Six on Saturday – Mind Your Head!

Although our first proper opening of the garden is not till a week tomorrow, we had a group visit on Thursday, a mixed blessing, as it meant the garden had to be more or less ‘ready’ over a week sooner than it might otherwise have had to be. We didn’t have any group visits last year, the first year that we hadn’t, and this was the first time we had a visit before the main openings as I had previously avoided this – June is probably the most floriferous month, and sometimes we could be in limbo for two or three weeks after the main openings until all group visits were over, before we could loosen the reins a little. Interestingly, this gardening group, from one of the local villages, had previously visited us the first year we opened, although all but a handful of them were new members so the garden was new to them.

Unfortunately, they had rather a showery evening for their visit, but at least they could have their tea and cake under cover in the sitooterie or the pop-up cafe in our back sitting room, and they seemed to enjoy themselves. As well as weeding and sweeping all the paths, safety precautions are taken to reduce the risk of people bumping their heads on low branches like the apple trees and the wisteria – as well as prominent ‘mind your head’ notices, I hang red ribbons from them and also from overhead timber structures. The Golfer is always keen to point out that the garden is created and maintained by someone less than five feet tall, and I have to try and look at the garden from a taller person’s perspective before our openings, tying in foliage that wouldn’t even skim the top of my head, the rain making that task even more difficult.

One of the views much admired was of the main borders and the rose arch beyond with well-laden climbing rose ‘Strawberry Hill’, so well-laden that the stems bow downwards under the weight of the blooms, exacerbated of course after any rain. We really need to rethink this structure, already extended in an attempt to support the rose better, as stems have previously broken from the proliferation of blooms – do we extend it upwards, or forwards or both? Has anyone any suggestions from their own experience?

I showed the first dahlias in bloom on a Wordless Wednesday recently; slowly, others are beginning to open and now we have, clockwise from top left, White Onesta, David Howard in the middle, Happy Single Juliet, Twyning’s After Eight and Totally Tangerine.

We also have the first sign of colour on the outdoor sweet peas:

After a busy period destroying lily beetles about two months ago, they seemed to have disappeared (possibly plotting their next campaign) and the lilies have so far been completely free of them, allowing some almost perfect blooms on this random Martagon lily that appeared in the woodland edge. Well, not completely free of them because, before the buds appeared, I was picking off as many as ten lily beetles at a time from its foliage, but this altercation does not seem to have affected the blooms:

And finally, for the last of my Six things on Saturday for Jim’s weekly meme, here are the first of my raspberries, desperately in need of picking, and which I meant to show off last week – I just need them to dry off first! It looks as if there will be an excellent crop, a little earlier than most years, but it’s not the first time they have been ready for picking from the first week of June.