For The Benefit Of Bees

The summer nectar bar at Norton Conyers is well and truly open now, we have so many bees in the garden that they are for or five deep on every flower. At least they are on the blooms that take their fancy and it is interesting to note which flowers those are, they are not always the biggest and most colourful. Top of the pops at the moment are the eryingiums / sea hollies, but the sunflowers, veronicastrums and salvias are close runners up. Many of the dahlias fail to impress with their intricate tightly packed petals. So the easy guide to which flowers to grow for the benefit of bees is to choose the simple ones, you can't go wrong with a daisy!

"How doth the little busy bee improve each shinning hour, and gather honey all the day from every opening flower"
Isaac Watts

This little chap has so much pollen on him he is almost entirely yellow!

Cutting The Meadow

Nicky starts the cut

Just before the recent spell of hot weather was forecast to break we decided it was time to cut the meadow yesterday, a real case of making hay while the sun shines! Luckily for us the morning at least was cool as after the first initial cut there was plenty of raking to do. Giles had a brain wave and suggested using the leaf blower to help make piles of the hay which worked really well, and so our day was spent covered in grass seed helping the occasional stranded small creature to the safety of the meadow edges, mostly toads which don't crawl very fast! Ours is not the best meadow in the world consisting mainly of coarse grass and nettles but it is still a fantastic habitat for all sorts of insects, small mammals and wild flowers. Along the edge of the haha in particular we came across a lovely patch of ladies bedstraw Galium verum, smothered in bees with a sent of hay and honey which it retains when dried which was why it was used to stuff the pillows and mattresses of women in childbirth, very apt considering Kate's good news yesterday. It also has a high acid content and was traditionally used to curdle milk for cheese making being one of the key ingredients in making Double Gloucester.

"Many eyes go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it"
Ralph Waldo Emerson

One of the many loads of hay

Ladies bedstraw

Visitors

Giles and I gave a guided tour of the garden yesterday to a lovely group of people who support the conservation of the local Thornthwaite henges. It was with a sense of pride that I found I could talk naturally and with a degree of knowledge about the history of the garden and the plants within it, after a little initial nervousness! No garden is complete without an audience, it makes all the hard work worthwhile. Lady Halena gave a talk in the orangery about the history of Sir James' family which I'm sure whet many an appetite for the re-opening of the house currently scheduled for 2014.
After lunch Giles left early, leaving me to enjoy the garden in solitude whilst I watered as many plants as possible before home time, a rare treat.

"In summer the song sings itself"
William Carlos Williams

Melting #2

Another day much like Saturday as we continue to suffer in the sultry summer heat. We are not the only ones however as some of the garden plants are now showing signs of stress, we have resorted to carrying cans of water to the worst of them especially the helaniums who were looking seriously wilted. With no rain in the forecast for the foreseeable future we may have a problem on our hands, the weather is such a  challenge this year! Luckily for us someone took pity on our plight today, the lady from Coachman's cottage brought us all an ice-cream mid-afternoon in return for all the fruit that finds its way to them, a much needed refresher. She told us that it is too hot for her horses as well and that at the moment they are only letting them graze the paddock in the evening cool, not a bad idea for gardening either if this Mediterranean climate continues.

"My advice to you is not to enquire why or whither, but to enjoy the ice cream while it's on your plate"
Thornton Wilder

Melting

Just Giles and I at work in the garden today and by this afternoon we were quietly melting in the heat. We settled down to watering the far vegetable patch and the new raspberry canes, as that seemed the least strenuous of all the jobs to do. It entailed stretching the big hosepipe as far as it would reach and trying to make the best of the poor pressure due to the distance. All was fine until the water petered out to a trickle, apparently we had run the well dry! So we switched to picking currants for the last hour or so filling another twenty punnets before home time. When Dave came sauntering up the path to collect me he was carrying two ice cold soft drinks for us, we couldn't express our gratitude enough.
My pictures are not doing justice to the garden at the moment as the lens keeps steaming up when in my pocket!

"If it could only be like this always, always summer, the fruit always ripe"
Evelyn Waugh

Hot Hot Hot

The walled garden of Norton Conyers continues to bake in the hot July sunshine, so today's post will be brief with just a few pictures to let the beauty of the garden speak for itself. Even Shandy was quiet for most of the day having dug up and devoured the rabbit she caught on Saturday, nice and ripe yum! We gardeners baked along with all of the flowers although we didn't get a refreshing shower with the hosepipe, cruelty to staff that!

"There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart"
Celia Thaxter

Heavenly Scents

We had a day of bashing and plucking in hot sunshine at Norton Conyers yesterday, starting with a spot of balsam control in the woods. We have moved onto a new area now that things are under control in the wild wood so that meant fighting through six foot high nettles to reach our intended victims. It is a strangely satisfying pastime and the first two hours of the day flew by until teatime when we emerged hot and sweaty with our arms tingling with nettle rash, now I know why we never garden in short trousers despite the promise of the hottest of days! It was sticky work hoeing through the top border next, we all felt the sort of fatigue that doesn't normally affect us but meant that even putting one foot in front of the other was an effort in the heat, so we were glad to retreat inside again for lunch. Our reward for all the hard slog was a peaceful afternoon of fruit picking and vegetable watering. The peaches were ripe and warm and giving off a fuzzy aroma of summer so we all ate one straight from the tree for quality control purposes of course! The juice ran down our chins so we had to have a wash to remove our guilty sticky evidence! Strawberry and red currant picking followed, the currants in particular have an intense beauty when hanging from the bushes like ropes of red pearls, we picked as many as we could scattering the hungry blackbirds asunder as we went.

When our harvest was over and the punnets lined up on the table in the orangery the scent was almost overwhelming, peach scent wafting in from next door and strawberry scent enveloping the room, moments like that are truly heaven sent.

"I know that if odour were visible, as colour is, I'd see the summer garden in rainbow colours"
Robert Bridges

An Old Favourite

Tropaeolum majus

Out of all the old cottage garden favourites I have a real soft spot for the nasturtium, some may think its brash colours are hard to match with carefully considered colour schemes, but for me I can't get enough of their cheerful presence and they are edible too, what's not to like! This year they have exploded into my garden more than ever before largely due to a fundamental error on my part, Tropaeolum majus loves poor soils and will flower well on them, silly me has planted them to grow up wigwams in my raised beds generously enriched with compost and as a consequence they have leaves the size of umbrellas! Add to that all the hidden seeds that have germinated whilst my back was turned and you might have an idea what my garden is starting to resemble. They are all welcome of course and I've stopped the larger plants heading for the hills by pinching out the tips, however I now have to undertake a daily pest patrol for the numerous creatures that wish to feed on all this sappy growth. I am of course familiar with all the usual culprits, cabbage whites, black flies etc but could anyone out their help me identify neat clusters of white eggs laid on the top side of the leaves? To my knowledge all the rest lay yellow eggs on the undersides.

One of my monstrous wigwams!

I have one other gorgeous example of nasturtiums growing in my garden, the flame creeper Tropaeolum speciosum, having grown it in a pot the previous year and achieving only one pathetic flower I allocated it a spot in the border where it has gone bonkers like all the rest. How can anyone resist its crimson red spurred charms.
Finally there is another beauty to show you, though sadly not in my garden, this one adorns the small cotoneaster hedge next to the peach house at Norton Conyers and I covert it madly but don't have the right position for it. Oh well I shall just have to admire it from afar!

Tropaeolum specieosum

"Did you ever think how a bit of land shows the character of the owner?"
Laura Ingalls Wilder

Tropaeolum polyphyllum