WEEKLY PIC: NOVEMBER10 WEEK 5

At the bottom end of Alfred’s Arches, up against the furthest part of the Upper Rosemary Border, grows Crinum macowanii. The mother plant came from near the river many years ago, off the part of the farm that now belongs to my cousin, and I remember from my youth a plant that had been taken to our Johannesburg garden. Such is the power of the River Lily…

 It is a robust plant, and there is nothing shy about it. The flowers are big, easily 18 cm long and 10 across, and candy-striped in bud. This plant carries four heads, each with over 10 flowers. One of them has flopped over the stone path linking the lawn to the Alfred’s Arches path. But I don’t do staking, especially not of such a plant. Luckily it has fallen across stones and in amongst daisies, creating a moment of great voluptuousness. In the top photo two younger stems can be discerned, the one on the left just pushing colour.

 Where it fell, the buds turned up again towards the light. Not a bad show from a little foundling of a wilding, no?

 

 

 

RATHER RANDOM ROSE CLOSE-UPS

For weeks I’ve been gathering material for this post, but the more I got, the more random the theme became; it has not been a good year for rose photographs, and there is not really the time to delve through my archives, so this is it – a selection of the season’s better pics…

‘Buff Beauty’ is one of the most charming of all roses, and one of my favourites.  Her colour can vary from a dull straw to apricot, depending on the light and the temperature. She is a graceful climber and sweetly scented.

Here she grows with ‘Veilchenblau’ on the Wisteria Arbour in the Anniversary Garden. As they get bigger it becomes less of a contortion to get them both into the same shot. I must remember that come the pruning season!

I am certain that ‘Veilchenblau’ is an ancestor of ‘Rhapsody in Blue’, one of the most talked about of recent introductions. The way they have a red rather than a grey undertone, their velvety purple aging and their lime green foliage differentiate them from most other “blue” roses.

I’ve spoken before of Rosa chinensis ‘Mutabilis’ and here the various colours, from bud to dark maturity and faded old age can be seen. A glorious rose; and of course, a species rose not a hybrid… amazing, isn’t it!

Rosa rugosa is another unmistakable species rose, repeat-flowering all season, with heavily corrugated leaves and a suckering habit. It has single  magenta flowers, which are not to everyone’s taste, especially when seen with the huge orange heps – a startling combination!

Usually R. rugosa comes true from seed, but this is a hybrid! However it won’t make my fortune as it is a little shy to flower and the blooms don’t last very long or produce any heps. A curiosity for my garden only!

After all the lack of genealogy… a bit of breeding. This is a Hybrid Tea known as ‘Garden Queen’ or (in the USA) as ‘Buxom Beauty’. She still stands in her unglamourous bag near the front door. I  thought she might be the answer to my prayers, but her shrill pink colour and flaunting shape don’t appeal to me as they ought. I’ve come to appreciate subtler beauties. I guess she’ll find a spot in the Beech Borders. Yes, I did say bEEch. She was intended for the Ellensgate Garden, but I think something less of a trophy will work better in that comfortable and intimate space…

‘The Squire’ on the other hand has no pretensions to grandeur. He knows he represents the Best of British and happily stood around in Trudie’s Garden for a year before I gave him a more permanent home there. Now, of course, in a quiet way, he lords it over the other roses. He is, after all, one of David Austin’s English Roses…

R. roxburgii plena  is a strange Chinese fellow and was originally thought to be a species, until the single form was introduced and he had a plena added to his name. In fact he is so strange that there are those who question whether he should be called a Rose at all… His buds are covered in spikes, giving him the names Burr Rose and Chestnut Rose  ( you can see one top right) and his silvery bark tends to peel in a most unroselike manner. He has 12 tiny leaflets to a leaf, although that is not nearly as unusual as one might think amongst the species roses.

My ‘New Dawn’ roses are all grown from cuttings. They strike more easily than any other rose I know. The one below the waterlily pond has had literally hundreds of blooms over the last two months – of the softest pink. It is about as typical a rose as one can get, and possibly one of the easiest flowering plants to grow, relative to its contribution in the garden. You do realise that I rank this rose rather highly, don’t you?

