Moving the agave salmiana

It was not possible to put it off any longer time to clear this section ready to expand the rockery.

The aloe striatula, large agave salmiana and the covered agave ferox all needed digging out.  The right side of the railway sleeper was cleared yesterday and the lower palm fronds removed to make access a bit easier. Given the size of the plants, and the length of the terminal spines, time for a little protection.

The aloe striatula came out nice and easily. As there are others in the garden they were just cut up. The little agave ferox also came quickly.  The soil is 50% gravel so the roots pull out without requiring too much force.

It is funny to think this was exactly the same size of the agave salmiana when they were planted, especially given that the full name is agave salmiana var ferox. Then onto the big one.  Digging the roots out was easy, getting it out of the spot was not.  In the end it was manhandled into a big sheet.
This could then be dragged / carried from the back of the house to the front where it would be replanted.  So the first section of the extension to the rockery is complete.

In the front, space had to be cleared in the central bed. I haven't shown much of the front as it's a bit more mixed. The central bed is a large oval, which is the perfect spot to let the agave get to its full size.

Once some space had been created, the agave was lifted into position and slipped almost perfectly into place.  It was nice that it went without issue and too many more stabs.

It's a little sad how small the agave looks in its new home.  It will grow and no doubt given a few years will swamp the other plants in there. Currently the best view is from above.

Not a bad start to the weekend. Sadly the rockery stone is not going to be here until next week, so I'll continue removing the plants from the main rockery. 

When photo records fail.

It has not been the summer I expected.  Having started well, it got to mid July and the workshop floor was down, so the proper work on the garden restarted. Then I hurt my knee and had to spend 6 weeks not using it, strictly no gardening.  Then I had to go to Uganda for 2 weeks for work, followed by two lovely weeks in Spain (I come back to that in another post). Then got back to the UK and spent every weekend visiting friends or them visitnig us, and suddenly it is October!

So much to catch up on. Today I was cleaning up in the front garden and noticed how much the buttlers sink had filled out.

It was a mixture of left over plants, so a bit of test.  I love the little mound forming alpines and have been looking for some that give me the look I am after. These have grown much quicker than
expected.

I thought these were suppose to be slow. In my defence the one on the left was tiny when planted last year.  It will have to be moved next spring, I think I'll re-do the whole planter as I love this end, and the other is to diverse.

So having taken some photos, I come inside to check the plant names and nothing!  Normally when I do a planter like this, or any pot, I take a photo of the whole thing and each plant with the label.  Then if the label vanishes I have the photos for ID.  There is no chance I wouldn't have done it, I just didn't upload the photos.

I hate not knowing plant names. I sense there will be a few weeks of searching in the hope something turns up.

Front garden update.

There hasn't been a front garden update in a while.  It has all been a learning experience, with far more bulbs and traditional plants than in my usual rockeries. The mild winter means the bulbs are behaving very strangely; they are suppose to be a continous stream of flowers from the early snowdrops and crocus to the late anemones. While the crocus and snowdrops were at their usual Feb and march flowering, come march everything came into flower including the anemones which are not suppose to flower for months.

It does make it very colourful out there at the moment.

These iris are still some of my favorites

The alpines don't want to miss out on the party, at least they are flowering at the correct time of year.

The excitement in the front are the eremurus himalaicus. Three bulbs were planted, and I've got to say I was a little skeptical having had no luck in the past. Not only have all three come up, but all are sending up flower spikes. At a possible 6 feet they should look great in a few year when they have bulked up into small groups.

The little circular bed, is filling out, and the candytufts are a mass of white flowers.

The succulents had a mixed time.  The echeveria elegans are mainly OK, with only the odd plant suffering any major damage.

The echeveria agavoides were not so lucky, as in the back the main plants all died, with only offsets getting through where they were protected from the rain.

The agaves were all pretty much untouched which is good.

The large one, has a good blue colour to it and doesn't have a single bit of damage.  There is also a small one,  I really didn't need another (my fourth) but this one is a little different, big gummy teath and a good red colour.

I'm hoping now it's in the ground it should grow quickly. If it stays with those teeth and the colour it is going to be my best agave montana.

So the front garden: part 1.

This has taken up most of my time whenever it has been dry this spring. I last posted about it back in August last year, the post can be found here. At that point the right hand side was all levelled and the gravel was down.

At that point I optimistically ended that post with the sentence "Still lots to do, but it feels like the main bit is done". How wrong, but I'll come back to that.

The idea for the front is less spiky with a blue, white and silver theme. We will stick to this fairly rigorously with the one exception of the odd splash of orange. So stop reading now if you offended by flowers.

