Summer, lots of changes.

The garden has been amazing, I have lots more flowers than usual, the nicotianas I planted I though would grow to about 12 inches have hit 3ft plus and to be honest are far to close to the path, but they give a fabulous closed in feeling.

This spikey leaved plant which I have totally forgotten the name of is huge, the one planted in a pot is far smaller.

It is covered in spikes from the trunk

to its leaves....

My new dahlia has excelled its self

the heads are about 6-8 inches across

and there have been loads.

All the dahlias I overwintered have not done so well, but the 3 new ones have done well this red/yellow one with the tree dandelion next to it,

and another new one the flowers change colour as they age.

Amaranthus Pointy finger, looks exactly like a pointy finger, makes me smile every time I walk past it.

some look better than others but you still get the idea.

Canna Cleopatra has not only got stunning foliage

 but stunning flowers as well, I cannot wait for this clump to get bigger, I think its my favourite canna.

Another Canna easily over 8ft beautiful leaves and yes it will flower if the autumn is mild.

 The Rincus in the new bed have reached amazing heights. Blue Giant on the left should reach 10ft plus and out sized New Zealand Purple easily, but New Zealand purple has reached heights I have never seen before in my garden the seed pack says it can reach 7ft well it is way above that. When I put the new soil in this bed I did add a lot of bags of farmyard manure which I think helped. (Note to self: bu more farm yard manure)

Canna Durban looking good against Ricinus Carmencita Red.

Landscape pic of this bed.

Stumpy, well that is what I have called this Maureli against the back drop of the T-Rex it looks quite good but should be 6ft plus, maybe I need more manure down here lol!!

Another landscape photo from the side bed. Butia with Ricinus communis zanzibarensis to the left and the Tree tomato to the right.

The Elephants ears, Colocasia Pink China have been amazing this ear and as far as I am concerned are the hardiest for me.

As a precaution I always dig a few up to over winter in the greenhouse. but the rest are left outside covered with extra soil or manure.

One of my baby Hiniba from last year.

At the back of the Hiniba is a new plant for me this year Manihot Grahamii, its the one with the very pretty leaves. I planted it here to give it protection from an expected hot summer which never happened, so I hope it has had the chance to get some good roots down to help it through the winter.

Now I am preparing for winter and have started to wrap up the greenhouse, more details in the next post.

Serious thoughts on what to do?

I am having very serious thoughts on what to do in my garden. I love the lush tropical look but I am very conscious on just how much watering is needed to keep it looking so good. I don't have a problem watering, in fact I quite enjoy it, but water is going to become a precious commodity so we are being told and I would much rather drink it than pour it on the garden.

A view down by the pond.

I have 5 very substantial water butts, not you ordinary 210 litre ones  mine are all 500 litres plus. They are also very nearly empty!

In hindsight, (a wonderful thing, but very annoying) when we had the bio mass boiler installed and had the new patio laid, we should have had a huge tank sunk under the patio as there are 3 roofs that fill just one large water butt, I believe the would have easily filled a sunked tank!

So what to do??
The arid bed just loves the baking sun, I do nothing to it, as you know, occasionally if I am walking past with the hose it gets a bit of water but to be honest not much at all. So do I make the rest of the garden like this? I would have to devise a way to protect it over winter though and that is fairly hard work to set up.

Even the palms, this is my Butia, above,is suffering.

The Ensete Hiniba should be way bigger than this.

Persicara is wilting.

The Maureli, is still a bit stumpy!

I have a decision to make. I don't have and probably won't have grand children, but the rest of my family do, I could easily say 'its not my problem' or 'it doesn't affect me'! But I have to live with myself. I think it is ludicrous that we flush 'drinking water' down a toilet to empty it when we are surrounded by sea. This has been a bug bear of mine for years.

Back to the garden, even though the girls dug in a load of manure the soil is dust dry, I am seriously considering changing the left hand side as you look up the garden to a gravel bed, a bit like at Beth Chatto's gravel garden. The link will take you to the gravel garden gallery, beautiful, but? I am not sure its me. Ideal for my garden and situation, but do I like it? Mmmm??? The jury is still out!!! More thought needed.

First Day of Spring, apparently.

I decided to unwrap my varying palms, the two trunked Butia has come through pretty unscathed but this is fairly well protected from the south westerly winds by the brand new fence. I always think a palm adds something to a tropical looking garden

The old Butia which has been planted out since 2014 and is the palm in the centre of the blog header, when it looked decidedly better is as you can see rather the worse for wear. I am gutted, that this and the ......

Brahea armata in the next picture look so bad. Having come through last years 'Beast from the East' winter, to end up looking like this after the mild winter we have had, I am quite gutted.

If it was me I would dig them out, I think they look awful. After asking my 'Tropical plant friends' advice they all say leave them in. One person said ' they will be fine and send out 6 fronds this year so will look better'? 6 Fronds??? 6 FRONDS??? I have never had 6 fronds grow in one year, all the time I have had them planted out!
The Brahea armata in 2015 if you look at the old photos of when they went in they looked far healthier.

The Butia was planted out 2014

 as you can see they both had far more fronds. I don't know, you will just have to watch this space!!

Unwrapping!

I am sick to the back teeth of rain, if anyone turns round in the height of summer and tells us we are having a drought and you can't use your hose pipe I will not believe them, the ground round here is saturated!

It seems to have been a long grey winter, we had sun one day last week and I would have got excited had I been at home, but I was up at mums.

So the weather forecast has threatened sun with temps up to 13C this weekend, so I have washed the bar b que (just in case) and unwrapped the palms.

My Butia, which is the slowest growing in the garden seems to have faired quite well.

I think wrapping it in a duvet in the really coldest period has helped, and its all looking relatively good.

My other Butia looks magnificent

as you can see the fence is still waiting to be repaired, we have the concrete gravel boards and the neighbours actually have had the fence panels in there garden for about 4 weeks now, not sure whats going on.


The Brahea armata  which I always though was relatively tender, seems to sail through winter.

I protected the growth point with a duvet and as you can see a new spear is growing away.

It seems to love the wet winters we have.

Compared to previous years we are well behind, I have my blog to compare, I find it really interesting to look back and see what was happening at this time last year. To save you looking I had already jet washed the patio and decking and it had been dry enough for me to treat the office and the decking!
And we had been having problems with Rats as well.

Back after the weekend to let you know what went on.

Wrapping for Winter.

Winter has passed, you may say. The Spring Equinox is 20th March, but winter still has a grip.

The other day I got an email from the lovely man at Hardy Palms where I bought most of my rather expensive palms from. He advised as we were due to have a long spell of extremely cold weather, we should wrap up our palms.

Normally they cope well, as the temps go down to minus something, then up during the day to single figures. But this next week we are due to have sustained minus figures day and night.

So a bit of work was needed today.

These are the covers that have got us through so far.

They have not done too badly.

So I unwrapped my new Butia and it is looking good. I have to protect the growing tip and Mr Hardy Palms recommended wrapping a duvet around it. I had a suitcase full of single duvets that we used to use when my sister and her 3 girls used  when they where little and came for a visit.

So being ingenious, I cut them in half length ways and sewed along the cut seam, which made them more manageable to wrap around.

Doesn't it look cosy now.

My other Butia, before

and then after..

and finally my Brahea Armata with a new spear growing

sadly I forgot to take a photo of it all snuggled up in its duvet, but it is.

My Olives have also been wrapped up.

All we can do now is wait and see if they survive.