Every ramble this week has brought another first in terms of what has started blooming, with almost all the roses now having begun to flower, but only a few profusely. I was well pleased today, however, to find the first blooms open on my outdoor sweet peas (these are Gwendoline and King George VI) and the first dahlia (my oldest dahlia, and with very variable blooms quite possibly a seedling). Everything else may be behind any sort of norm, but that is not the case with those two.
The cutting beds are beginning to fill out, but plants have not yet reached their full height and blooms are a couple of weeks later than in recent years. Calendula are currently the brightest and best of them (Snow Princess, Orange Prince, Sunset Buff)…
…. but cornflowers were the first to flower. The two on the left, Red Boy and the two-tone blue one that I seem not to have noted the variety of, are new to me this year and very pretty:
There is a striking depth of blue in the blue & white borders, courtesy of Clematis ‘Kingfisher’ and Delphinium ‘Dark Blue with White Bee’. The clematis has been there for a number of years but never flowered well before, no doubt because I was incorrectly cutting it back in early spring as a Group 3 clematis, instead of the Group 2 it actually is – one of the reasons I don’t intentionally purchase the latter! The latter is new to me this year and having come in just a 1 litre pot I am surprised at how well it has grown and am thrilled to have it blooming already.
Climbing rose ‘Wollerton Old Hall’ is a fairly recent addition, possibly arriving in 2019, but didn’t begin climbing last year and had only a couple of blooms, but has finally accepted the garden as its new home and beginning to make a show of itself with its very pale apricot blooms, so pale they are almost off-white:
These are just some of my firsts this week and I could easily have exceeded my Six for Jon the Propagators’ Saturday meme many times over. No doubt other bloggers will be sharing many firsts amongst their June joys too.
When you are preparing to open your own garden it can be hard to find or make the time to visit any other gardens, especially as June is invariably the peak month for garden openings. However, we managed it last Sunday and hope to visit another this coming weekend. This one, on the edge of Cannock Chase, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty made up of deciduous woodland and heathland, borrowed from this landscape and had a ‘woodland edge’ feel to it. The owners also incorporated a range of artefacts within the garden and overall there were a number of similarities with parts of our own.
We don’t, however, have any caves in our garden…
Later than in most years, the roses are gradually coming out to play; ‘Strawberry Hill’ was the first, climbing over the arch at the back of the main borders. She has a very dishevelled appearance, as if she got dressed in a hurry in a distinctly strawberry shade of pink.
‘Olivia Rose Austin’, the rose I showed on Wednesday, really is the most perfect ‘quartered’ rose and a glorious shade of pale pink, not that you would know from the sun-bleached photograph of her on location. She came to visit for the first time early last year, and quickly settled down into a shapely and healthy bush, immediately becoming one of my favourites.
The third rose to get going this year is ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, said by some to be the most popular rose ever. She has been resident here for a number of years but moved house about three years ago, leaving the gallery fence for a new abode at the end of the shrub border. She has taken a little while to settle in but this year her decision to move was rewarded and she is looking wonderful, with more blooms than I have ever seen before, even at this early stage. She is a deeper and brighter pink than the other two, and very appealing – probably set to become another favourite!
I have managed to get a close up of one of the bees from the bird box, and am fairly confident it is a tree bumblebee 
Meanwhile, ‘our’ red mason bees have filled up some of the nesting tubes, capping them with ‘mud’, after having seen no activity there since they hatched early in April, leaving me a little concerned that they might not have coped with the frosty nights following the emergence from their cocoons. They tend not to be active after June, by which time leafcutter bees will have emerged and will quickly fill any empty tubes, destroying rose foliage as they do so!
Lastly, the sixth of my Six on Saturday, the meme hosted by fellow blogger 
Did I
The old adage ‘ne‘er cast a clout till May be out‘, whether it refers to the month of May or may (hawthorn) blooms, no longer has much relevance for most gardeners, as climate change has moved the seasons forward. I daresay there are still some traditional gardeners who insist that certain things should not be sown or planted out till such and such a date, and even I have found that later sowings of annual have often quickly caught up with any earlier ones. Anyway, here I am fully on top of seed sowing and planting out despite dry and frosty April and the damp squib that much of May has been – now with a warm dry spell it’s a matter of waiting for blooming to begin.
Next, the woodland, the view from the bothy over the main borders and the main borders from ground level:
The clematis colonnade (spring clematis over, summer varieties still in bud) and bronze heuchera bed, then the woodland edge border from both directions:
The three bold borders, now beginning to have something to show for themselves:
Through the gates to the cuttings beds:
And on to the blue & white borders, the rose garden and through the clematis collonade to the main borders:
Back towards the house and the snowdrop border with the start of summer annuals, and the defrocked wisteria:
And finally to the Coop, Coop Corner and shady courtyard:
Whew, that was whirlwind tour! Now take it more slowly by watching the video instead…
In less than four weeks time we will be welcoming visitors as we open our garden for the National Garden Scheme, so we continue to crack on with necessary tasks in the garden. Now in our 5th year of opening ( although the planned June opening was cancelled last year because of the pandemic we had already managed a February opening before lockdown began), we are beginning to feel like old hands and there is not a seemingly endless job list as there will have been in the early years – in truth, I feel very much on top of it, although the Golfer’s list of task is not reducing very rapidly as he will keep going out and playing golf…
This year, I have tried to get in the habit of inspecting the lilies (all in pots) regularly for early signs of lily beetle but up till this week had only come across a single specimen; something has changed, and today I removed at least half a dozen of the blighters – this one seems to have somehow got himself squished…
I rounded the corner of the working greenhouse on my first-ramble-of-the-day midweek, to find a patch of cornflower in the cutting beds broken, smaller plants scuffed out of position and one of the posts supporting two layers of netting knocked over. The culprit, undoubtedly a cat, had clearly been disturbed in a neighbour’s garden, jumped onto the fence and down into the middle of the cutting bed, oblivious of the netting…the resulting 
mayhem must have been quite a sight (and sound, possibly) as he tried to extricate himself. There are at least 3 cats that regularly parade through our garden as if it was their own, but in this case we know exactly who the guilty party was as we found several clumps of white and ginger fur nearby. Why he lost so much fur and why it wasn’t on the actual scene of the crime remains a puzzle… It will not happen again, I assure you…
It may be coincidence, but we have not seen a cat anywhere in the garden in the few days since the animal repeller (designed to repel certain animals by ultrasonic waves inaudible to humans) was placed in situ, temporarily hanging on an existing bracket before being affixed to the wall.
And that’s my six (or is it just 5?) for our genial host 
