What's Looking Good In August 2021

This Hebe flowered last year, non-stop, for 14 months but took a break in late Spring and has started again now. The bees and wasps love it but seem to get on OK here.


This Shasta is on our front verge and we have had to remove 3/4 of it as it was blocking the view when driving out. This is what's left


The bronze Fennel is also spreading like mad and we keep having to dig out young ones. Luckily we have been able to sell most of them


The Inula also need some hefty control and we cleared a lot of it in the winter. It just thumbed its nose at us and carried on spreading




We gave the Sysirinchium it's early summer chop after it had finished flowering and has started again


The Verbascum chaixii also had its early summer chop after flowering and is coming back again everywhere


Crocosmia is also becoming a bit of a thug but we have dug out quite a lot, together with Jerusalem sage, Alchemilla mollis and hardy Geraniums and filled the car and took them to a charity garden centre where they teach gardening to people with learning difficulties. It's much better than binning them.


Forgotten the name of this one


This is the Phytolacca (Pokeweed) that disappeared quite some years ago and suddenly reappeared this year about 6ft from the original. It has flowered and now going to seed

 

We have quite a few Hydrangeas (whites,pinks and reds but no blue). The plant to the left of it is Jerusalem sage (Phlomis russeliana) but the mauve variety. We have lots of the yellow (spreads like mad) but just this one patch of mauve that doesn't seem to want to spread. It is much more floriferous than the yellow but a bit on the pale side.








Behind the Hydrangea is the Lysimachia atropurpurea just starting to flower in yellow. In a week or so's time the leaves will start turning a dark purple. An interesting plant but it spreads with root runs


At the end of last year we planted a couple of Clematis alongside these two supports and they are now doing very well




Raspberries have finished (very poor crop) and blackberries not brilliant this year but other fruit is doing well. I have picked a hundred pound or more of golden plums (now just about finished) and haven't yet got my fruit picker out to get up to these - so some have rotted. The tree is getting on for a 100 years old.


Pear trees are doing well with the Williams the most advanced


All the apple trees are also doing well despite the frosts in April




With some of the eaters ripening nicely

 

@shiney that pink fluffy flower looks like thalictrum

 

@JWK Thanks, that's the name . We have three different types in the garden and I just couldn't bring the name to mind! it must be . We have the one in the photo, one that grows about 5ft high and very bushy and Elin that grows about 10ft. The others finished flowering ages ago.

 

@Sheal thanks The apples and pears always do well. We don't feed them but keep them well pruned each year. The Williams pear came from Belgium and the Conference pear (my favourite) was bred from it in the late 1800's just down the road from us by Thomas Rivers. All our fruit trees are over 70 years old as the back of our garden was part of a fruit nursery.

The back of all the neighbours' gardens were also part of the nursery but we're the only ones that have managed to keep the trees. Most were either taken out by the owners or weren't looked after properly with a few being lost to the hurricane of '87.

We have had all our apple trees identified by the experts and have some older varieties. They come to the old Rivers Nursery in Sawbridgeworth each October to identify apples for people and part of the old nursery is preserved and looked after by a Trust and the local council. The rest of the nursery is a hospital and retirement homes.

We've only lost a few of the originals that were here when we moved in 50 years ago. We took out the cherry trees as they weren't doing too well, the birds always got them first anyway, and the experts suggested that we removed them to give the apples more space. We also removed the Cox's Orange Pippins that had started dying.

We freeze a lot of the apples and also sell a lot for our charity.