Treeferns Awaking

 

With spring feeling like it has arrived here in the UK the garden is breaking its winter slumber. Admittedly its a little delayed on a typical year, but at least its finally here!

 

My favourite new growth is nearly always are the tree ferns, with Dicksonia antarctica being the most showy at the moment. The other less hardy tree ferns are waking, but are still in the greenhouse, although they really should come out soon.

 



 

Dicksonia antarctica

 

As regular readers will know we have a tree fern patch in the jungle area of the garden, and this area is bursting with the new life. Currently the area is easy to navigate as we have tidied up and removed last years fronds, the snow and frosts had browned them off this year. With the fronds removed we can actually walk down the pathways, which will soon be tricky when the crosiers are fully extended. Still for now it makes enjoying the new knuckles an easy and rewarding task!

Gaz

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Colour on the Top Patio

Last year I created a mixed display of mainly succulents in pots on the top patio. I really liked the effect that was achieved and had so much fun preparing the display. Inspired by that I decided to do something  similar again. This time bigger, better, more colourful, more vibrant, and more dramatic. 

I love it! I'm in love with it!! And I really, really enjoyed making the display and looking at it!

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A Quick Peek...

...at some of the succulents that didn't make it out of the greenhouse this year.

The top patio is once again home to a succulent display, similar to how we did it last year (albeit on 'steroids' this year, coming up on a post soon). And because we haven't really bought that many plants this year, at least compared to our usual rate of plant buying in previous years, I used a lot of what I had already to make the display.

Still a few didn't make it out for various reasons. Here's a quick peek:

Some of the succulents are either too small to be displayed this year, or extras that don't need to be out for now. As you can see at the middle shelf, we also have an excess stock of pots that didn't make it out this year.

After just saying we haven't bought that many plants, the above two photos are new purchases. I couldn't resist picking up the possibly Aloe ferox above because of its vivid red spines. Not that I need another one but it was hard to resist!

A closer look at some of our small succulents...

and finally...

The sole survivor of a batch of three. It's looking promising and has put on a lot of growth this summer. Aloe 'Hercules' - thanks Gerhard!

Mark :-)

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Suburban Jungle Maintenance

A real, wild jungle is almost maintenance free (or rather self maintaining, striking its own balance). 

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Dinner is Served!

Dinner is served!!!

Who needs real food when you have beautiful plants to visually feast on?

Anyone for a second serving?

Although Twinkles doesn't seem to agree. She didn't look pleased with the substitution to her usual grub...

Meanwhile, busy busy times in the garden with so many things to do and so much to be excited with. One of which is the top patio where I'm busy figuring out the pot display for this year.

I'm on a mission to minimise the use of plastic pots there from this year onwards so lots of repotting are being done, including this Nolina longifolia which looks much better now in a glazed pot.

Pot display in progress

However, I'm happy to keep using them for the rest of the garden. Especially black ones that are much easier to blend in.

Mark :-)

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Less Plastic, More Fantastic

Is my dictum for this year, at least for the top patio...

This Agave geminiflora is looking fabulous. It deserves the the dignity of a nicer looking pot.

Last year I did a sort of 'whimsy' style of displaying potted succulents and was very pleased with the result. And as a bonus it received good feedback too. By going with the anything goes style of displaying pots (but actually carefully displayed) I justified to myself that it's ok to mix in ordinary plastic pots in amongst the ceramic, glazed, and terracotta ones. The end result turned out fine and I was happy with the outcome.

However I can't keep denying to myself that those cheap nursery plastic pots don't bother me. Most of the key plants on display then were in those plastic pots and if I'm going to do a similar display again this year I wouldn't be able to ignore/tolerate them this time.

So why did I keep them in plastic pots when replacing them with glazed ones were easy enough?

Answer: because plastic pots are light.

Plastic pots have there uses and many advantages too, one of which is being light hence easy to move. With most of our succulents and xerophytes not hardy enough to remain outside all year round they will need shifting indoors before winter sets in. The bigger specimens are tricky enough as they are to shift and it'll even be more difficult if they are in heavy pots.

Both Agave geminiflora and Agave ocahui will have new glazed pots this year

But aesthetics will win this year and I'm determined to have less plastic on display at the top patio. It'll be more effort to move them later on but I'll cross that bridge nearer the time.

Work in progress

For the rest of the garden however, I don't mind them quite so much and tolerate them far more.

