Have just been away for two weeks following Hoby Open Gardens and it has been hot; very hot for England at 32 centigrade! And we continue to have had no rain of any consequence since the middle of May.
We left a garden looking quite good but now it is crisp and dry. Our soil is a sandy loam and tends to dry out quickly but in an English climate this is usually not an issue..
The main lawn was the walled kitchen garden for a large house next door and the interesting thing now is that wherever there were paths in the original kitchen garden the lawn drys out fastest as you can see in the above.
The lawn on June 16th before the sun!
So rather than show pictures of dried up plants I thought I would go back to the open garden event.After a hectic week getting everything ready the weekend arrived and was a great success. Eleven gardens opened, included Glebe House, and in addition we provided lunches, tombolas, an art exhibition, plant stalls,a white elephant stall (ie a junk stall), a Pimms bar and lets not forget the cream teas. Our garden was one of the venues for cream teas and after Diane had made 250 scones we made almost £900 on the teas alone. Overall the money is still being counted but it looks like we have made almost £7500 which, for a village of just 100 houses, is excellent. The money is going to do some improvements in our 13th century village church.
The roses were stunning with Rosa Rambling Rector covering the old apple tree and Rosa Bobby James on the right just coming into flower. Probably one of the best comments was when one of the visitors said she always came into our garden to see the rose ‘Rampant Rector’!
Here are some of the roses in the garden:
The main pond had recovered from when it emptied itself and the water stayed crystal clear.
and there were no snakes to be seen here either.
We only have one hanging basket and luckily it is on automatic watering so it just as good now.
The dahlias were a bit disappointing as the slow spring had held back the flowers. The only flowering dahlias were Dahlia Arabian Night and Dahlia David Howard. Now they are all struggling due to lack of rain.The Delphinium Black Knight and Rosa ‘Iceberg’ made a great show.
This shrub always provides interest. It is Carpenteria californica with Rosa ‘Irene Watts’ in the foreground. Carpenteria californica is quite a rare plant in English gardens and it needs a sheltered position as it is rather tender.
June is peak season for poppies which self seed throughout the garden.
We do not have a huge vegetable plot. However, for open gardens even the vegetable plot needs to be weed free.
Elsewhere there were plenty of flowers to see.
As you can see the hedges had not been cut. Actually we ran out of time, however, the current thinking is that it is better to cut box hedging a little later to help prevent blight.
2018 Gardening Hours | ||
Week beginning June 30th | Total 2018 to-date | Average per week |
0 | 462 | 18 |
Holiday week so no gardening.