What We Did Early-May Bank Holiday Weekend
Morning, Dear Reader. It's been raining here, all night and this morning. Woot! And W00t again! I went to water some of the rather wilted-looking plants in our yard the other day only to find nothing coming out of either water butt tap. We only have a small yard, and a smaller garden, but we have two water butts and both were empty!
They were saying on some weather forecast at the weekend that most of the UK has had the driest April for a long time. When we were out over the weekend and there were oak and (still living) ash trees growing together I checked. It's going to be a dryish summer too. Heigh ho! Time to invest in water-retaining granules and dig them into the various pots along with some slow-release fertiliser methinks. We don't have a water meter, but I still think it's daft watering plants with drinking-quality water. Maybe I'd better get a bucket out and start saving stuff as I did last summer.
Anyhew, writing of the weekend, we had a good one. Saturday we re-visited the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum near Romsey. The Gardens because they are ever-changing. Saturday because we know there's an hourly bus service there from Romsey. Buses tend to go Really Silly (if not vanish all together) on Bank Holidays, but more of that later.
The gardens were beautiful, as usual. Though as we were sitting down to lunch the sky started chucking tiny snowballs at us. Snow! Fortunately for all of five seconds, then the sun came out again and we got on with our lunch.
At this time of year the Plants of Current Interest are, mostly, flowering trees (the Magnolias were last month, though there was a yellow one as a PoCI), azaleas, wisteria, Kamassia, and an orange-flowered Spurge, which they reckoned might be a little less likely to take over than other varieties of spurge. Read: "Better plant it in a bucket, like mint"!
As I was up at silly o'clock one night this week because unable to get off sleep (must give that up) I faffed about with some of the photos H took.
Azaleas. Plant of Current Interest #7, in the Himalayan Valley.
Also (specially for AnneLaure these) the paeonies were coming out. They'll be really good in a week or so, provided it's warm meanwhile.
Paeonia delavayi. Which we thought was a good colour.
And
A yellow variety. Unlabelled so I can't tell you which it is!
We had a really good day, particularly considering the dire prognostications of the Met Office. The gardens have a nursery attached (think plants, not small people) where I got a Choisya dewittiana 'White Dazzler' for the yard. It's a smaller shrub than the more usually seen Choisya ternata 'Sundance', which often has golden-to-light-green leaves but still has scented white blossoms at this time of year and again in late summer. 'White Dazzler' is a smaller shrub with finer cut leaves, hence better for our small yard.
Hah! The care label says 'Situation - full sun to part shade', which we can do out back, the 'part shade' bit, hence I bought it. The RHS website - who presumably KNOW about these things says 'Situation - full sun'. We'll see. At least today's rain means it won't be going crisp at the roots. Yet. Better get on and get the (partially) sunny end of the yard cleared up, that Rampant honeysuckle pruned well back and get it planted before the summer really sets in.
Bearing in mind early-May Bank Holiday weekend last year was when the sun came out and SHONE for months on end, the snow on Saturday came as a bit of a surprise, though much more like 'proper' Bank Holiday weather!
Come Bank Holiday Monday we went to Mottisfont. We generally get a taxi there. There is reputed to be a bus, but it only gives you about two hours at the place, and you can spend a lot longer there, specially on a nice day, which it was.
As 'twas, being a Bank Holiday Monday, there was a FREE minibus which nips round Hilliers, Mottisfont and up to Stockbridge and back several times a day on Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays. So we caught that - the money saved from taxi fares covered the cost of lunch.
Anyhew, the current exhibitions in the upstairs galleries being 'Plants Portrayed' a selection of 34 contemporary botanical illustrations from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. These were utterly amazing. Some put me in mind of my Biology A level course, where we had to find wildflowers as they came out, draw them, cut them in half vertically and make labelled diagrams of the various parts (sepals, petals, stamens, anthers, style, pistil . . .) Only mine never looked that good!
There is also 'For the Time Being' - showcasing ceramic compositions, prints and artist books from a one-year residency by Hampshire-based artists Suna Imre and Eileen White - which were also amazing, if slightly harder to interpret. I'm still awaiting a reply from BiL (who is a photographer) as to quite what 'lumen photographs' are - they had a slightly x-ray-ish quality which was beautiful.
And outside the Walled Garden - comprising Vegetable Garden, Formal Garden and Rose Gardens - were coming along nicely. The Vegetable Garden is a recent project and gradually being stocked with various vegetables and fruit trees. Some of the roses were out already. We'll have to go back next Bank Holiday to see the rest.
No, Dear Reader, no photos. Not even of the teeny-tiny water boatmen in the pond in the Formal Garden. They'll grow. H was knackered after the Monday outing, has been back at work since yesterday morning, thus he hasn't had time to download the photos he took - or I can't find where he put them (always a possibility.) I suppose I could try doing the download, but it's a long time since I've done it and I'll have forgotten various critical details. Mind you, it'd be nice to find the pictures weren't 'locked' so I had to duplicate any I wanted to do things will. See, Dear Reader, Faff!
