but some forms seem happy in much warmer, dryer places.  (Are these forms now referred to as Cyclamen peloponesiacum?)  Many pulsatillas in the garden now, I just love the silky flowers.  Many flowers please the eye and the nose, these are pleasing in another sense - touch.
Finally, I showed my Trillium grandiflorum seedlings as they emerged recently.  Here they are plus their blackbird protection.  You can see a line of seedlings across the pot, reflecting the area that the blackbirds did not disturb.