Glorious variety of Day Lilies

I am ashamed at how long it is since I last blogged the garden. In it I am unfailingly brought to wonder at my Creator's handywork for which I can only glorify His name.

This has been an extraordinary year. The soft fruit has been magnificent, and for once the birds have largely left it alone. We have feasted on strawberries, redcurrants, raspberries, tayberries, and the blackcurrant bushes are laden with huge berries waiting to be picked. Susanna has tried her hand at making redcurrant jelly, a must for lamb, and raspberry vinegar, such a refreshing summer drink. Though the birds did strip the morello cherry last weekend when we were away in Louth with the Irish Tree Society. I would like to think that the birds are learning to share, though I fear it may have more to do with so many dying in the last hard winter.

We are eating our own peas and beans, with more coming on in succession, and I am very pleased with the new potatoes - Duke of York now, with Charlotte and Pink Fir Apple to follow on. Courgettes threaten to become a glut. Only the tomotoes and cucumbers in the poly-tunnel are a disappointment - probably because the plastic is losing its transparency.

The roses have also been very good this year, no doubt because the frost reduced the numbers of pests and the dry June held back the mildew.

But the stars of the season are the day lilies. Susanna bought an extensive collection from the specialist Apple Court Nursery in England some years ago, which have been moved to her Labyrinth garden in front of the house, where they have really taken off. The sheer variety of form and colour is quite extraordinary. All this has been achieved by nursery men, largely in the USA - but it is the hand of God which has made the variation in the wild species without which they could have done nothing!

Below you will find portraits of most of the cultivars, varying in colour from lemon yellow through peach and pink to strong reds, and varying in form from delicate elongated to full and plump. Unfortunately the labels got lost when they were transplanted, and we can no longer identify which is which.

And here are some general views of the Labyrinth with the day lilies in situ.

And lastly a view of the end of the Drive Border, a very happy if unplanned juxtaposition of purple Cotinus 'Royal Purple' and Berberis with lime green spurge.

May blossom fading

Already it's the last day of May, and I see that I haven't blogged the garden since early April - the May blossom is fading and my clout has been cast! The excuse is that Susanna and I have been away, despite last year's oath that never again would we desert our garden in April or May.

In early April I rushed to rotivate the vegetable beds, before we left for France - a tough job since they lay fallow last year. Charlotte and Pink Fir Apple potatoes went in, with broad beans and old reliable Kelvedon Wonder peas.

We took the car on the Celtic Link ferry to Cherbourg and joined the Irish Tree Society in their visit to the Paris area. Guided expertly and charmingly by Mme. Maïté Delmas from the Jardin des Plantes, we saw many grand gardens and fine trees, but to my mind none finer than the Domaine de Segrez in the enthusiastic company of the owner and eminent botanist M. Franklin Picard, who had added many rare species collected on his travels to a mid C19th arboretum. From there we took off by ourselves, visiting friends and reaching as far South as Limoux. The poor little car was groaning with cases of wine when we got back, including Monbazillac, Cahors and Blanquette de Limoux!

On our return three weeks later, the potatoes were just poking their noses out, and the broad beans were doing well; I was disappointed that the pea germination was sporadic - mice I suspect - but planted some more. I cultivated a third of Susanna's raised beds and she planted more peas, dwarf French beans, shallots, onions, garlic and beet - the other two thirds remains to be tilled. And I planted out a row of climbing French bean Blue Lake grown in peat pots by Susanna - incomparable flavour - and two rows of potatoes bought in France, Belle de Fontanay.

Then we left again for Germany, Leipzig, for Susanna's PhD Viva: the only place the external and internal examiners could get together was in the margins of a Conference there. My clever pearl beyond price sailed through of course, and will shortly be Doctor Susanna! Afterwards I took her on a long weekend in Berlin, so changed since we were last there shortly after the wall fell.

On the Sunday I worshipped in the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche on the Ku'Dam. The original neo-gothic church was destroyed by allied bombs in 1942. Alongside the shattered tower which has been left as a memorial, a modern church has been built; in it a beautiful golden statue of Christ hovers in front of blue stained-glass windows. The moving service was a Confirmation, administered by a woman pastor Dr Cornelia Kulawik.

The Blue Lake peas were eaten to the ground when we got back, and I think I know the culprits - the hares! They are still in the garden, and there are leverets too, though I can hardly believe the latter are the result of the tryst Susanna and I witnessed in early April as they are too big. One was hiding in the long grass of the wild-flower meadow, body to the ground and ears pressed flat, completely still even when we walked only feet away from it - very sensible, since I have also seen the Kestrel hovering in the vicinity.

