Heavy Lifting
Tulipa ‘Peppermint Stick’
What about this weather eh? It’s been more like summer here in England this week.
To be honest I could have done with more than the dribble of rain received over the weekend but I’m not going to complain. Not when you think what April is normally like in good old Blighty. And it can’t be bad to find yourself delving into the far reaches of the wardrobe for a pair of shorts this early in the year.
Magnolia laevifolia
But lest you were thinking that my absence (again) was down to a further (successful) search for the Pimms bottle, no, it’s been a couple of weeks of decidedly hard graft. I’m determined that, with little else in the diary to distract, this year the garden will be dragged back into shape. No excuses. And April is the perfect time to shift stuff around. I love doing this. Well, perhaps not so much the doing. It’s bloomin’ heavy work. But it is so very satisfying to see plants revelling in perhaps a more favourable position than was chosen for them the first time around, mingling seductively with a more companionable set of neighbours, all the while reducing the very large gap between the grandiose vision in the gardener’s mind and the hard reality as it exists on the ground.
Agapanthus ‘Zachary’
And of course if I’d done it last year it wouldn’t have been half so bad. Some perennial rootballs can grow to frightening proportions. Agapanthus, in particular, has big fleshy roots. Dividing it is a job and a half. So is hauling it from the bottom of the hill to the top and the wheelbarrow had to be deployed. It would also have been better done earlier in the month when the new growth wasn’t quite so lush. But it looks OK so far. Perhaps I got away with it.
Lysimachia clethroides
This was given to me as a gift by a very kind friend two or three years ago and by the time I came to dig it up the clump had spread to one and a half metres wide. I kid you not. Relocated and with extra space to allow for further growth it’s now given me two drifts each covering at least a metre square. So it’s a bit of a thug and does need a large border but as it’s all about covering earth here at the moment it fits the bill perfectly.
Lysimachia clethroides, the goose neck loosestrife. An archive shot.
And yes, the picture is the right way up!
Of course excavating on such a major scale is not without its attendant dangers, quite apart from the damage inflicted to the poor gardener’s back. I also had to call for reinforcements and a pipe rejoining kit when I came across a hole in the large bore (main) irrigation pipe. Two holes actually. As it happens, the exact same distance apart as two tines of a garden fork. Is it stretching credibility too far to blame the mice again?
Olearia x scilloniensis
A half price bargain from an autumn plant sale finds a home in a newly vacated patch of earth.
Acer palmatum dissectum ‘Garnet’
Late afternoon, as the sun drops behind the trees, is a wonderful time to be in the woodland. The acers, planted at various times over the last few years, are coming into their own now. The Spring display with its fresh new foliage is easily as delightful as the autumn flush of colour.
Acer palmatum var. dissectum ‘Emerald Lace’
Acer shirasawanum ‘Moonrise’
Arisaema sikokianum
I have to admit this one was something of an indulgence. A not insignificant outlay last Spring of £15 for just one small tuber (let’s whisper it). But the way I look at it is this. As it has successfully bloomed for a second year in a row the pleasure it has brought has cost me just £7.50 on a per annum basis. And next year, assuming an equally dramatic resurgence, it will be cheaper still.
Polygonatum multiflorum
At the other end of the budget spectrum, I inherited Soloman’s Seal. Therefore it’s cost me nothing for the last ten years. Does that mean I enjoy it any less?
Euphorbia ‘Black Pearl’
‘Tis the season for euphorbia, plants that I’ve come to love for their wonderful structural quality. And the fact that nothing eats them! This one has the same glorious punch of acid lime green as all the rest, but with a difference. I’m a total sucker for anything black.
Cornus canadensis
Reliable ground cover for moist dappled shade. Better in soil on the acidic side.
Rhododendron luteum
Tulipa acuminata
My favourite tulip. Mike prefers the one at the top of the post. But then, when did we ever agree. Both are species tulips so will happily return next year. Less work.. I can vote for that.
And finally..
