Roses

Rose's are one of my all time favorite plants. They are so beautiful and romantic I think everyone should have one in their garden.
There are many different types ranging from huge rambling climbers to miniature ground covering to the more unusual species types. I must admit I'm a bit particular about the types I like I'm not really a fan of the large flowered Hybrid tea roses. I love the old fashioned scented varieties commonly known as the English rose's or David Austin these have been specially bred to have the old world charm and beauty with modern hardiness, longer flowering and a better degree of disease resistance. They are also (mostly) wonderfully fragrant.

One of my favorites is jubilee celebration



I mean come on just look at that flower.
This one has a delicious scent like strawberries, honey and tea. Yesterday I made some rose petal jam, with petals from this baby and it tastes heavenly.

When I moved in to my cottage I inherited 3 roses in the garden, a unruly white climber that had nothing much to climb up a pink rugosa and a weeping standard. Now I've never really been keen on standard rose's they're a bit old fashioned (not in a cool vintage way) and quite twee, certainly not something I'd of ever thought of buying but I'm so in love with mine


This one's called "Felicite Perpetue" but I affectionately call her flick. I love her little pom pom flowers

I also have a thing for the more unusual rose's like this one and if I had more room I'd love one of these and one of these but unless I do away with the chickens (which will never happen) I'll just have to make do with the 12 I have crammed in the garden.
Here's some more.

This is Rosa glauca,


This is William Lobb


This was supposed to be this obviously its not (bought as a bareroot plant in the winter)but I like it. Although I have a horrible feeling it might be something like a Kiftsgate If it is will just grow and grow. Hmmm maybe I should investigate that one

Thursdays favorite plant

See told you I'd be back


Right this gorgeous chap is Astrantia major also known as masterwort.

This is a real star performer for the herbaceous border. Its flowers last for ages and are really good for cutting. It likes a nice rich moisture retentive soil and performs really well in heavy clay. I have a huge clump in my main border and some at the edge of my wild (messy) pond. Its happy in full sun or a little light shade.
You can often find these growing wild, (I've seen some on the edges of a near by wood) were they have naturalised from nearby gardens. They are really really easy to grow from seed and will happily self seed all over the place.

I love the shape of the flower heads, like little pin cushions with spiky little bracts around the edges. They look beautiful when the sun shines through them and seem to glow when it gets dusk.
There are a few different varieties of varying shades of pink and plumy reds, I have another one called Ruby wedding which is stunning.

I'm going to get round to uploading tons and tons of pictures to flickr soon (I need a rainy day)and will talk some more about my veg patch and post some pics of it (I picked my first pea today.

Enjoy the sunshine

love jess x

A.W.O.L

Sorry I'm being a terrible blogger, my excuse is that I'm in the garden.

I'll leave you a picture of the clematis thats just finished flowering through my bay tree hedge and a promise to catch up soon.

love jess x

Thursdays favourite plant

The orange ball tree (Buddleia globosa)


Image via flickr

I have a enormous one that grows out of a tiny patch of dirt between the paving stones and the road at the front of the cottage it forms this huge arch other the gate that leads to no-where but compost and wheelie bins.

How can you not love this shrub, its covered with little balls of sunshine, that the bees and butterflies can't get enough of.

I love oranges and yellows this time of year so bright and cheerful after the winter or on days when its still cold and miserable (by summer I prefer cooler pinks and purples).

This rather different buddleia flowers earlier than the commoner "Davidii" type buddleia you see everywhere mid summer (love those too), So it needs to be treated a bit differently. This cheerful chappie should be pruned just after its finished flowering, not late winter like you would normally do with the usual buddleias ( you'll chop the flower buds off, and that would be terrible)

One word of warning though, globosa's can grow to monstrously epic proportions. Mine is bigger than my cherry tree!, so it will be getting hacked back a bit soon. You can be quite ruthless if they get straggly looking.

bye bye babies

Just a quick post to say that my sparrow chicks have gone, they fledged on Friday.

It's now very quite in the wall no more cheeping.

Although they were getting very loud in the last few days I kinda miss their chatter.

Good luck babies

xx

Awaken me with a kiss

This is another favourite plant of mine, (maybe I should do a favourite rose) I have a serious problem with rose's, I'm addicted to them. If i could only have one type of plant in my garden it would be rose's, anyway back to the point.

This is rosa sericea ptericantha

image via flickr


I came across this rose a few years ago whilst visiting an NGS garden and fell head over heels in love with it. Its just so beautiful and unusual. The thorns are it main focal point although it does flower quite early on in the season (about now)with small creamy yellow flowers. But it's the thorns that are so amazing, I mean just look at them.

This is the kind of thing you'd imagine growing rampantly around sleeping beautys castle. It's pure brothers Grimm.

