Reasons to be cheerful

One, two, three..

1........ The first of the eremurus are showing.

I tend to loose interst in plants (and the internet) over winter.  It seems to be a way to avoid getting depressed by the cold and short days. Then as the days get longer and hotter, suddenly the garden and plants start to look interesting again.  Time is spent in the green house, the garden, and waking plants up with their first water of the year.  At this time the Eremurus wake up, poking above ground after staying hidden over winter. E. oase is the first up this year.

In the last garden E. stenophyllus was planted in the dry bed and came back reliably every year.  Both e. stenophyllus and e. oase were planted in the new succulent rockery last summer, hoping that they would cope without problems.  The first winter with any garden is always worrying, so it is great to see E. oase showing.  It is the plant that tells me to get back out in the garden again, if I wan't interested in the garden before, seeing them appear gets me outside again.. Does anyone else have a plant that signals the start of spring?

2.........  Plants looking good.

So far (as it could still turn) it's been an incredibly mild winter, which is a big relief with the plants being in for their first year.  The whole bed looks good.

Many plants like this agave filifera don't have a single mark.

The echeverias have their winter colour, especially the e. elegans

Even some of the trial plants like this sedum mediterranean mystery look like winter never happened.

It is a massive relief to have got through the first winter without loosing any of the big plants or any of the plants I was worried about. 

3...... Determination to survive.

I wouldn't be pushing my plants is everything survived and there wasn't some damage.  Remember my variegated aloe saponaria, shown here at the end of the summer.

This was always going to be a test, even the normal form is very marginal here. It doesn't look quite so good now.

But these plants don't give up without a fight and look closely and there is hope. The main plant may be toast, but the two pups look like they are going to be fine. This seems to be true with most of the damaged plants.  The first view is of the damage, this is my echeveria deresina x agavoides hybrid.

After the damaged section were removed the tip seemed fine and there were undamaged pups growing already.

This could all change if we have a cold end to winter. Unlike the rest of the world the Uk does not move from winter to spring to summer in a nice predictable way. It was lovely today and the forcast for the next few days are suppose to be good as well. Then next week it could snow and we could go back to freezing night until April. 

For now I am happily singing, "reasons to be chearful, one, two, three".

Planting up the main succulent bank.

Building the main succulent rockery has been a lot of physical lugging or rock, soil and gravel. Monday saw the final large delivery of soil and gravel, time to enlist the family for one final push. In the morning the bed was set out ready, extra blocks had been added over the weekend to build up the end so it was ready to go.

The vertical posts had also been added continuing the wave from the side garden.  It was interesting having both the oldest nephew and niece around, they are really getting into gardening; not just the plants but the design as well and there were several discussions about why things were going in certain locations.

By lunch the plants were going in and the biggest rocks were in place.

Then it was just a matter of selecting the best rocks to create a more terraced look.

The gravel ran out before the entire bed was covered, but as the front row has to be finished it's no disaster.

Now the real fun can begin. With most of the big plants in, I can start to see the gaps and where all the bonus interest can be added. every time I look around it I see crevices in rocks that I can see being filled with some choice alpine.

The backbone is there and will fill out over the next few years, but what will really set everything off is the other plants that are not noticeable at first, or that bring colour at different points of the year.

There are so many good corners, gaps, hidden spots I am going to be able to add a lot more plants than expected. There is no rush to do this; I have some plants ready, other gaps will be an opportunity to buy one of the plants off my must have list. Hopefully I will be able to restrain from planting any old plant, to fill the spaces with those rare or special varieties.

Lots of new views to discover

The agave x nigra didn't seem to mind being in pots, the root balls were really strong and there are pups on each plant.  They look good and blue against the rocks which wasn't planned but one of those happy coincidences.

One of my favourite aspects to the bed is the different view you get when sitting on the wall at the table.  It's nice to look down on the plants while also being able to touch them

Plenty of space in there for some litte (and not so little) gems.

There is still a lot of work to do to get it looking how I want, but the main physical stuff is done with the fun bits to go. 

The area around the patio is almost finished, or at least it's looking like a garden.  At some point I am going to have to buy some non-spikey plants to fill the beds along the fence. I'm not going to have an excuse to delay it much longer.

And so it begins

With a constant stream of people coming through the house, I used a break in the viewings to start dismantling the dry bed.  The agave section is the first to go, this was it this morning.

I thought it was best to start with the smallest plants first and work up.  This lot came out in about 1 hour, being planted in almost pure gravel makes removing them really easy. There was one pup from each of the agave parryi, you can clearly see the difference in colour and shape now, they looked almost identical when planted.

The bed is already looking much emptier. I'll do the rest of the agaves, the filifera, nigra and montana next and then I will have all the space I need to take care as I dig out the yuccas.