Marching down the lawn in the soft evening light, fresh from their over wintering grounds in the shed. Second from the right, Snooty Duck, head held permanently high after that very unfortunate incident with the mower..
Onwards.
I has been much too dry, hasn’t it? Unfortunately only the very narrow top strip of Mike’s tulip has appeared. Your usual glowing photographs have probably helped us identify our acers – let’s see what The Head Gardener says. 🙂
It’s crazy weather for April. Just when our plants really need moisture to get them growing well.
The photo problem sounds like a possible loading issue. It might work a second time?
Good morning.. its lovely to see the ducks again. We have had tons of rain and actually snow too .. ugh… there is ice on the driveway this morning. But the primroses and hellebores and bloodroot are blooming and the epimediums are ready to pop. Soon it will be fairyland. And that gooseneck lysimachia – I put some in my meadow many years back and now it has spread to an area at least 400 square feet. It competes with the other thugs out there and its quite the battle to watch – but its beautiful.
400 square feet! That is quite a clump.. but having seen what it can do in just a couple of years I’m not surprised. The newer growth around the edge was only a problem where it had invaded other plants. The older stuff in the middle I just discarded. But I shall have to keep an eye on it now if I’m going to hold it within bounds. It is beautiful, worth the trouble.
Your photographs are balm for the soul. Such loveliness.
Glad you have been having some decent weather–albeit not quite enough rain. Our Mid-Atlantic weather has been erratic with below normal temps, too much wind with punches of rain. In fact, rain expected for seven of next ten days. And a blanket of tree pollen covering everything. Ah well. Will turn back to your photos for solace.
It’s not often I complain about insufficient rain, especially in Spring. Amazing how quickly we went from a very soggy winter to soil so hard I can barely get a fork into it. I hope it warms up for you soon but your rain does give me hope, our weather often comes from your direction.
Glad to see you are still at it! Beautiful.
Still at it. It performs the same function as your art, it keeps me sane while the world is in chaos.
Oh, your ducks are so divine! Love them marching down the lawn. And I am in agreement with Mike, that first tulip is so elegant, the last one positively weird! I love Lysimachia clethroides but I am glad I declined to buy it if it is such a thug, it would probably take over my entire garden, but I will keep admiring yours. This lovely April weather has definitely been a godsend in the current climate and all the better for you to get back to your gorgeous garden and give it the TLC it probably needs after the last year!
The TLC it DEFINITELY needs!
Lysimachia clethroides just needs keeping an eye on. I planted a sizeable clump and it’s only really this year it has started to take over. The flowers seem to lean toward the sun. So much of my garden is shady I suspect this effect is emphasized here. It needs careful placing so you’re not always looking at the backside of the blooms.
It certainly reads as if you are enjoying yourself dabbling in the dirt. I seem to remember that last time we had such a glorious April that was almost the full extent of our summer. I hope that history doesn’t repeat itself. I love your logic when it comes to your initial outlay for the arisaema sikokianum 😂
Your thought about a glorious April is something that has been troubling me as well. We all need a decent summer this year. But it’s part of the reason I’ve been trying to be industrious while the good weather lasts. We do need rain though. Maybe just a couple of days of downpours and then back to the sun? 🙂
Super photos – yes, everything is bursting into leaf and bloom and I’m enjoying it all! Trouble is after so much rain, there is so much lugging of compost in a race against time – totally agree! I resemble an orangutan and my arm muscles equal Arnie’s. Bonus is that I’ve lost weight but it seems to be coming off the derriere and legs. Now for the rest of me other than my ape-like arms, I have freckles on my freckles even though I covered up – add plaits and I look like an elderly Pippi Longstocking!
Happy St George’s Day
I had noticed I too was getting Arnie arms. All that lifting of heavy plant rootballs! As for them getting longer, not sure about that. Perhaps because I have resorted to using the wheelbarrow for lugging compost. What I do know is my back aches and my legs ache. I will never leave it two years before I do this job again. Famous last words..