It's best to prune these in the late winter/early spring to get a flush of new growth which has the deep red translucent thorns although you'll end up cutting off the flowering stems (it flowers on the pervious seasons growth) like I seem to have. And make sure it gets planted somewhere it catchs the light, to show of the thorns.

Garden heroines

Gardening especially vegetable growing can often seem to be a male dominated world, images of old men in waistcoats, smoking pipes up the allotment, discussing spuds and tomato plants is often how a lot of first time female gardeners can perceive it to be.
Gardening legends such as Percy Thrower, Geoff Hamilton and the housewives favourite Alan Titchmarsh are all amazing champions of the green thumb but there are some wonderful garden ladies out there.

last night I was watching the coverage of Chelsea and saw the lovely Christine Walkden, I absolutely love her. She's such a no-nonsense plants women, she has an amazingly infectious passion for plants. A few years back now she had a TV show called Christine'garden and it was so lovely and refreshing, her garden is just stacked with plants, she doesn't appear to be interested in design or planting combinations so much, as just planting her garden full of everything she loves. It made me laugh how during the winter months she turns her dining room table over to all her tender plants, to keep them protected from the cold. I just love her enthusiasm, I find it so inspiring.

Another favourite of mine is Rachel de Thame, totally chalk and cheese with Christine. I love her for different reasons entirely, She's such a glamour-puss and I love that about her. She got quite a bit of stick when she presented Gardeners world, for being seen to be too pretty, and wearing gloves and not getting her hands dirty. But she has a real passion for beautiful plants and made a stunning garden last year at Chelsea.

Carol klein, (I really think she was robbed, she should have been the main presenter of Gardeners world) is an another wonderfully enthusiastic plants women, I adore her love of growing and nurturing plants. I really need to take a trip down to her nursery Glebe Cottage, I think she has a few open days left with the NGS. (I also love Carol because she looks a bit like my mum)

Another Gardeners world presenter again. Alys Fowler. I think Alys is great because she's young (and she has a love of vintage clothes like me). I think she's really accessible for younger women (and girls) to relate to, and that's important to make gardening a cool hobby to get into and not just something older folks with time and money can do. Gardening can be seen as a old fashioned dull pastime, but its not and I really feel Alys is promoting that.

Finally Gertrude Jekyll, who for me is one of the most important women to ever pick up a trowel. Without her influence and use of colour and texture maybe todays gardens wouldn't be as beautiful.

Just don't mention that charlie dimmock.

Chelsea girl

My love affair with Chelsea began 4 years ago,
I've always been passionate about plants,from when I was a tiny little thing I've know the names of most wildflowers and trees and I've been gardening since I was in my teens, a window box here a hanging basket there, borrowing a small corner of a neighbours allotment and pottering about in my mums garden.
But it was 4 years ago that it become more than just a hobby. At the time I was working for a company who were sponsoring a show garden (along with the wildlife trust).My head office department thought it would be a good P.R thing to send a few shop staff up to the showground to "help out" with the gardens construction the week before Chelsea opened. My manager knowing I had a bit of green finger put my name down and off I went to London.

I think all the other staff that had turned up over the week had hung about for an hour or so, had a few photos taken holding a spade and then, disappeared to go shopping on the kings road. I on the other hand fell in love as soon as I arrived I just found the whole thing incredible, the plants, the people, the whole atmosphere. I got stuck in straight away chatting to all the builders, quizzing the designer about everything, swooning over all the plants. I was in heaven.
After proving my mettle I was given a 2ft by 2ft corner to finish planting all on my own, helped clean out the pond and helped to lay turf in the meadow area. I ended up staying on till 10pm (I was meant to go home at 4pm) and had one of the best days of my life.

I think it was when I was standing knee deep in sludgy water helping to drain the pond for the second time that I realized this was exactly what I wanted to do with my life.
I wanted to be a gardener.

So within a few days after my Chelsea Epiphany, I'd enrolled at college and began devouring every Plant, garden and design book our local library stocked. I went out to the scrappy backyard behind my little flat and pulled up all the weeds and designed and created my very first attempt at a cottage garden all of my own.

And now here I am 4 years later working as a horticulturist, living the good life in the country with my dream (still work in progress)cottage garden and still being madly and passionately in love with plants and gardens.

So the Chelsea flower show has an important place in my heart, and one day you'll see me there with my own show garden.

(my garden 2005 image via giles landscaping)

veg tables

How have I never heard this before?

Live life off the wall

Vertical gardening has been around for a while now and is a brilliant way to garden if you don't have any space or if you want to cover a big expanse of wall or fencing.
I recently came across the work of Flora Grubb and have fallen in love with her use of succulents and air plants


(image via Flora Grubb gardens)

I'd love to find a way of replicating this in my garden, although my style is more along the lines of cottagey, and all the walls and fences have climbers on them already.

Hmmmmmm