Mark :-)

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Spring Growth

For all intentions I was hoping to snap a few more photos today for this blog post about some of the exciting spring growth happening in our garden this week. However the weather has turned from gloriously sunny and bright to grey and drizzly, not conducive to taking photos.

Still I'm glad it is rainy. I don't mind it being rainy on weekdays whilst at work. And besides, it's much better for the garden to have bouts of rainy days interspersed with sunny ones.

I'll have to make do with the very few I managed to take last weekend...

Loving the dainty new growth of Acacia pravissima. Mind you the old growth ain't too bad either.

This climber took awhile to get going but this Holboellia coriacea looks like it's set to romp away this year, and put on a spectacular show of blooms too.

All our tree ferns are showing signs of movement as well but the potted ones like this Cyathea cooperi are expectedly ahead. They did overwinter indoors.

And Saxifraga stolonifera seems set to conquer a large area. Easy enough to pull them out where they are not wanted and how could one not love their bright spring colour?

Next weekend is forecast to be sunny again, and better opportunity for taking more photos!

Mark :-)

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Slow Awakening

Just had our first decent weather weekend this spring. So good that it feels like summer already! With the weather being rather unpredictable in this country it could well be 'the' summer of 2016 but we're hoping that won't be the case...

Blue skies and warm weather, bliss!

Anyhow, with so many commitments work wise for the both of us it has been a slow awakening for both us and the garden. Nevertheless, better late than never and we took advantage of the fine weather by going into full swing preparing the garden for the growing season ahead. We have so much to catch up on!

We're behind with tidying up but pace is now ramping up

Loving the blues, both from the sky and the yuccas!

It is notable that the growing season here is rather behind compared to the other side of the pond of similar climate (yes we were still reading blogs despite our absence recently). Speaking of slow awakening, we were away two weeks ago and during that period apparently there was snowfall and the temperatures dipped during the evening, hence spring growth slowed down. It suited us fine though, the last thing we wanted was a warm spell whilst we were away. It was only last week really when the weather turned better and by Friday it has turned into full spring mode.

Jet wash time!

The newest addition to our cat brood, Cotton has started to spend time out in the garden with us

Such a wonderful weekend, shame it had to end. But there's more to look forward!

Mark :-)

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Late December at Alternative Eden

As parts of Northern England suffer from the effects of multiple storms bringing flooding its easy in our part of the world to think we are having a kind winter. We have only had a couple of light frosts and they were back in November, other than that it has been unseasonally warm, with day time temperatures regularly in the mid teens Celsius (high 50s/low 60s Fahrenheit). For our part of the country we have not seen the storms bringing damage but warm temperatures.

As a result the garden seems somewhat confused with hostas poking up from their extremely short winter slumber and neighbouring spring flowering trees showing blooms already.

If the cold does come it may be with quite damaging effects as plants suffer less when dormant but for now its giving us an easy time of it - nicer walk to the station in the morning and not having to put the heating on as much giving our wallet a well earned rest.

Tetrapanax rex pushing out new leaves

Middle patio area... this is honestly how it looks today.

The path past the Jungle Hut, still looking lush

Ensete maurelii planted as summer bedding, pushing out new leaves after November frost

We have added an additional member to our household that many of you will not have met yet.



This is Cotton, she's about 4 months old now and making her presence known with the other two cats. Knickers and her seem quite friendly despite her regularly tormenting him. Twinkles on the other hand does not seem best pleased to have a new kitten in the household and mostly just tolerates Cottons existence.

We haven't let her outside yet, but I'm sure she will have lots of adventures in the garden when she does finally get out!

Gaz

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Autumn Beckons

It's October now and autumn has definitely begun. Although the garden is still looking very lush and only a few plants have just started changing leaf colours and shedding them, preparations have begun for the coming colder months.

First things first, start treating and shifting our pots of succulents. It wasn't easy to break up the display we created for the summer but I took a deep breath and just went on with it.

I really ought to get a potting bench. This squatting malarkey isn't good for my back long term. Still one has to smile...

For the whole of last week it was sunny and dry, albeit with significantly cooler temperatures than the previous month. The week before though we had so much rain which helped most of the succulent to bulk up even more.

But there are lots of pots to shift so one must carry on.

As expected we didn't get to finish moving them all. We weren't expecting to anyway. Autumn preparation usually goes on for weeks but we've had a good head start already.

I'll miss the succulent display we had last summer...

But they don't look too bad under cover either.

They'll keep me company as I spend more time once again, during the colder months in the koi shed.

Mark :-)

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