You'll just have to go yourself!
And that was our (much better than the Forecast predicted) Bank Holiday weekend. What were you up to?
Y'all have a good day now!
They were saying on some weather forecast at the weekend that most of the UK has had the driest April for a long time. When we were out over the weekend and there were oak and (still living) ash trees growing together I checked. It's going to be a dryish summer too. Heigh ho! Time to invest in water-retaining granules and dig them into the various pots along with some slow-release fertiliser methinks. We don't have a water meter, but I still think it's daft watering plants with drinking-quality water. Maybe I'd better get a bucket out and start saving stuff as I did last summer.
Anyhew, writing of the weekend, we had a good one. Saturday we re-visited the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens and Arboretum near Romsey. The Gardens because they are ever-changing. Saturday because we know there's an hourly bus service there from Romsey. Buses tend to go Really Silly (if not vanish all together) on Bank Holidays, but more of that later.
The gardens were beautiful, as usual. Though as we were sitting down to lunch the sky started chucking tiny snowballs at us. Snow! Fortunately for all of five seconds, then the sun came out again and we got on with our lunch.
At this time of year the Plants of Current Interest are, mostly, flowering trees (the Magnolias were last month, though there was a yellow one as a PoCI), azaleas, wisteria, Kamassia, and an orange-flowered Spurge, which they reckoned might be a little less likely to take over than other varieties of spurge. Read: "Better plant it in a bucket, like mint"!
As I was up at silly o'clock one night this week because unable to get off sleep (must give that up) I faffed about with some of the photos H took.
Azaleas. Plant of Current Interest #7, in the Himalayan Valley.
Also (specially for AnneLaure these) the paeonies were coming out. They'll be really good in a week or so, provided it's warm meanwhile.
Paeonia delavayi. Which we thought was a good colour.
And
A yellow variety. Unlabelled so I can't tell you which it is!
We had a really good day, particularly considering the dire prognostications of the Met Office. The gardens have a nursery attached (think plants, not small people) where I got a Choisya dewittiana 'White Dazzler' for the yard. It's a smaller shrub than the more usually seen Choisya ternata 'Sundance', which often has golden-to-light-green leaves but still has scented white blossoms at this time of year and again in late summer. 'White Dazzler' is a smaller shrub with finer cut leaves, hence better for our small yard.
Hah! The care label says 'Situation - full sun to part shade', which we can do out back, the 'part shade' bit, hence I bought it. The RHS website - who presumably KNOW about these things says 'Situation - full sun'. We'll see. At least today's rain means it won't be going crisp at the roots. Yet. Better get on and get the (partially) sunny end of the yard cleared up, that Rampant honeysuckle pruned well back and get it planted before the summer really sets in.
Bearing in mind early-May Bank Holiday weekend last year was when the sun came out and SHONE for months on end, the snow on Saturday came as a bit of a surprise, though much more like 'proper' Bank Holiday weather!
Come Bank Holiday Monday we went to Mottisfont. We generally get a taxi there. There is reputed to be a bus, but it only gives you about two hours at the place, and you can spend a lot longer there, specially on a nice day, which it was.
As 'twas, being a Bank Holiday Monday, there was a FREE minibus which nips round Hilliers, Mottisfont and up to Stockbridge and back several times a day on Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays. So we caught that - the money saved from taxi fares covered the cost of lunch.
Anyhew, the current exhibitions in the upstairs galleries being 'Plants Portrayed' a selection of 34 contemporary botanical illustrations from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. These were utterly amazing. Some put me in mind of my Biology A level course, where we had to find wildflowers as they came out, draw them, cut them in half vertically and make labelled diagrams of the various parts (sepals, petals, stamens, anthers, style, pistil . . .) Only mine never looked that good!
There is also 'For the Time Being' - showcasing ceramic compositions, prints and artist books from a one-year residency by Hampshire-based artists Suna Imre and Eileen White - which were also amazing, if slightly harder to interpret. I'm still awaiting a reply from BiL (who is a photographer) as to quite what 'lumen photographs' are - they had a slightly x-ray-ish quality which was beautiful.
And outside the Walled Garden - comprising Vegetable Garden, Formal Garden and Rose Gardens - were coming along nicely. The Vegetable Garden is a recent project and gradually being stocked with various vegetables and fruit trees. Some of the roses were out already. We'll have to go back next Bank Holiday to see the rest.
No, Dear Reader, no photos. Not even of the teeny-tiny water boatmen in the pond in the Formal Garden. They'll grow. H was knackered after the Monday outing, has been back at work since yesterday morning, thus he hasn't had time to download the photos he took - or I can't find where he put them (always a possibility.) I suppose I could try doing the download, but it's a long time since I've done it and I'll have forgotten various critical details. Mind you, it'd be nice to find the pictures weren't 'locked' so I had to duplicate any I wanted to do things will. See, Dear Reader, Faff!
You'll just have to go yourself!
And that was our (much better than the Forecast predicted) Bank Holiday weekend. What were you up to?
Y'all have a good day now!