Back in February the bench outside my conservatory was full of the blues in the form of dwarf Irises. As they have gone over the pots have been replaced with tulips, narcissi and starflowers (ipheion) in white and yellow. By growing spring bulbs in containers it is easy to move them around as plants finish…
Category: Garden Diary
Posts about my garden and the changes through the seasons
Six on Saturday | No Fooling Around
I have been wondering lately what makes people choose specific plants for their gardens. Once they have decided on the type that is. I tend to choose a certain colour palette for areas in my garden so blues, purples and what I describe as ‘bruised’ colours are my favourites. I like a few whites in…
Six on Saturday | Spring has Sprung
So, the first few days of proper spring as the vernal equinox took place at exactly 21:24 (Greenwich Mean Time) on Monday March 20. The spring weather has yet to appear though as we have had showers and heavy rain all week with the best of the sunshine first thing in the morning. However, I…
Six on Saturday | Middle-March
The month of March is marching on with only a couple of days until we reach the vernal equinox when daylight hours equal the hours of darkness. This is when spring truly starts for me. I was going to do a post purely about the yellow flowers appearing in my garden this week, but could…
Six on Saturday | The Big Chill
Forget the start of Spring, winter returned with a vengeance this week to many parts of the UK and northern Europe. Fortunately in the south-west it was rain and not snow. Still too cold and wet to do anything much in the garden, but the only thing I need to do is go round and…
Six on Saturday | Spring Forward
Although the first of March is considered to be the beginning of spring in meteorological terms I tend to stick with the astronomical terms – the Vernal equinox falls on Monday March 20th this year. But there is no doubt that life in the garden is beginning to emerge with the longer hours of daylight….
Only the Blues
Iris reticulata ‘Alida’ (Alida: pale silky blue, mid-blue fall with yellow blotch.) Iris reticulata ‘Clairette’ (Clairette: A distinctive sky blue iris with purple falls marked white. Light blue, golden blotch.) Iris reticulata ‘Rhapsody’ (Rhapsody: Blue bird blue, falls royal-blue with yellow and white rimmed blotch.) These little beauties all began to flower last week and…
february flowers
Last week the crocuses, among my pretty marbled Cyclamen hederifolium leaves, were nothing more than spiky leaves poking up through the ground. By mid-week the yellow crocuses were in flower. Yesterday’s sun painted a pretty picture. Flowering in a container are my new Iris reticulata ‘Clairette’ with sky-blue flowers, each fall being beautifully adorned with…
frosty friday
In the 6 years since moving to the southwest of Cornwall I have only seen a handful of frosty mornings, including the Beast from the East back in 2018. This week has been exceptional with frost most days and yesterday the hardest one yet. Temperatures that don’t normally fall below zero were down to -3….
Six on Saturday | Annual Round-up 2022
We have reached the time of year when I take stock of the garden over the past 12 months, reviewing the successes and the failures. It won’t surprise anyone who lives in the UK that this has been the driest year of the six I have been living in Cornwall. As I did in my…
Cornwall in Colours 