Come on a garden safari: Sunday 19th May

On 19th May we will be opening our garden as part of a 'garden safari' which will be a fabulous opportunity to wander around a nice bit of Camberwell. Sadly its a safari without any lions or tigers, but a good opportunity for good tea and cake and having a nosy

Garden safari in aid of Dulwich Helpline and Southwark Churches Care, Sunday 19th May, 2pm to 6pm

Explore four lovely private gardens plus the famous Lettsom Gardens near Camberwell Grove (by kind permission of the Lettsom Gardens Association, an active community group). Also open will be a garden which contains the original 'Camber well' which was supposed to have Roman coins in the bottom and give Camberwell its name. The gardens include two small areas of woodland, as well as grassland and a children’s play area. They are not generally open to the public.

Read about Dr Lettsome here

Read about the original Camber-well and Lettsomes garden here

The charities we are opening for provide friendship, practical help and emotional support to isolated older people in the community. Registered charity no. 1105923

Plant stall

Tea and home-made cakes!

Programmes/maps available on the day from 189 Camberwell Grove, London, SE5 8JU  Adults £5 (children under 16 – free) £5 (children under 16 –free)

Come and have a nosy! the garden looks very different to how it does in September with different successional planting with an exotic framework pushing through

May!

Its May! it feels like summer and northern towns are full of people wearing shorts!

The garden seems to be fast forwarding into life which is lovely, but as we have the garden safari coming up on 19th May I keep asking the plants very politely to hold off for a week or so

The garden is awash with blue....Echiums all seem to be undecided about whether to flower or not as the ones with rotted tips are flowering, but a couple of others are holding back



'Neighbours' has been the word of late, as input into the garden has been to feel less exposed and on view from the house, so I extended out a bed to create a bit of a barrier with a rather cold whipped bamboo and young Trachycarpus. This view conflicts with the other view about having an open sweeping lawn.. so half is open, half is more covered.

Extending the bed was harder than I thought as under the green grass was 2 bags of rubble and solid clay...so I ended the day with a sunburnt head and backache...

 The greenhouse is getting rather full as things are pricked out, and the Ensetes come back to life (phew). I did need an emergency trip to buy slug pellets as there was a bit of an invasion....even now I'm watching loads of tiny snails climb over the window looking for prey....

 My plant of the week, Pinguicula grandifolia....so pretty! it is carnivorous, trapping tiny flies on its sticky leaves

 I was hoping that the pond would be full of thousands of tadpoles having been kindly gifted some spawn, however all I can see are lots of obese newts that are so fat they aren't even moving out of the way. mmm.

Moving the greenhouse is the other neighbourly concession.....This will be hard as I'm not convinced where to put it or how to re landscape the area as it wasn't something I was thinking about. The ask is for more seating areas which are hidden from the house which this will give, however the current seating area (through the gateway) is on a lower level, and I cant see how it links together....however I think sometimes once you move something you can envisage the space better, and its better to do it now whilst I can still plant things out..... 

This was a nice surprise to see a Yucca flower spike pushing through...

Then I seem to have a lot of Cannas all gradually coming into life and needing a home....also note to self, without clear labels they all look the same!

 Hurrah, banana trees are coming back into leaf!

 the top is looking great with a carpet of forget-me-nots

 This is my potential new greenhouse area....a bit of space I didn't really know what to do with (a sign?) however it could be shady.

Then the bees are super busy, and we have just put on supers (things to collect honey) please let me have more than 4 jars of honey! please don't swarm!

i may have no honey, but I do have lots of purple sprouting broccoli.....this is despite the pigeons eating them all winter and me not netting them. One day I will be a good vegetable grower!

Inspiration from Antibes, South of France

I have just managed to escape for a few days to Antibes, which is in the South of France, between Nice and Cannes... I love France and currently my body is still about 75% French food and rose wine..

It was unusual to be there in April so the native flora was all rather nice (rather than fried in the summer sun), this was from a walk around the coast...

There were of course lots of typical big Agave's

 This was in the old town, where we had a house with a perfect roof terrace, plants had a way of colonizing all the banks...wall was especially overrun with white perennial wallflowers and there was a lot of this Aloe everywhere which  they also used as hedging making mine at home look rather drab

I was rather taken by this grass tree (Nolinia??) near the fort

I was more excited seeing this Aristolochia growing wild and rampant....