‘Tausendshon’ – thousand times beautiful – is an aptly named rose. Almost thornless, it flowers continuously with flushes of apple-blossom pink blooms. Another easy rose from cuttings, although a little prone to mildew with me. But I have yet to spray it; it pulls through of its own accord.

This is not, I guess, a close-up. At least not of the roses, not even quite of the foxglove.  But I’ve been wanting to show you the Anniversary Garden, where mauves and yellows combine. Most of the roses in this shot are ‘South Africa’, a very disease resistant and robust soft orange rose which I can’t praise highly enough, bred by Kordes of Germany.

Here it is in close-up. Worthy of oohing and ahing over…

I’m certain David Austin waited a long time before he dared name a rose after Graham Stuart Thomas, the doyen of old-rose specialists.  He made a good choice.  I believe this has become the most popular yellow rose in the UK.  In South Africa it is best grown as a climber.  After trying to contain my two bushes for three years, they are now blissfully happy on  reed structures, each about two meters high and three meters long.

I said the theme was yellow and mauve, didn’t I? I’d actually misplaced this shot of ‘Veilchenblau’, (taken last year and sought out for this post), but I’m pleased it happened that way. I think it rounds of this little show quite nicely!

 

WEEKLY PIC: DECEMBER WEEK 1

Serious cheating – this is more of a photo essay.

I picked Frances of Fairegarden’s brain about her wonderful pics and found out that her camera is not too fancy: the same as mine but 4 generations more advanced. The quality of her pics has more to do with getting the light and everything else right than with technical know-how or equipment. So I could and should  go out and do better than I’ve been doing!

At the end of a cloudy day I took my camera and tripod to the Rosemary Borders.  As the sun sinks low in the west on such a day, it might break through the clouds which often don’t extend across the much drier plains to the west of us.  The light can be spectacular; today was merely adequate. And so to the subject of this week’s pictures…

So this week’s pic – or perhaps it should be pick! – is of the penstemons in the Upper Rosemary Border. I love them with the species rugosa rose and ‘Antony Waterer’ spiraea; the colours are identical but the plants so different. I love them against the hummocky shapes that dominate this bed, and I love the mauve and pink varieties together.

We move down to the Lower Rosemary Border for this shot. This bed was originally planted with scatterpacks, and I want to get back there, but it is currently more of a grow-on bed for Canna Durban (Tropicanna) and my indigenous orange poppy which featured a few weeks back in the weekly pic. Here Durban grows with the California poppy.

We move lower yet to the Makou Dam. I love this year’s ferns and last year’s oak leaves against the water.

Finally – the sun breaks through beneath the clouds as it sets.

 

WEEKLY PIC: NOVEMBER WEEK 5

My first sight as I woke this morning: the icon of my garden, the bridge, washed in the clean early sunlight of a summer morning after rain. Woken by the Piet-my-vrou cuckoo calling anxiously for his wife. “Peat may frow” – Pete my wife. Why his wife has a man’s name, and where she’s got to that he has to call for her so incessantly through the heat of summer has worried me since I was a little boy,  but I don’t think he trusts her in the balmy holiday weather of high summer…

 

A WALK DOWN THE GARDEN PATH

The Cottage Garden path that is. Not terribly inspired photographs, I’m afraid. The day was hot and muggy, the light bright but without contrast. I over-compensated, darkening by an f-stop too far. And I only have photoshop 4. My camera is  disappointing me. My computer screen could do with a good wipe, which might improve the pics. *thought* Perhaps I’m being a little grumpy? But I have a desire to share and so, internet willing, here are a few views of the Cottage Garden.

Three narrow stone paths cut through the Cottage Garden, so that it is never more than 2.5m wide. Negotiating these uneven paths with a tray full of teacups or drinks on the way to sitting out under the oak is an interesting way of dicing with death. This path leads from the front door towards the road. The road in turn leads past the waterlily pond and the Makou Dam in front of my parents’ house before swinging up along the Long Border to the entrance.

This is the view across the path, which is visible to the left. On the right my cottage can be seen. This grassed parking spot is the coward’s route down to the oak tree.

