Ground frosts

This morning was the first time when on waking up it looked like there had been a slight ground frost. Not enough to hang around for a long time but enough to make the rampant nasturtiums hang their heads a little. It is also a wake up call for me, as yes inside I may have the heating on and be wandering around in shorts and Hawaiian shirts pretending it is summer however I think I need to firmly accept it is winter. 

So this weekend is the time for the big plant take in...the Musa silkimensis will all be dug up, Cannas cut down and stored and Ensetes cut down and left to dry....time for the cold

New plant show painting

So my ramble towards being a better painter continues...this is the latest one very loosely based on a fern stand at a plant show this year which I am rather pleased with!

Nice France: new public garden and escaping cold England

So last weekend we escaped to Nice in order to check out my parents new flat and have a break. Our visit coincided with the official opening of their new redeveloped park which was a very exciting affair complete with sultry teenagers in traditional dress and lots of important speeches about reclaiming open space from cars and buses.

It was very exciting to see how they thought open spaces should be done and there were a few surprises such as the misters, scented with Jasmine (tres bien!) casting clouds of spray across the park. The double surprise was how quickly a small child standing on a sensor would get soaking wet.

Fountains were the big thing and they seemed to have something hypnotic in the water as the locals were all transfixed as they popped up and down to the music.

They also had these seats which were all in the new stylee (ie individual seats randomly placed around like an informal sitting room) however these only had one leg fixed to the ground so that you could follow the sun, or ignore your neighbour.

The planting was loosely continental...Africa being nice witht his lotus type flower and Australasia being a sea of tree ferns (Dicksonia and Cyatheas don't you know!) nice modern swathes of grasses and loose planting. Generally all the municipal planting in Nice is so much better than English ones as it is all so varied and exciting rather than our abused shrubs and samey bedding. In the middle of the roads were Tetrapanx and planting very reminiscent of my own, and around tree bases there were swathes of Miscanthus and Garuda.

The children's play stuff was also rather fun big monsters of the deep.

Interestingly the whole park was actually built over the old river which used to dissect the main town with big bridges over the other side. In Victorian times the ladies would wander amongst the boulders with people washing their clothes in the river. This was all covered over about 100? yrs ago and was built over in various ways from open space to a bus station. Now it is a park and a rather good one, I approve!

Also a fun thing to do was go to Villefranche...a village round the bay which was great for gawping at the locals and wandering its medieval streets. There is nothing at all wrong with a 2 1/2 hour lunch on the quayside in the sun. There was also much admiration of the plants and looking forward to returning

 It seems that the designer of the town bands uniform was also a fan of the Thunderbirds...

 

Nicotiana glaucum growing out of a crack!

 

 

 Loquat flowers

 

 

October at its exuberant best (before the winds blew it over!)

Things are solidly autumnal...no frosts yet but with the clocks changing I'm coming home in the dark and walking through piles of leaves. Garden wise things are still growing happily away...unaware winter is lurking to stop them dead and turn things to mush.

The end has come for a few things quicker than expected with the winds that blew over the South of England on Monday...not quite an American standard of storm and I haven't seen any trees down around us but enough to blow away the cobwebs and knock over the dahlias and ricinus.

However some things are looking better and better...the salvias which have been sulking all year are suddenly flowering, and some annuals are looking the happiest they have ever been. So some pictures of this years climax to enjoy whilst you can!

Things on the terrance moved for the painters....my movable jungle in pots!

Chairs are still left out NGS stylee...Canna musifolia looking big



You can see how much the Canna musifolia have grown in a year! probably at least 8ft....

Nicotiana tabacum finally getting bigger

check out my Dahlia imperialis getting bigger and bigger...yeah baby!

I am really pleased with the cup and saucer vine where the flowers open white and fade to purple....they have quickly covered their supports and are flowering well. They have worked better having them on 7ft high supports rather than climbing up huge fences where they tend to get lost and not flower so well

 

This is the nasturtium take over....they came out of nowhere and have conquered any spare spaces, reaching across paths like an octopus ready to grab you

 

This is the scene today post winds....tall dahlias, ricinus and helianthus are all flattened :(

 

 

 

A surprise at the RHS autum show

I had planned a dash to the RHS autumn colour plant show early yesterday morning, not particularly expecting very much....I think I have already been fairly vocal about thinking that these shows are getting very samey with many of the same nurseries, same types of displays and formats, however yesterday I had a big surprise....

Fabulous Nerines...nothing unusual there

The main hall was much as usual...autumn colour is my thing and there were some displays of dahlias and a good amount of salvias that I was unfamiliar with. I also got sucked into buying a few ferns, and particularly some different species and varieties of Polypody as these ferns do so well at the front of borders and cope with dry shade admirably...often in the wild you see them colonising dry stone walls.

Some fabulous Michaelmous daisys mixed with grass, prarie style

I was pleased to pick up a Kniphofia rooperi...a stunning red hot poker that looks its best at this time of the year...vivid colour and a nice chunky poke.  I also bought a replacement Eupatorium capilliaris to give it another chance as I can’t decide is the winter or the slugs killed it...

However the surprise came when I went to the other hall....firstly we were directed to the side entrance where we entered into a dark Heuchera art instillation.....trippy music was playing, and drapes enclosed the space....projections of colour were on the wall and instillations of heucheras with lights and vinyl records posed tripping risks. I did wonder if an organiser had been at the magic mushrooms.

eh by gum...whats going on?

A further surprise was in the main hall where three quarters of the space was given over to more art instillation's...on one side there were things (big olive tree, rock, block of ice) suspended on ropes high above sand filled planters. Then there were cages and adventurous corrugated iron planters. Blimey.

 

is that passiflora really so dangerous that it needs to be caged?



This was my favourite....a block of ice suspended over a planter being raised up and down....however it was very high art meets RHS due to the yellow slip hazard sign....you can also see the bored looking lady in the corner of the room whose job it seemed to be to press the button to make it go up and down. Its not quite the Saatchi gallery....

 

I think it was great for the RHS to do something different, and very adventurous however it must have appealed more to a younger audience and not their core users...I did wonder if St John Ambulance were on standby in case some couldn’t cope with the change. Certainly when I was there the stream of people was more just around the plant stands...those that ventured over to the art tended to look for the labels of the plants that were being used. However it amused me and I stayed for twice as long as I would usually....go have a look and see for yourself!

So all very exciting, what awaits us at the spring shows?