Given how much time it took to design, build and plant up, not to mention the time I have spent protecting it and removing leaves, I have mixed feelings about the speed with which it is can be dismantled.

It had to happen

It's official we are moving and so the dry bed is going to have to be dug up.  It is funny when people come to look at the house apparently there are as many comments about the garden as the house.  There are the ones who think it is great and those that ask if it is going as the plants do not look child friendly. Whatever others think it is strange to think back to what it was like before:

Even back then there were signs of my addiction with pots full of agaves and I think it was the thought of having less plants in pots that persuaded my OH to let me dig up the concrete. Not sure it worked quite like that in the end, although at least the front bed has developed every year and she actually enjoys looking out onto it.

Now I just need to dig it all up! The agaves and yuccas are going to be first, some of these have got quite large now and this section of the bed is probably my favourite.

One has to be the agave montana, they love having their feet in the ground and is almost twice the size of the one kept in a pot. 

At this size it copes with our winters without any problems, only needing a little protection to keep snow out of the crown.  It is a good one for the UK as it grows best when slightly colder and wetter which is perfect for those UK summers. I will be interested to see how far the roots stretch on this one. Also in this bed are two agave filiferas, two agave parryis (plus a few pups), an agave x nigra and a few little ones. The large yucca rostratas are going to be interesting as well.  They are famous for dropping their roots as the first sign of disturbance.  Hopefully being in gravel will allow them to be dug up with minimal disturbance.

There are agaves in other parts of the bed as well, this agave bracteosa holds court at the front,

While this agave gentryi is hidden away in almost shade.

As I am not sure how long it will be before I can replant them, they will be put into pots and grown under the assumption that they will still be in pots over winter.  That way in the worst case of not having their new home ready in time they should be easy to manage over winter.  This will work fine for most of the plants, the problem plant is going to be eremurus stenophyllus. You may remember this post about the plant last year. It is starting to appear again and I don't have time to leave it to flower. 

I have no idea when the best time to dig it up will be, should I do it sooner or leave it as late as possible? If anyone reading this knows please let me know, it will be a great help.

So that's what is going to be keeping me busy for the next few weekends. It will all be worth it for a larger garden, space for a green house and of course the fun of being able to design something from scratch again. Or lets hope so anyway.

It's too early

For everything to be in flower but it has been such a good and sunny start to the year that all the echeverias are way ahead of where they should be.  Looking around the shed today it is a mass of flowers, not just the spring but early summer flowering varieties.  Normally at this time of year it would just the the echeveria roseas in flower like these, with varieties like e. agavoides just starting to show their flower stalks.

The dry bed is well and truly waking up.  There are signs the agaves are starting to get into growth, but this time of year really belongs to the alpines.  On my wish list of things for a new garden I have: more space, a greenhouse, a south facing slope and a stone wall for alpines. It would be a dry stone wall where every crevice has some interesting little plant to catch your attention. One group of plants that would feature are saxifragaceae. There are so many varieties, the ones I like are the tight clump forming ones.  I have a few in flower at the moment, although they don't look as good in the ground as stuck to a wall.

Thankfully they don't all have yellow flowers, the next one does, but I love the shape of the clump.

Finally a different flower type

This one is so small it tends to go unnoticed in the dry bed for most of the year.  Another good reason for my alpine wall.  If I ever get my wish, part of the fun will be searching for lots of other varieties to complement the few that I currently have.

I should have known.

I have to confess to not being 100% honest with you all.  I have been on another one of my trips this time for 2 weeks in Myanmar (Burma) and scheduled my last few posts to appear throughout my trip. When I left it was lovely and warm and we were having the warmest winter I can remember. The posts during my trip reflected this and I think I jinxed it. If you have seen the news, or live in Europe you will know it is not a mild winter any more! You can imagine my horror when I got this photo of my dry bed from my OH.

I have mentioned before that snow in the UK does all the damage due to being wet and constantly melting and re-freezing. Thankfully my lovely OH had gone out and put down the fleece before it snowed so all the plants were fine and I need not of worried. The snow has gone now, and it has warmed up again. The moral of the story is don't go away in the coldest month of the year, and if you do, definitely do not comment on how warm it has been!

Don't worry I will do a post on my trip with some much warmer photos soon.

The dry bed cleared of leaves.

Having shown the dry bed covered in leaves, I though it I ought to show it cleaned up.

Not the best photo as it was a bit of a dull day.  It has not been a great year for succulents in the UK, we have had a cold summer and it has really effected the growth.  About the only group of plants that have grown are the yuccas. One that has done particularly well is yucca whipplie. I manage to badly damage this plant when I stupidly covered it with a bit of fleece before the snow, the weight of which snapped the growing point.  It doesn't seem to have slowed the plant down at all though and I am really pleased with the growth rate.