A pleasing mix of foliage rather than flowers characterises this spot at the moment. I added a good strain of the little wild white campion, Silene undulata, which was growing in the veld some years ago, and it now romps through the garden like a child at a party. When it gets too boisterous or starts to collapse on everything, I get strict and pack it off to bed. The next spring it returns. The bird bath is a lovely terracotta one, which suffered a friendship-ending fate when the neighbour dropped a branch onto it many years ago in Johannesburg. The glass bowl was an interesting replacement. The whole thing needs leveling – the bits in it all help to distract one (or were put there in the hope that they would)  from its leaning ways. The birds like the bits and don’t seem to mind the angle…

These last two pics show the plants on either side of the path in more detail; the bird bath is just to the right out of sight now. The green rod referred to in a post some days back did, indeed, turn out to be the orange Watsonia, W. pillansii, which is indigenous to our area. And in fact it DID grow there last year too – but not as tall and torch-like!

 

A LONG WALK TO LOOK AT BLOWSY ROSES

I’ve been asked about my red foliage and my roses, so I’ll identify my roses in this post and tell you a little more about other plants. And I’ll take you to a number of other spots around the garden, but let’s start again in the Beech Borders.

All the roses you see here I grew from cuttings from stock first planted in the Rondel Garden in 1996. From left to right they are: the bright pink of the Damask rose Ispahan (early 1800s) which featured often in the previous post. A few blooms of the  Bourbon rose Mme Ernst Calvat (1888) peek out from behind it and look rather similar. The pale pink is New Dawn, one of the best climbers of all time. In 1930 it sported as a repeat-flowering version of a 1910 introduction – one of the most fascinating rose sports of all time, as for the rest they are identical. To its right the rich pink of the Gallica Belle de Crecy(+-1850s) All these roses are wonderfully scented. Towards the back, more Ispahan. The red shrub is Berberis thunbergii atropurpurea and the pink flowered shrub which I love to mix with roses is Spirea x bumalda ‘Anthony Waterer’. They too are grown from cuttings; when you garden on this scale doing your own propagation is necessary ! The background is a row of seven now mature Acer palmatum (Japanese maples – a glorious sight in autumn) and to the right is Acer davidii, one of the snake-bark maples.

My nephews aged 16 and 14 were here from Namibia last week. They crept down to The Embarkment to get to the water with good grace. They knew that cutting the plants that had fallen across the path was out of the question –  an Abelia x grandiflora and two roses: the common moss rose Rosa centifolia muscosa (before 1700) and the Four Seasons White Moss Quatre saisons blanc mousseux (1835)

Another of these impressively named roses holds its own across the water after (I must admit) being dumped there some years ago when the area was much more open in the hope it would survive. To its left Acer palmatum atropurpureum with Rhododendron luteum  and Exochorda x macrantha below and Salix babylonica ‘Crispa’, the lovely Ram’s Horn Willow to its right.

Here is a view of my house through the Four Seasons Whie Moss, the camera held above my head. If nothing else this photo proves that it was not pruned last year, but survives quite happily nonetheless! ‘Four Seasons’ is a bit of an exaggeration – it repeat flowers slightly in autumn. Which was, of course, very unusual when it was first introduced…

Whilst on the far side of the dam, a view of my house and yes, my vehicle: a Malaysian designed Toyota Condor 4×4 diesel: it works like a slave, can carry 7 passengers or a load of plants or cement or even take a full-sized mattress when I go camping. Irreplaceable, it has been superseded by vehicles that are hopelessly too sophisticated and expensive to play such a multi-purpose role! (Anyone from Toyota reading this??) White climbing Iceberg roses (1968 – had to add a date for this modern classic!) grow left and right onto my house, with a Clematis montana adding to the show on the right. Overhanging the dam at the entertainment area are two Félicité et Perpétue roses, a lovely old climber from 1827. Penelope, a Hybrid Musk from 1924, graces the Cottage Garden below the Condor.

Here is another view across the Cottage Garden to where we have just been; the green  rod in the right quarter has me baffled. I suspect it is a rather potent Watsonia – but it will come as a wonderful surprise when it flowers. (No, I’m NOT going to identify the trees to the right of the willow right now!)

Near the garage the Wichuraiana rambler Excelsa scrambles up into a pine; wonderful if the mildew doesn’t do too much harm to it!

