From Hampton Court to Parham House

July 9, 2009
Hydrangea 'Annabelle'

Hydrangea 'Annabelle'

Well, I have done my time at Hampton Court Flower Show and got the tired feet and muddy shoes to prove it.

As usual I enjoyed it a lot, apart from that horrid washing line with saggy underwear planted up with bedding plants.  What on earth….?  And the ‘six wives of Henry VIII’  gardens were a bit beyond me, too.

But overall, I enjoyed generally wafting around - taking the opportunity to chat to a lot of old friends in the trade.

Was there a ‘buzz plant’ of the show?  There usually is.  One that certainly caught my eye was a pink and white stripey phlox (‘Peppermint Twist’ I think), even though pink is really not my thing.   And I have been pacing around my garden again today wondering if I could offer a good home to a delicate stemmed, gloriously refined white Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ that was looking stunning everywhere at the show.

I do it every year… and every year decide, sadly, that I can’t.

Thanks to all the smiley people who came to the Telegraph Gardening Theatre, asked questions, and particularly to those who came up afterwards and said kind things about my weekly Telegraph column.  Actually I got a lot of friendly vibes all day.  It never ceases to amaze me how many people recognize me on such occasions and come up and say hello. It is really gratifying.

Next stop, Parham House Garden Weekend.  On Saturday (11th July) I shall be doing an informal Q and A session with the RHS’s Jim ‘Britain in Bloom’  Buttress.  (Parham House is at Storrington, near Pulborough,  West Sussex, RH20 4HS – 01903 742 021 – www.parhaminsussex.co.uk ).

More smiley people, please?

Image courtesy of BBC

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Posted by Helen

Garden ponds/hot weather – a slightly more sensible post than the last one…

July 5, 2009
My pond

My pond

My pond – directly in my line of view as I write – is lovely at this time of year, but the hot weather and lack of rain have caused the water level to drop by a couple of inches at least.  Topping up garden ponds with tap water encourages the growth of algae, so I hesitate to do it.

I have rigged up a simple system for my pond that helps.  It depends on having a water  butt that is a sensible hose-distance from the pond and that the hose can preferably be permanently left in situ – buried or at least hidden.

I simply changed the tap on my water butt to a (rather annoyingly slow flowing) one that takes a standard hose attachment, cut off a length of hose and buried it with the free end hanging over the edge of the pond hidden by foliage and the other end coming out of the ground close to the water butt.

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Posted by Helen

The Performing Seal speaks (or writes)

July 2, 2009
Hampton Court Palace

Hampton Court Palace

Being basically a very un-bloggy person – am I the only performing seal that has to be reminded to perform (by my son Henry who blogs for Cancer Research UK )? – I (no, he) feel(s) I should in turn remind readers that I shall be ‘performing’ in the Telegraph Gardening Theatre at Hampton Court Flower Show on Wednesday 8 July  anwering ‘Thorny Problems’ style questions with Val Bourne and a big cheese from the RHS.

Empty seats and blank stares I do not relish.

On another matter entirely:  My ‘new’ garden has moved on.  I have taken a few more (shoddy) pictures and added them to my Flickr page.   Aren’t these warm days when you spill out into your garden in you PJs at 6 in the morning just wonderful?

Everyone should grow ‘Fairy Wings’ poppies – fresh and fluttery each day, they lift the spirits to great heights.  Everyone should also grow Nepeta govaniana and Campanula lactiflora together, absolutely intertwangled and completely over the top.

Everyone should just stop bloody worrying and get out into their gardens.

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Posted by Helen

It’s raining in Torquay

June 21, 2009
Ivy leaves keep falling on my head

Ivy leaves keep falling on my head

Well OK, actually it probably isn’t.

I refer readers to a previous post, namely ‘What’s going on in Torquay‘, an expose of a little area of my garden (in the deep shade of a yew tree) so named because, being a collection of of potted box balls, hostas, spikey things, ferns, melianthus – and also, now, a couple of banana plants donated by a friend – it does somewhat resemble the oddly artificial frontage of a south coast resort hotel (all it needs is an uplighter and hey presto).

In fact I wrote the piece principally to sing the praises of the plants that, with minimal effort, thrive there.  I am very fond of my ‘Torquay’.

So the rain to which I refer is  not the horticulturally useful wet kind of rain which rarely penetrates the yew canopy – it is foliar.  The yew tree is/was infested with common ivy  (Hedera helix) – so badly that you could see the stuff waving around out of the top of its (reasonably tough and mighty) host.