In November a sunny afternoon was spent planting around 300 bulbs into the gravel. It should have been a simple task, but having taken care when laying the gravel there were two layers of weed membrane under it. Each location a bulb was to be planted required moving the gravel, cutting a hole, digging out the hole, refilling with better compost and then moving gravel back.  Very repetitive and sadly the garden looked no different at all after all the work.  The bulbs were selected to give flowers from beginning of March until roughly the end of July.

Come spring and things started to show, the crocuses were first. Very pretty but the planting didn't really work.

The blue crocus were next. They were slightly more blue that this photo.

The irises worked better in the gravel.

They looked good with the rocks.

What is it they say about best laid plans. Either the mild winter, or being their first year but instead of flowering over an extended period everything decided to flower at the same time.  The tulips:

Then the anemones as well, which are now finished but shouldn't have even started yet.  I can't complain though as they gave quite a display.

Sadly the only think that did not come up the size expected was the eremurus. The three rocks in in the above photo at to stop me walking on the tiny little plant. It is going to be a few years until that one flowers.

While this lot were flowering away, we got started on the other side. It seems that while succulents go to sleep over the winter lots of local plants do not and come spring the left hand side of the garden had to be sprayed, dug and levelled once again. I've lost count of the number of times I have dug this garden, succulent gardening is a lot less work.

Finally we were able to set out the beds.

More gravel and laying out the first set of plants.

More digging as lots of manure is dug in. Finally some plants can actually be planted.

I was beginning to find out how big the garden was, the number of plants was racking up, it was good when there were plants available form the back.  Remember the yucca dug up from the back (you can see the post here). They turned out to be two plants not a twin head.  Splitting them was easy once all the soil was shaken off and in the new bed they look much bigger.

As the dog will not be loose in the front we are able to plant I few plants I wouldn't risk in the back, like juniperus squamata 'Blue Star'

It feels like the central bed is coming together. It will be a few years before the plants fill out, no doubt a few plants will be moved during that time.

The other two beds are filling up very slowly. Not only does it take time to find interesting plants that flower at different times, and fit the colour scheme, but it is expensive and is having to be spred out. The garden doesn't looks great yet, it is a bit disjointed. As more plants are repeated in various different locations the garden as a whole will hopefully pull together. Time will tell if it will work, not being succulents is all a bit of an adventure for me.

Then finally this weekend I got to start adding the succulents and alpines to the gravel sections. They are going in slowly and I'll do separate post on that once I have finished it. In the mean time here is a taster as we can't have a post with so few succulents.

It felt a lot more within my comfort zone working in the gravel section. I'm going to try out a few different ideas there is not enough space for in the back. Assuming the rain stops, I'll get to finish this and can post the results.

So a very different post to normal, but hopefully the work will be worth it. Maybe this time it really is safe to say the worst is over, at least in terms of the physical stuff, lots of plant finding still to come.

More circles

They seem to be appearing all around the garden, from the circular seating area and most recently the moss circles (from the post here.) Can't resist showing the photo again.

The front garden gives more opportunities to bring in circles.  There will be a circular raised bed for a start, and lots of mounding plants in the gravel.  Two that will definitely be added:

This arenaria aurea seems fairly keen to stay in a circle anyway and the white flowers will go well in the white garden.

Gypsophila aretioides may provide a different challenge, to keep it perfectly circular or to let it just grow how it wants.

No surprise here: scleranthus biflorus. The watering is working, now it is just the big winter test.  There is one in a pot and one in the ground, so hopefully that should give an idea of how it copes.  The one in the pot is growing in a perfect circle, the one in the ground is a bit all over the place.  So may need to select the plant carefully and look at how to keep it nice and circular.

This got me thinking about what other plants could be grown in circles, maybe by giving them something to grow in.  Looking through the greenhouse I spotted the copper slug rings.  They come in different sizes and could be half buried in the gravel or rested on top to give slight different heights.

Photo from slugrings.co.uk

Now for plants. Sempervivums form nice clumps and the smaller forms could be contained by the rings.  It just happened there was a good clump of sempervivum arachnoideum cobweb that needed a new home, so time for a test.

Will be interesting to see if it can be kept within the ring.  There needs to be more, whole groups.

I probably have enough small semps to fill a few of these, but it opens up a whole range of small plants. I am thinking of doing a run of them up the centre of the parking space. Need to get a few more and try joining them together to give large sizes, then the fun can start properly next spring.

So what other plants would work well in these?

Progress out front

The front garden has been mentioned a few time over the summer, it was due to be the big project. There has been progress, but no where near what was planned. Other demands have kept me busy, plus it slow.

At the start of spring, it was a weed and blown in plant mess.

