‘I’d like to get you on a slow boat to China
All to myself alone…’
Inspired by the use of a gravy boat as a vase and the presence of the three Chinese sampans made out of shells, this fragment of a once well-known song popped into my head. Personally, I wouldn’t want to spend time with anyone on a slow boat to China, or even a fast one come to that, and would indeed think carefully about any boat trip… 🙄 Coincidentally, a recent conversation with my mother threw up the interesting snippet of how much she enjoyed a slow boat from China back to the UK as a child in the 1930s….
Leaving boats aside, I really enjoyed cutting and arranging blooms for today’s vase. The selection began with stems of hugely dependable Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’, encountered in an open garden only a few years back and one I would now highly recommend. Having the gravy boat already in mind, I continued to focus on blue or blueish blooms and was surprised at my eventual haul: side stems of delphinium, annual clary sage ‘Oxford Blue’, cornflower from ‘Polka Dot Mixed’ and stems of what is labelled as Veronica ‘Schneeriesin’ but is sporting these light blue blooms as well as white, with the addition of obliging semi-herbaceous Clematis ‘Arabella’ which is proving to work really well as a cut bloom.
The end result is most satisfying, especially being the most ambitious of my vases so far this year, and makes a change from simply picking and plonking. If you have blooms or other material from your gardens or garnered nearby that you would like to share with us on IAVOM, then please join in by leaving the usual links to and from this post. Simple or elaborate, arranged or plonked, all are welcome and all will undoubtedly bring pleasure.
Most visitors this year seemed to comment not just on the roses but on the clematis too, although in fact there are a number which were not yet flowering, like ‘John Huxtable’, above. I have to agree that all those that are now in bloom do seem to be more floriferous this year, which I am guessing may be down to the fact that I actively fed them earlier in the year, following the feeding regime recommended by Thorncroft, my favourite supplier. If this was the reason, then the effort and cost involved was certainly worth it.
I could show several more examples, but this would be stretching the Six on Saturday rules too much, so will just share the exuberant ‘Little Bas’ on the clematis colonnade, with a bloom of ‘Princess Kate’ hiding in the middle of the picture, and one of the herbaceous scrambling varieties (alongside the striking scarlet Lychnis chalcedonica), its label hidden amongst some very damp foliage:
I was thrilled recently to discover a big fat bud on an agapanthus grown from a seedling from 
I have managed to restrict my gardening activities this week to gentle deadheading and a little repotting, but today decided to face up to the Rector, the rambling rose above the arbour. For some years we have cut back all the flowering stems soon after flowering and this has certainly helped keep him in a shape suitable for his profession. Not a difficult task, other than facing the numerous sharp thorns, it just involves wholesale lopping followed by tackling the mountain of prunings and in due course tying the new shoots to the wooden framework, although only the first of these was achieved today.
Finally, for the sixth of my stretched Six on Saturday for 
It was only yesterday that I realised how close it was to the end of the month – my mind clearly hasn’t been thinking beyond the dates of our garden openings, so we are fortunate to still have timely photographs of the garden at the end of June, plus the usual video! Under The Garden tab above you will find a map of the garden and an annotated version which shows the route of the video tour and the usual location of the photographs; these may help you orientate yourself in a garden that allows several routes around it.
In the woodland, under the canopy of the trees, the foliage of bluebells and wild garlic is quickly withering along with that of lamium and red campion, although foxgloves seem fine with the dryness; at the end of the woodland, climbing up in the bothy we can look out over the main borders before clambering down and viewing them from ground level:
Turning, we see the bronze heuchera bed, with the clematis (some late to bloom) colonnade beyond, underplanted with roses, before heading through the woodland edge border, seen from both directions. I am pleased to have added more roses to this very mixed border, now gradually filling out to add more colour, although perhaps not yet as floriferous as they could be.
The new grasses border is beginning to make an impact, although the shorter grasses will take longer to fill out and make their presence felt:
Although still overstuffed, the two remaining ‘bold borders’ are beginning to come together although probably need judicious editing – and certainly more staking, as veronicastrum continues to head skywards. The presence of non-climbing clematis in the borders and others on trellis on the walls behind adds further colour:
Through the gate in the wall to the cutting beds and the working greenhouse we can note that dahlias and most annuals are much later than last year, but every day something else is beginning to bloom and their relative tardiness will soon be forgotten.
The blue & white borders are probably the least successful borders of the garden, but there are now at least some success stories amongst the planting, so with editing here too we might finally achieve something the gardener deems acceptable!