Everything of course is bursting out now. The limes in the Alley are all in leaf, even the very late one which I think is Tilia cordata - and not T. platyphyllos as the others are. The young oaks grown from acorns harvested in the botanical gardens are reaching for the skies - they are all peculiar hybrids, and planted too close to each other and to other trees, but we need their shelter. I have at last planted out the young long-needle pine Pinus x holfordiana which we bought last autumn at Westonbirt, where the hybrid was first raised around 1904.

The wildflower meadow is in full blow, and I am delighted with it. The meadow buttercups are spreading well, the yellow rattle seeded from Carney Commons is putting manners on the coarse grasses, the birds-foot trefoil, vetches and red and yellow clover are putting on a show, and the Ox-eye daisies are just begining, though fewer than in previous years. It is showing its value for bio-diversity, as there are several different bumble and solitary bees working the flowers assiduously.

It looks too as if it will be a good year for butterflies. There were plenty of Orange Tips, and I have seen Greenveined, Small and Large Whites, as well as a few tatty Speckled Woods and Small Tortoiseshells. There seem to be more Holly Blues than usual which is nice - the caterpillars of this spring brood feed on the flower buds of Holly, but those of the 2nd autumn brood on the flower buds of Ivy - I must check our young hollies for them.

And Susanna's labyrinth garden is a picture, already full of colour and interest. One of the standard Wysterias flowered for the first time this spring - a beautiful scent - and the green-yellow-and-red Parrot tulips I gave her for her birthday made a particularly exotic splash. The David Austin roses are just starting, beautifully set off by the lavender, and the Russell lupins are giving vertical accents. Interestingly, the Magnolia stellata is showing a second flush of flowers on two lower stems, which have a pink flush and wider petals than the earlier flowers: I wonder if the plant is grafted, but if so, we are getting two for the price of one!

Oh may the Lord be praised for the beautiful place we live and for the glorious variety of his creation!

March 2007 - The Green Wave

Today is St Patrick’s Day. Peering through drifting drizzle, my heart goes out to all those parading to celebrate our national Saint and all things Irish, particularly the visitors from afar in skimpy marching-band costumes. Shivering and dripping, I learned my lesson in previous years, so I limit myself to pinning on a few trefoil leaves, Patrick’s metaphor for the Trinity, and going to church, while Susanna retires under the duvet to avoid the dismal day. Fat chance of getting any work done in the garden as I’d planned!

In theory, the job for today should be planting a row of first early potatoes. The old tradition was to put them in on Patrick’s day, for an early first harvest in June. But my heavy clay is always too sodden to work, the soil is too cold, and even if the tubers don’t rot, the first shoots can still be cut by frost until mid May. I think the tradition more suited to Wexford than the Midlands, unless global warming changes things. The potatoes are chitting in the greenhouse, but the end of March will do for planting this year.

Frost and snow are forecast, a brief return to winter. But spring races ahead, unstoppable, as the days lengthen to the equinox. The grass I can’t get out to cut grows ever faster. The daffodils along the drive wave cheerfully in the chill wind – old varieties, they came as volunteers in the topsoil when we built the extension. Lavender Iris stylosa sits in a vase on the kitchen worktop. Susanna’s sweet peas reach upward on the windowsills – soon they will need beheading to promote shrubby, branching plants, ready for planting in May. The first blackthorn blooms in the hedge – old Shannon fishing lore says the fly will be up in four weeks to the day in sheltered bays. Fat fruiting buds on the pears are set to burst. And the first leaves are out already on the Amur maple (Acer ginnala), though I expect to find them shrivelled by the frost.

We are told that if you could look at Europe from outer space, you would see a Green Wave moving north across the continent in spring, caused by the buds on the trees and hedges opening. The Green Wave begins in the south in February and moves up across the continent as temperatures rise, at about 160 kilometres per week. If this is true, it should take about three weeks to move across Ireland from Mizen Head to Malin Head, about the same speed as you might walk. School children across Ireland are joining in a mass experiment to check this, by dating locally the first appearance of five signs of the Green Wave:

• the first primroses,
• the first swallows,

and leaves opening on three common trees:

• Horse Chestnut,
• Hawthorn
• and Ash.

Repeated year after year, this can provide a scientific measurement of the effect of global warming. To find out more, see http://www.greenwave.ie/.

The little drama of spring burgeoning in my garden is just a small part of the greater drama of the Green Wave, unfolding across Ireland, Europe and the temperate world. And this is mirrored in the great drama of our Faith. Starting in Lent, Jesus leads his disciples to travel the road to Jerusalem, a road that leads inexorably to the Cross and Resurrection, on to Ascension, and then to Pentecost, when the Spirit bursts forth and changes everything.