I know it is common, but the agave gloriosa variegata has turned into a lovely plant.

It has got a bit big for the space and is now starting to grow over the agave gentryi.  This is another plant that has done well this year, having been badly damaged last winter.

Speaking of hardy agaves, the true star for me is agave bracteosa.  It never shows any damage despite not being protected at all last winter.  Again the bad summer has meant it didn't grow as much as I would have liked.

The lack of growth was a common theme for the agaves this year, even the a. montana has been slow.  This one usually grows more in cooler weather.  The a. parryi, filifera and nigra haven't been much better.

Over the next couple of months I will be getting the plants ready for winter.  A lucky few will have rain covers, and the fleece will be got ready for when snow is forecast. The rest will be left to fend for themselves.  No pampering here!

Dry bed in Autumn

My last update on the dry bed, was all about it being low maintenance, at this thime of year it looks a bit different.

I would show how well the yucca bright star, and agave bracteosa have done,  but it is hard to tell:

The echeverias did well and the e. roseas are nice bushy plants, surrounded by e. agavoides and a few other more hardy varieites:

As you can see, at this time of year we have a slight leaf fall problem.  We are surrounded by big trees, which I love, but at this time of year creates a little extra work.  This is only two days worth of leaves, and over the next month or so I'll be out every day trying to stay on top of it. It would be very unhealthy for the plants to be covered in wet and rotting leaves. Sadly They have to be picked up by hand, which is a dangerous job with hidden agaves and delicately fishing the plants out from between the spikes!

Having collected them all, depending on how full the compost is, they often moved out into the street to form a nice neat pile. It usually doesn't stay neat for long though, who can resist a fresh, crisp pile of leaves.  Don't you just have to shuffle through them?

Is there such a thing as too low maintenance?

It is often mentioned how succulent gardens are low maintenance and there is no doubt that this can be true.  With my dry bed the sole work is cutting off flower stalks and picking up leaves that blow in from other gardens. That's it; no pruning,  no digging in organic material, weeding, watering or any of the other stuff you normally associate with gardening.  In fact I sometimes wonder if it has gone too far in its lack of requirements; I am obsolete, it can survive and look good if I am there or not. 

Is this a case of  "be careful what you wish for" ? After all I always wanted a garden that looked good all year but didn't need much care, allowing me to just sit back and enjoy it. I thought this was the ideal garden, no real work,  just lots of enjoying. So I got what I wanted. As many of you will know, the real joy of gardens is not just sitting in them but getting your hands dirty, getting in among the plants. So what to do in a garden that needs no care? I ensure my plants look their best, removing ANY dead leaves, make sure the gravel is all tidy, check for bugs and basically anything else that keeps me in among the plants.  Sadly that doesn't keep me busy for long so I resort to my pots which ultimately ends up in propagating more plants.

One echeveria that kept me busy for a little bit today was e. carnicolor.  I posted this picture of it earlier in the year.

The flowers have finished and I hadn't bothered removing them. They have taken on a life of their own and the plants are a mess. 

I have mentioned before that if you leave echeveria flower stalks then new plants will form and this one has taken it too the extreme.

So cleaned the plants up and re-potted them, strangely into a smaller pot as they had too much space. They looked much better afterwards and can be put out in public again.

In a month or so the young plants will have filled out to nicely to fill the pot and no doubt it will be even more of a medusa when it flowers next year. I couldn't resist tidying up a few of the flower stalks:

Most of these will be given away, but I am wondering if I can't do something with one of the stems. Maybe another one to try to bonsai, it's a good colour, has a good structure (it you don't let it run wild) so may look good as a miniature.

So while the dry bed may be no maintenance at least the pots give me something to do.

The wait is over

Back at the start of March I posted on the return of  the Eremurus stenophyllus planted in the dry bed. The post said that I had yet to get it to flower, but after 3 years the wait is over. This was it last week:

No need to ask why it's also known as the fox tail lily.  The flower stalk sat like this for weeks with the individual flowers not actually opening. I was beginning to wonder if it was one of those that waits until it is totally ready and then everything opens at exactly the same time. Then today the bottom row of flowers finally opened.

Hopefully they will stay open for a few days to allow more to open, giving a more dramatic yellow to the whole flower.  You have to look closely at the moment to notice them, although the flower does look great against the yuccas

It is probably because I have been watering the dry bed this spring that it is flowering.  It seems the rain we normally get has headed over to parts of the USA.  As I feel it is important to get the plants going, I have been watering the bed every now and then.  It seems I really shouldn't have planted it in the dry bed.