The first day is the worst, but keep moving – it tones up the derriere brilliantly! Add sumo wrestler to the planting positions – all good stretching exercises for the legs. Then up and down the hill with the barrowloads – I know exactly what you feel like! It gets better, I promise!
Love those ducks – even the beak in the air. Maybe it is looking at little flies to chomp. 😉 I miss my loosestrife. I must get another purple version – the old wood made great pea sticks! I never saw them last year, but this year the little violets are all in the wild area along with the bluebells. I did lie on the ground to see if they had any scent. None that I noticed though. Oooh and we’ve been given full planning permission with the barn and the house extension today! Not that I think it will start anytime soon, but perhaps the barn this year – hope so.
That’s great news about the planning permission! I know how long you’ve been preparing/waiting for it.
Snooty Duck always looks to be the one in charge. The other ducks all run with their eyes to the ground. They must rely on Snooty for directions.
😂
Gorgeous photos, all….!!!!
What Joy to look at…..
🌱🌸🌱🌷🌱🌺🌱
Thank you!
🙂
Wow, every photo here brightened my day. Thank you! You’ve certainly been busy: Congrats on all the gardening accomplishments! Your tulips, maples, and magnolias are stunning! And your header (crabapple buds and blooms?) is lovely, too!
Thanks Beth.
I think it is a crab apple. It’s another inheritance and I’ve never known for sure. It produces tiny immature fruits but then something always gets them, or they drop off, before they get more than a cm wide.
Can only dream of most of your plants Jessica! Lovely pictures and particularly enjoyed the acers. Oh to be in Devon, now that spring is here …! Very, very hot and dry here.
It’s positively Mediterranean in Devon at the moment, too hot to work in the middle of the day. The last few things I still have to move are getting done in the cool of the evening. Any earlier and they’d just expire. We desperately need rain. Not something I often have to say..
You are so lucky to have to endure lockdown in such a beautiful setting.
I think all of us with a garden or green space around us are incredibly lucky at the moment. But then, like you, I’m only really happy when I’m outdoors.
Having divided Agapanthus in my own garden, I can fully appreciate the time and effort involved. If I’d anticipated this pandemic and its impact on my usual spring plant shopping expeditions, I’d perhaps have divided more for use filling in this or that area. Perhaps, if we get a span of cooler weather soon I’ll still do that but with temperatures hitting 84F (29C) yesterday and expected to go higher yet, that’s not looking likely. Out rainy season is done and summer has arrived!
It’s the lack of spring plant shopping that has left me thinking about how best I can use the stuff I do have, hence all the recent activity. Perhaps that’s a good thing. Fortunately in planning for the new terraces I’d also amassed quite a few plants from the autumn sales, so that’s helped too.
I was going to say Californian weather here but it hasn’t gone that high. I know I’m spending far too much time watering. The sooner I can get stuff in the ground and connected to irrigation the easier my life will be.
Cool plants and beautiful photos of them. Did the rusty ducks have ducklings? Seems like you have more of them now.
It’s all your rain that makes those plants so big, happy, and heavy. I guess there is some advantage in soil so constantly dry it is light as dust. I love those filigree Acers, and the Arisaema which looks like it came from outer space. Shh don’t tell I spent as much on a tiny rooted Frankencense plant, and I think I killed it. Ouch. Best wishes from far far away.
Mike bought three more ducks after the mower incident. I think he feared he would be unable to repair the injured party. But he did, sort of, so the flock has expanded quite a bit.
Add water to clay soil and you get very heavy!
I very rarely spend much on bulbs and tubers, mostly because of the mice who to a man have a nose for an expensive root. If only I could get them to develop a taste for our invasive Spanish bluebells.
Best wishes from equally far away. Keep safe Hoov.
What jolly ducks! And what beautiful acers! I’m already plotting the winter pruning (it’s autumn here) which will allow us to see our smaller acer without clambering into a dark overgrown bed and staring upward in order to do it.