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Posted by Helen

Keeping control of your cistus

June 11, 2009
Cistus creticus

Cistus creticus

Last year I wrote about keeping things in my garden ‘in balance’ by cutting back the lush foliage of my border plants at this time.  With hindsight – looking at pictures I took – it is clear that many of my plants were hugely over-enthusiastic – they looked as though they had been fed on steroids.

I put this down to the fact that it was their first proper season in new homes and they were luxuriating in the newly muck-and-compost-enriched soil (that was originally exhausted and clay-ey).

They now look  better – sturdy, nicely filled-out and flowering well, aided, (in currently tumbling rain ) by all the invisible corsetry that I put in place to hold them up.  A year later and all that original effort  and soil improvement is showing with a profusion of flowers and growth in the newer shrubs, and even the  old duchesses that were here –  the tree paeonies and viburnums and so on  as well as the the large established trees  – seem to have put on extra weight.

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Posted by Helen

In praise of…greenery

May 17, 2009
That there Libertia

That there Libertia

During a week (the run up to Chelsea ’09, my thoughts go out to the poor souls out there…) of perpetual grey skies and a nasty niggling wind, a friend (called June, ironically) emailed from southern France, with words to the effect that her garden was looking good, but then if you can’t make your garden look good in May you must be a pretty poor gardener…and I suppose she is right.

To me, the first half of May can be a bit of a waiting game which I rather enjoy.  The in-your-face Spring  ’stars’ are flagging:  the last of my tulips are now dog-eared, juicy Dicentras are leggy and buffeted by the wind.

Of course, there are flowers aplenty – the tree paeony is in top form and it is a particularly good time for Aquelegias.

Appreciated greenery

Appreciated greenery

I am particularly appreciative of my upstanding Euphorbias that seem to glow in the gloom, for that much-loved spikey, dusky-leafed Libertia ixioides (about which I wrote this time last year and which is even more fullsome now).

Almost above all though, I am enjoying the the splendid pristine  contrasts of the green foliage in my borders which I plant with leafy May in mind almost as much as for the eventual colour of its later blowsey performance.

I have a visiting group tomorrow…I hope they appreciate the greenery as much as I do.

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Posted by Helen

Assorted daisies and goat cuisine…

May 6, 2009

Hold on to your hats, this may be a long one…

Crete Balls of Fire

Crete Balls of Fire

Getting away from my desk is hard.

My weekly problem-solving column in The Telegraph gardening supplement has run more or less without a break since 2001 (apart from some jiggerypokery around Christmas times) and involves a weighty e- and snail-mailbag.

I endeavour to keep things as up to the minute as possible, and juggling the weekly deadline with other commitments and with various speaking engagements, as well as coping with my natural gardener’s reluctance to miss anything interesting on my own patch, means that traditional planned holidays are rare. Read the rest of this entry »

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Posted by Helen

Skirmishing in the trenches

April 28, 2009
Allotment finally tamed – April 2009

Allotment finally tamed – April 2009 (click to enlarge)

Fabulously and at long last – I have got the upper hand on my allotment.

All raised beds are built (some, to my great personal satisfaction, using recycled decking), spuds (Charlotte, Vivaldi and Anya) are up, autumn raspberries are a foot hight.

Strawberry plants (Florence, Honeoye and Alice) are doing well in their smart new home and some are even in flower, there is a spectacular abundance of gooseberries swelling almost visibly and the roses are all in great shape following their first proper prune.

And that is just some of it…

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Posted by Helen

Calling all Garden & Horticultural Society Presidents

March 25, 2009

Quite out of the blue I have been asked to be the President of a local village Horticultural  Society – a purely ‘ceremonial’ role, I expect, but one that I am really pleased to take on.

I should love to hear from anyone else who has done, or is doing, something similar and hear about their experiences.

How ‘hands on’ can one  – is one expected – to be?  Some horticultural societies are frozen in time (somewhere in the 1950′s), some others seem to be really proactive.  Most seem to have members that are getting on a bit, and perhaps seem unable to attract younger members.  How does one get over this problem?

Annual membership subs are in my view unrealistically low – while the expected fee from decent lecturers has understandably risen in the past years.  In my village there is hardly any link between the allotment people and the garden society.  Is this typical?    Comments please.

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Posted by Helen

Email not working

March 16, 2009

My home email address has stopped working.  If anyone is trying to get hold of me, I can be reached pretty quickly via my Telegraph address: helen.yemm@telegraph.co.uk

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Posted by Helen

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