First job to clear this mess. Turns out the builders had buried a lot of bricks and flint. The rubble was dug out and that should have been the end.

Or so I thought.

I can almost hear the laughs from the rest of you, and it wont come as a surprise to learn that a little rain later and the whole garden was once again covered in plants.  The seeds were grateful for the nice loose soil and were rampant.

The whole area was then sprayed twice with weed killer, which was far more successful. Not something I had used before, but I was assured that it was quick acting and then degrades and is safe to plant the area up shortly afterwards.

The next stage was to level the whole area and compact the section that will occasionally be used to park on. Gravel was ordered, the next delay. Finally it turned up.

First part done.  This will be the section that will sometimes be parked on.  There are two strips of matting to reinforce the area, with the centre being left clear for planting.  The plan is to plant down this central strip so it does not look like a parking space.

Second part almost done.  Typically there was one tiny bit left as the gravel ran out.  The section to the right of the path, will be planted up with bulbs and other plants to give a different gravel garden to the back.  There will of course be the odd succulent mixed in as well.

These photos were taken at about 7pm, so you can see the garden gets afternoon and evening sun, some is in shade until 3pm, so the plants will not cook as much.

This bit can now be planted up as the bulbs arrive. I have a few large pots, and the two butlers sinks to be placed out here as well. Drains and a man hole cover mean part of the garden can not be planted.

I am going to have to find  better photo point, you can look in from all sides, there is no one point that shows it best. Doesn't look good from this angle, but shows the rocks going in and the first collection of pots.

The whole garden will have a blue, white and silver theme, so the plants like yucca rostrata and pale agaves will fit in well.  The palm in the photos is  chamaerops humilis cerifera which has a lovely silver colour to the fronds.

This agave ovatifolia frosty blue should look right at home with the colour scheme.  It will stay in the pot until next year, then go in the ground once a bit bigger.

The next stage is to build the soil bed sections.  The idea is to have a large raised circular bed as the main feature, with a gravel path around the edge. This will be off to the left of the photo. Leaving two other beds; a small shade one under the bay window, the other at the front.

Still lots to do, but it feels like the main bit is done, and it's good to have plants there again.

A little time in the garden

At this time of year it is about sneaking hours in the garden when the weather permits.  We have warmer spring days, then it's winter again and the rain moves in.  At the moment time is spent between the front and back gardens.

In the back it is simply watching as the garden gets into growth.  I have covered the eremurus to keep the worst of the weather of.  I believe extra warmth also helps them flower.

There are now two shoots on the e. oase and they are growing at a good rate.  The e. stenophyllus have also shown up as well, On Saturday there was one little shoot.

I checked again today and there were three shoots, which is the same as last year.  It will be a great addition to the dry bed if these flower and there are fox-tail flowers scattered throughout it.

There are also signs that at least one of the hardy orchids survived.  The orchid trial was more about how they would cope with a dry gravel bed, than the cold. If they do come back then more will be scattered around to give something a little different in flower and leaf.

The wrongly named yucca aliofolia purpurea is looking a bit tatty, but the new growth is all good. I know it is not really hardy, but with the mild winter it was fine.  It is going to be tough to decide what to do if we do have a bad winter in the future. The first pup is starting to grow properly.  There have been a few false starts on pups, but this one finally seems to be sending out leaves.

This is not the most surprising survivor though, I'll do another post on that soon.

In the front the neighbours have been busy. Both sides have had their front gardens redone, mainly replacing walls and driving spaces, but they have cleaned up the beds and put out pots.  Ours now stands out as being decidedly scruffy.  As it was always the plan to do something about it this year we made a start on digging up the weeds and removing the builders rubble.

It was great to have my better half out there with me, although I think she regretted selecting the digging as the thing to help with.  As with the back, the so called "cleared" garden turned up a man-hole cover, lots of whole bricks, bits of ply-wood. All conveniently buried a few cms below the surface.

Having finished that bit, we turned to admire our hard work, only to see the rest of the garden still un-dug and mocking us. You see I told you it was scruffy and needed to be sorted.  I have no idea where the foxgloves came from, there were none in the garden before or in any of the gardens around, but they obviously liked the free run.

We don't really have a plan yet, probably a mixture of gravel garden, orchard, and bee friendly planting. As we dig it over, we are looking through books and pictures online, pulling out plants we like and ideas.

The butlers sink is a gift from next door.  During the clearing up they found it and offered it to me to plant up.  This is the second one I have, the first was going to be placed on the gravel section, but with two I may have to do something in one of the other sections.

The rocks are left overs from the main rockery.  They are to be used to form the shade rockery in the back, another project that needs to be completed, or should be started, once the weather settles.