As for the agapanthus – I deeply sympathize, as the Walrus said. I’m still waiting for the aches and pains to subside after a mammoth agapanthus excavation: about 1.5m3, a good deal of it wedged around tree roots and under a hawthorn – grr! I don’t much care for agapanthus – it came with the house – and it’s been slowly crushing the life out of our harakeke (phormium tenax). Here’s hoping the harakeke survives, now that the agapanthus has gone to start a new life as a pop-up garden on a building-site berm.
I did read that agapanthus was invasive in Australia and New Zealand. It isn’t quite that bad here, in fact in northern regions of the UK it is tender. But it must have to go some to overcome a phormium. I also manage to do quite well with that in the south west and it too is a brute. For the last couple of years all three of mine have started producing flower spikes just to add to their bulk. They are slowly taking over.
Lovely to see you are safe and well, and productively busy in your Garden of Eden. I open Northern Hemisphere blogs with trepidation, fearing my ‘virtual friends’ may have come down with the dreaded virus. Here in NZ we are in total lockdown, and we have been for a week longer than the official date – my GP told me to isolate as soon as I heard of community transmission, so I did. Next week we are allowed to loosen off a tiny bit – still no travel except supermarket trips, and still isolation, but we are permitted to expand our bubble, so we can include our son and his family who live a mile away. They are both “essential workers” working from home while they try to juggle two preschoolers, so our help is eagerly awaited. Garden news? – well, we’re heading into winter, harvesting silverbeet and lettuce, herbs and not much else. No, that’s not true, there’s still enough flowers to have a vase in the hall and another family room. We are so fortunate to have a patch of outdoors to enjoy – many people are stuck with children in apartments, with nowhere to go. Park playgrounds are strictly out of bounds as their metal surfaces are sources of contamination.
Keep well – look after that back – you really don’t want an injury at present!
New Zealand have done so much better than us at controlling the virus. I really do wish I was living over there right now! As it is it’s likely we’ll be in lockdown much longer.
I’ve decided to bring my vegetable garden back into play a little earlier than planned so I’m in the process of evicting all the plants that were growing in it as a temporary nursery bed. The supplies in the shops aren’t too bad but you never know. Especially if there’s a second peak if and when lockdown is eased.
And yes, I’m very mindful of the need to avoid injuries at the moment.. I think about it every time I totter about on the Precipitous Bank!
Lovely to see all your spring colour and vibrant plants smiling into the camera. I like both types of tulips, although your Tulipa acuminata looks a bit fragile for our garden, I wonder how it survives nasty wind and weather? I just love the beautiful Acer palmatum dissectum, it would be nice to see a photo of the whole tree, the red autumn colour is glorious.
I hope your Agapanthus never take over the garden as ours have done…Paul and some hired help.. took a pick and shovel to some of the agapanthus in our front garden. Finally gone!
I absolutely love Snooty duck and her crew, they look as if they are on a mission….. enjoy spring!
Your assessment of Tulip acuminata is spot on. I put the pot out in front of the greenhouse, which gets full sun and the blooms didn’t last as long as last year. Not that it was as hot last year. But we’ve also had quite a breeze over the last week and that has taken its toll.
I will never underestimate agapanthus again after this year and I doubt they will ever get anything like as large as they do in Australia!
Lovely to see your ducks back in across your garden! I’ve been doing the same as you, moving plants around and yes, we need more rain, hardly any came last weekend, we need a lot more to soften the soil again. We are so lucky to have our gardens at this time of year, goodness knows how long we are going to be isolated, but I can’t see it ending for quite some time. Your garden is full of colour and flowers at the moment, a beautiful place to be.
I thank my lucky stars every day that I have a garden. Especially with this hot weather, being cooped up inside would be very hard indeed. Glad to hear you’re fit and well Pauline and still working around the garden, it certainly helps doesn’t it. Except that the soil is so hard. I can barely get a fork into it in places. Rain in the forecast for next week.. I do hope it arrives!