As  I’ve said before, the Rondel Garden, home to my original old-fashioned roses, commemorating Sissinghurst in its name and Francois in its existence, is in need of serious replanning… This is Rosa moyesii ‘Geranium’. I’ve never seen a single one of the famed flagon-shaped hips on it. Climate? Or just my bad luck to have an infertile strain? Iceberg on the house.

Still in the Rondel, Pink Grootendorst (A Dutch surname meaning ‘big thirst’ – there are three members in the rugosa family!) has flowers frilled like a carnation and dates from 1923. To its left in the rugosa bed is Frau Dagmar Hastrup from 1914. Prunus cerasifera in one of its many forms provides a plummy background.

We now move to the end of the wisteria arbour in the Anniversary Garden where the Polyantha climber Veilchenblau (1909) lives up to its name which means ‘Blue veil’. Below it the wonderfully subtle strawwy yellows of Buff Beauty (a shrubby climber from 1939) can be seen. Veilchenblau is beginning to climb up into the Japanese maple. I can’t wait to see the effect five years from now!

I planted New Dawn in the Upper Rosemary Border by mistake, thinking it something else. It has scrambled about, reaching for the sun through the thick planting of smallish shrubs, and set off especially well against Abelia x grandiflora. The species Rosa rugosa has been a mixed blessing next to it, suckering whenever the roots are damaged during cultivation. However the flowers are a perfect colour match with Spirea x bumalda ‘Anthony Waterer’ and the rose flowers continuously, later producing startling orange hips at the same time as its magenta flowers. I enjoy the unsubtle colour mix and the birds enjoy the food. Win-win, I’d say.

Here is another view, taken from the Rosemary Terrace; I’ve written enough and you’ve read enough. No more details on the planting.

This is the first year I’ve even noticed the Tausendschön (Thousand beauties, 1906, a Polyantha climber) in the purple crab-apple. It must be five or more years since I planted it there. It repeat flowers in a good spot. This can’t be one. But it will grow through the tree and in years to come give greater joy.

Gosh, this walk is exhausting me! We are now up in the arboretum where I planted a number of tough roses some six or more years ago. The rather garish pink was incorrectly marked ‘Compassion’ but has proved itself to be tough alright. Behind it is South Africa. I will sing its praises (the best rose since Iceberg???) in a future post. A single flower is all that can be seen of Rosa chinensis mutabilis about which I will tell you more when I post close-ups soon.

And so down we go and across the Makou Dam to the old stone barn. Tausendschön,  the mother plant of many on the mountain, absolutely loves this sunny spot where I planted it nearly 20 years ago. Beyond it another repeat-flowering pink rambler-like climber grows on the fence of the vegetable garden. I’ve known this rose all my life here on the farm and in neighbouring gardens. Unlike most climbers – and definitely most ramblers – it has an incredibly long season, being one of the first in bloom and carrying on right into winter. It is very happy here where it steals the sun from the veggies, happier than its mother plant, and being a sucker for charm and beauty I allow it to keep pride of place.

We end our walk (pant, pant) at Trudie’s Garden outside the big house, where I reiterate what I said at the beginning of the previous post: I like roses where they can grow as huge as they like and flop over complimentary shrubs and be voluptuous and abandoned. This might be a rather more elegant lady, a prim and sophisticated hybrid tea called Germiston Gold, but she too benefits from the arm of a dapper shrub to show off her assets…

 

BLOWSY ROSES IN THE BEECH BORDERS

It is rose season at Sequoia Gardens, a time of extremes of joy and despair. It is not really a rose climate; it tends to be too damp when the roses are supposed to look their best. In addition this past season I’ve not always provided the necessary support with feeding and pruning (I don’t do any spraying anyway). But walking through the garden recently and looking at the scene below, I knew where the strength – and the future development – of my roses lay…