The rose garden is also beginning to fill out as the newer bushes get established, enjoying increased light after removal of nearby trees in recent years, but still shadier than is ideal:
Recent rambling, now with the garden to ourselves, has felt especially indulgent, knowing there is no pressure on me and no critic other than myself, and I was particularly aware of this as I stepped up to the clematis colonnade from the rose garden today, taking in the delights of the clematis above my head and the roses at my feet, with the billowing main borders beyond. When the latter were revamped two years ago, splitting them up, the intention was to give the sensation of walking through rather than past them – and this is how it seemed as I brushed past blowsy geranium and other delights:
Reluctantly turning towards the house, we can pass the ex-snowdrop border, currently hosting the easily grown and accommodating annual limonium, just coming into bloom, and avert our eyes from the early morning sun to look across the paved area and take in the foliage and blooms of yet more roses and clematis:
Finally, a quick look in the Coop shows streptocarpus and pelargonium in bloom, with assorted foliage in the Coop corner behind, crying out for some summer colour:
For real-life visitors to the garden there are other corners to explore and views to take in; the video tour may show some of these but will certainly give a better impression than still photographs (at a reduced resolution) will ever do, so do take a few minutes to watch it.
With our second open garden afternoon yesterday, I knew I would not be able to squeeze in the creation of a vase for today’s IAVOM, but had the presence of mind to take a few photographs of one of the vases gracing the various tables in our ‘pop-up café’, the sitooterie and elsewhere in the garden. Each stoneware ink bottle contained sprigs of sweet peas, astrantia and Euphorbia oblongata, the former two picked prior to our Wednesday opening with the sweet peas replenished yesterday morning.
The fabric for the tablecloths, also used for the cushions on all our benches, came from a serendipitous purchase of a pile of huge tablecloths at a car boot sale, originally used, we guess, to furnish large tables at some self-hosted function. Last year, inspired by tables at a garden we visited, I made a number of tablecloth weights, little bags of glass pebbles suspended from plastic clothes pegs, to prevent the cloths from being lead astray by the wind. It was a bright but breezy day yesterday and they served their purpose well.
We are in-between garden openings at the moment, with a group visit a week ago, the first general opening on Wednesday, and our second and last general opening tomorrow. Unless there are later group visits booked, that will be it for this year and I may take my foot off the proverbial pedal for a little while. This last week seems to have been a continual process of top-up baking, deadheading roses and tying in wayward clematis, but the effort will be worth it and I have every confidence it will be another successful day tomorrow.
Most of the roses have peaked but are still looking good, although rambler ‘Rosemarie Viaud’, clambering over the back of the shed, is only just coming into bloom, turning up late as she always does:
The cutting beds are beginning to look more colourful, the outdoor sweet peas are in full bloom and two more dahlias are now producing their first blooms, ‘David Howard’ and Geoffrey Kent’ below:
Visitors always comment on the hostas, whatever the state of their leaves, and I am pleased to say that those by the sunken area have remained fairly mollusc free this year; those down the side of the house where visitors will enter the garden suffered a little early in the season, but have remained unscathed since, the result of continued dry weather or application of a garlic wash:
Blooming at a perfect time for showing themselves off are several pots of Asiatic lilies, perhaps making up for their lack of fragrance with vibrant colours, the one below being ‘Forever Susan’. I am sure the garden could benefit with more, so must remember to add them to my next bulb order.
That’s my six for today, a little taste of what our visitors have seen or will be seeing tomorrow. Visitors to 
Phew…what a scorcher it was yesterday! Phew! What a hectic afternoon it was on Thursday! Whew! What a relief it is to have some rain today! Take your pick…
Thankfully it wasn’t as hot as yesterday, when temperatures reached nearly 35°C by late afternoon, although you can see from ur weather monitor that it was pretty warm inside too, reaching 29° by the end of the day in our kitchen with the always-on Aga. The upside was that we were due rain all day today, although it has mostly been persistent showers rather than anything heavier. Temperatures have dropped to 12 or 13°, more than 20° less than yesterday, although it is still exceedingly warm in the house where the heat seems to have been retained.
Yesterday’s heat was probably the last straw for the Winter Sunshine sweet peas in the greenhouse which, although still covered in blooms, are producing them on increasingly short stems, making them difficult to use in a vase. Now that my outdoor sweet peas are getting going, this may now be the time to remove the former, enabling me to get my tomatoes into the greenhouse border instead. I usually wait till after our main garden openings, this year on 22nd and 26th June, but I may take the plunge and pull them out before then.
Next to the greenhouse, in the cutting beds, one or two more annuals are beginning to show colour now, particularly the clary sage, like ‘Oxford Blue’, below. Incidentally, I have made a second sowing of zinnias which are growing at the rate of knots and will hopefully still produce many weeks of flowers in due course. It seems as if the demise of my others may have been damping off, perhaps due to a relatively cool April.
Finally, despite the dampness of my rambles around the garden today, I managed to notice the often overlooked ‘stinking iris’, Iris foetidissima, flowering in the woodland edge border – more often than not it is the autumnal berries that catch my attention rather than the flowers.
Rambling in the Garden 