What a feast for the eyes! My garden has not had so much attention since before I became a mother, an hour a day out there for the last five weeks and it is transformed – it is a little smaller in size to yours. I pruned a very out of control honeysuckle this week and my arms looked decidedly worse for wear! After a winter of persistent rain it is very strange to be watering the garden, am I wishing for rain and I live in one of the wettest places in England, crazy!
How quickly it changed from what must have been a record wet winter to the hard baked earth of today. It is crazy! It’s not often I am complaining about lack of rain and certainly not in April. I’m glad you’re able to spend more time in the garden, it’s a relaxing place to be and so satisfying to see it pulled back into shape.
You have such exotic things growing in your garden, and things I’ve never heard of before. The Acer is so unusual, and the tulips look a little like my species tulips that I’m so fond of. It’s nice that you’ve been having such beautiful weather after all the rain earlier in the year.
We’ve been having glorious autumn weather, and even a decent amount of rain, although we’re beginning to wish for more now. It’s so pleasant to sit in the sun and have our coffee or lunch…it’s far too hot to do that usually.
I’m also a fan of species tulips, I’ve never really been taken with the overly hybridised varieties. I hope that in time I’ll be able to naturalise drifts of them, if the mice can be persuaded to leave them alone!
I hope you get some decent winter rain, you deserve after this summer.
Loved reading your post, Jessica, and it’s good to know that despite the ‘heavy work’ your plants are bringing you joy
I’ve restarted my pre breakfast tours of inspection and every day I see something new. A garden can’t fail to bring joy, even in the most difficult of times.
I had gooseneck loosestrife in my old garden where it was held in check by the basement wall and a concrete sidewalk. It would take over here so I left it behind; but it is really a beautiful plant. And I am quite impressed and jealous that you are growing Cornus canadensis; a North American native that I have had no luck keeping alive. Your garden looks wonderful and hopefully you will get some rain soon and so will my garden. Those April showers keep passing us by.
Being a fan of the cornus tree I couldn’t resist when I discovered there was a ground covering version. The same incredible blooms but in miniature!
I may yet need to encase the loosestrife in concrete.
Fingers crossed for rain on both sides of the pond, we all need a lush garden to lose ourselves in right now.
Between Loosestrife and Crocosmia, both thugs, I ache all over from spending days trying to dig it up. They have taken over a part of my garden that has been, lets say, a bit neglected! I knew this lockdown would have a silver lining!! My soil is like dust its so dry – who would have thought! I wouldn’t mind a bit of rain, but if it could just rain through the night and be dry during the day I’d appreciate it! xx
It looks like our wishes may be granted, at least partially! Plenty of rain on the forecast for tonight. Let’s hope it amounts to more than a dribble this time. I’ve been moving roses today. At least they’re benefitting from the cooler temperatures.
Fabulous photos as always. Glad you are keeping out of trouble! Take care x
Trouble? Moi? Perish the thought 😉
Euphorbia self seeds like mad round here, do you have the same issue? Lovely rain today, for once I believed the forecast and put out the weed and feed so felt quite smug as I watched the lawn soak up the water.
Some of my euphorbia seed like crazy, including ‘Black Pearl’. Others never have. Strange.
I went round spreading chicken manure around the roses in the hope that the promised rain would come. Hopefully some of the goodness will have leached into the soil before the mice scoff the lot.
Lovely photos Jessica, the young Acer foliage is so beautiful.
It certainly is. An acer is not just for autumn!
Gorgeous plants and gorgeous photographs, I have been through from beginning to end twice, and still can’t make up my mind about the Tulips…
How have you managed to dig these past two weeks, I had concrete here (another fork bent) though the rain the last two days has softened things up nicely so now I have no excuse…
Stay well both of you.
In places it’s been almost impossible. I am seriously considering adding a pickaxe to the garden gear. And now it’s almost too wet. I have about two days as a window of opportunity before the concrete comes back.. but at least all my transplants got a proper soaking.