Fact: I will never be a neat gardener. Fact: my roses often need to fend for themselves. Fact: roses in an unneat garden having to fend for themselves are a disgrace. Fact: my roses often succeed in being superb despite all these facts! How and why? My best roses flop heavily onto other shrubs, or have a strong supporting cast when they aren’t capable of taking centre-stage. Many are once-flowering old-fashioned shrub roses. Many are tough as nails – what Ludwig, South Africa’s Mr Rose has coined Eco-Chic roses and marked with a red ladybird in his wonderful colour-catalogue. I must stop thinking along the lines of outdated rosebeds! (Except of course for Trudie’s Garden, where that is part of its charm, and where I do try to do the high maintenance thing.) I must accept that the Anniversary Garden is a 60% rose flop and fix it, not as a rose garden, but as a colour-themed garden with many roses. I must nurture the roses in mixed beds if (but only if) they are happy. And I must develop a large area where the old-fashioned roses can grow as huge as they like and flop over complimentary shrubs and be voluptuous and abandoned… the Rondel Garden is too small for most of the old-fashioned roses! And because of the editing nature of photography I can go SNAP! and make it look as though this has all already happened!

Already the Beech Borders display this philosophy rather well. Refine and expand will be the motto here – there is an area of some 30 by 70m next to this that I’ve been wondering about for years now…

It lies in the rectangle between the Standen Walk and the Beech Borders which you can see in this panorama…

At the bottom of the Beech Borders lies the Waterlily Pond…

And beyond that the New Dawn rose is spectacular for the first time this year….

Now let’s reverse back up the Beech Borders…

…until we are under the beech. The round pot contained Raubritter, the wonderful globular pink rose, to mark the intersection of the gardens. It died of neglect.  Down the bottom the magnificent tree fern is a bit of a bind because it narrows down the view of the pond. Ah well… count your blessings. It was there long before my garden, after all!

One of the tricks I wish to explore is the combination of red foliage with pink roses – in fact any foliage that compliments the blowsy badly behaved roses I adore. In my next post I will show you more in other parts of Sequoia Gardens!

 

WEEKLY PIC: NOVEMBER WEEK 3

Two days of misty weather, but little rain. Three weeks of trying to catch up with the real world – so my post on my blowsy roses gathers material but also dust. It is time for the weekly pic, so I stick my nose out the front door – literally – at 5.45am to take this shot. It is actually a pretty good subject, not as much of a compromise as it sounds. It shows the good and the bad of my gardening. Let’s start with the bad: too many ‘sticky’ textures, not enough big leaves or sculptural shapes, but it shows much clearer within the frame of a camera than on site; and a tendency to dotty planting rather than dramatic use of a few plants.

 

However it shows some of my favourite plants, and an admirable ‘white garden’ quality, although the Cottage Garden is better described as a garden where white  dominates. In the foreground are the bells on grassy wands of one of my all-time favourite plants: the white Angels’ Rods or Diarama; self-sown white Nicotiana elata abound; in the background Rosa ‘Penelope’, a wonderful repeat-flowering Hybrid Musk that strikes easily from cuttings, and standing out against the dark background, the flowers of Hydrangea serrata are beginning to show colour. One of the stone paths cuts through the composition. The Cottage Garden, small in scale, muddled in execution (by accident rather than design, but appropriate to its name!), is one of my more successful creations.

 

WEEKLY PIC: NOVEMBER WEEK 2

I was so certain that the roses would feature this week. But I think a longer post on my blowsy, rather unconventional approach to roses is needed; besides which, none of this morning’s rose pics, the first I’ve taken this second week of November, jumped out at me and demanded to be used.

So instead I present: Papaver aculeatum, the South African Poppy. It fills me with wonder that this obviously-poppy poppy is the only poppy indigenous to  South Africa; is in fact the only poppy in the entire Southern Hemisphere.  It is rare but quite widely spread, and can be either a soft orange like our local strain, or salmon-pink. I consulted Mark Griffihs’ “The New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary: Index of Garden Plants” which to my even greater surprise lists it as native to both Australia and South Africa.  How? When? I was quite prepared to believe that millenia ago a migrant bird brought a single seed from the North, and that developed into our poppy. But the same species in Australia? The only one there too? I must get an answer – is this possibly a mistake, or just another of the myriad questions nature dangles before us?

Our lovely display started as a single flower found wild on the farm. Over the years we have encouraged it in one spot, where it grows in the Lower Rosemary Border  amongst the unfurling leaves of the marvellously coloured Canna ‘Phaeson’ , sometimes incorrrectly called C. ‘Durban’ . I think this year I must conciously harvest as much seed as possible. This plant is a treasure!