Then the Antibes folk were so good at greening up their city....balconies were stuffed full of plants which were tied and balanced precariously on ledges

Even in narrow streets they could get in a lot of plants just using pots

We also managed a trip to the Jardin Thuret.....in essence a botanic garden created in 1857 by Gustave Thuret to conduct plant acclimatization trials. It was an interesting place with some great old palms, however not quite a Kew gardens. Oddly it also had no benches, something a bit lacking across the whole of Antibes...I feel there is a good business opportunity for a bench maker to start targeting oldies with legacy desires... 

I have no idea what these are, but they were rather bold...

This was the most exciting thing I saw....a large bamboo forest of Phyllostachys edulis underplanted with Chasmanthe aethiopica...very striking! I don't know anything about Chasmanthe but it was grown in a few huge naturalistic sweeps, it looked a bit like a Crocosmia

A rather startling native? arum

and a rather ancient clump of European Fan palm...

Columnar cacti on the wall of the Picasso museum

Due to a 2 hour delay at Nice airport we also managed a quick trip to the Jardin Exotique which is only 10 mins walk away....do go if you are delayed! At its heart was a huge pyramidal greenhouse which had Caymans and lots of owls. You can also see how far ahead they are season wise as it had a real early summer vibe...there were even mature nasturshums

Everyone loves s a huge pseudo Aztec wall

There was also a Paulownia in flower looking stunning....the whole family asked me to immediately stop stooling mine to let them grow as it was amazing

This Echium was so electric blue and had a queue of people wanting to photograph it

I also spied a Tetrapanax looking rather aloof and a bit spindly. There is/was also one at Kew in the Temperate House and it looked similar...outside seems to be better! 

I like France! take me back there immediately!

Unwrapping bananas, Dr Who aliens and optimism

Well I am braced for the tropical temperatures that we are forecast for tomorrow....double digits! 16 degrees? 21 degrees? gosh....shorts and vests are at the ready and this time tomorrow I could be asleep in my hammock.

I have continued my optimism by unwrapping all the banana trees, and setting out some of the plants that have been hiding in my sideway such as a large pot of Canna musifolia and Musa sikkimensis....I figured its probably a few weeks early but an experiment as I hope the sun and water will help them erupt. I also have a very short memory...what snow? what hail storms, what ice?

Lots of things to do, so a bit of a pictorial tour

Firstly I am loving this grape Hyacinth, put in last year, pushing up like some type of cloaked 80's Dr Who baddie, I think it is Muscari latifolium.

The big banana unwrap was particularly exciting to see what was still there...also unwrapped was this Echium...I figure that I have 4? that are properly ok to flower, and have given them a good dose of fertiliser to help them on their way. Here you can see the banana before.... the plastic on the top was to try and keep it a little dry.....

Half unwrapped you can see how I started by making a bit of a wig wham of sticks and general dry garden debris, this was to protect the stem and keep moisture away from it. I then put bags of autumn leaves around the edge to try and keep the cold away. All was then wrapped in fleece

 

Well it worked! and all look alive, even the small ones. hurrah!

  

Ok it looks like a tall dead stick, but the stem is firm and the top shoot greenish

 

There was lots of fleece to dry off

 

 

Next up were the Ensetes which have been drying out in my metre cupboard since November? I was a little apprehensive as a lot were small (Late summer sales get me every time, I think I got 6?!) however all apart from 1 small one appear to have survived as the stems were still firm (the dead one was squishy and the leaves fell away)

 

There are the small ones before I cleaned them up, they are about 40cm?

all done! following on line advice I put them into the smallest pots they would fit into, only just pushed into to the soil (rather than buried) so fingers crossed this warmth brings them out. Please note my semi tidy greenhouse!

 

My first seedlings have also emerged, a few Tithonia are just coming through

 

 

 

So other things.....this year is the first I am letting Celandine grow. I usually think of this as completely evil as it takes over and is very invasive, however I read that the bees can like it as a an early flower, so this year it stays and those bees better be happy!

 

 

I think the paeony wins the prize for best spring emergent growth

 

I also have a surprise colony of violets which have just appeared under the Tetrapanax, nature is fabulous!

 

These are still evil, nature is not all fabulousness!....Sycamore seedlings. The curse of the garden, I had thought we got them all but some escaped!

The bees are also really active, although terribly camera shy as when I am coming to take their picture they don't stay still and there is also only a fraction of those that were previously there! It is great to see some with pollen on them (bright yellow blobs on their legs on the bottom). This is a good sign as it shows that there are young bees, and the queen is alive and laying. phew.

 

Finally the current challenge....the big problem with the garden is how overlooked it is, and how on display you are to the other flats.... it is difficult as there are limited secret corners, however we will try and make it more appealing to other residents. I feel a trip to Columbia Road for some more bamboos coming up.