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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Suburban Jungle Maintenance

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

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Dusk in the Jungle

We haven't been that good at posting photos of our own garden recently. But that doesn't mean not much has been happening, in fact it's the other way around. It is summer after all and it's easy enough to get so immersed in doing things in the garden that taking photos gets sidelined.

Plus there's also a little element of being temporarily selfish too, taking delight in keeping most things to oneself and having a breather from sharing what you see, of one's own personal space.

But time's up now for being selfish and here's a quick look of how our jungle is looking like in early July, with photos taken at dusk today.

The lighting contrast was less than ideal this evening and many of the shots we took turned out blurred. Thankfully a good chunk still turned out fine and good enough for sharing.

We've been having so much rain recently, not that unusual for Britain of course and the ferns especially have been loving it! Much to our delight...

Some cutting back on the other plants in the jungle needs to be done in a week or so but we're mostly satisfied how things are growing so far.

Mark :-)

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Urban Jungle

Last weekend Mark and I along with our friend Don, paid a visit to Urban Jungle over near Norwich in Norfolk. Although a couple of hours away we tend to visit every summer and usually make an occasion of it. We tied this trip in with an over night stay at the coast and then a trip to Will Giles Exotic Garden in Norwich, but more of the garden visit soon.

Urban Jungle has a great selection of the exotic and tender plants as well as hardy unusual trees, shrubs and perennials. After the poor winter in 2010 we added a number of hardier plants from Urban Jungle to our garden and I suspect many other exotic gardeners also had the same plans.

One of the thoughts that always crosses our mind when we visit is just how clean and tidy everything is at Urban Jungle, not just the plants, but the pathways, beds and display areas. Somebody puts a lot of effort into making sure the nursery is just perfect every time.

In amongst the plants are lots of places to sit, relax or take a cup of coffee (and cake, as they now do the most fabulous cakes!)

  A tranquil place to relax, and not a leaf out of place.

Ficus Carica 'Ice Crystal' - we already have this in out garden but this was too good a plant not to take home.

I did mention the cakes, right? well it would be rude not to enjoy a drink and cake sat in the greenhouse with all the exotics around us.

A great selection of yucca, palms and agaves. I suspect the canna may be an interloper.

Within the large greenhouse is also a koi pond, crystal clear water and healthy looking fish. We spent quite a while just watching the fish.

So what did we buy.... well you may have to wait and see, but the fig above does now have a new home!

Gaz :)

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The Garden in July

Its the middle of a heatwave at the moment, and overall the garden does seem to enjoy the warmer weather, although the extra watering takes sooooo much longer.



Regardless the garden is starting to fill out - too much so in some places where those extra plants squeezed into a gap in spring didn't really have a gap to squeeze into! 

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Jungle Days

With the summer months the jungle part of the garden takes on its usual lush appearance and so far this year it seems better than ever. We have had a mixed summer so far, some warm days and lots of wet ones too, as such the garden seems to be responding well.

We have a number of ornaments in the garden with the pergola covering the bottom patio has a selection, with carved African birds hanging from the beams, and some other inhabitants on the ground below. 

This concrete tortoise was a gift from my parents, my sister is also the proud owner of one.... (thanks Dad!)

Whereas this one is made from metal coming from recycled oil drums.

Trachycarpus martianus

 The Trachycarpus martianus by the bottom patio is kept in a pot, its borderline hardy but we have decided to keep it pot grown and move under cover in winter. It seems content with this arrangement, and whilst it would grow faster in the ground, we dont want to risk it if we had a repeat of the bad winters we had between 2010 and 2012.

The pergola is covered by a grape vine, as well as Clematis armandii, the Schefflera on the right hand side is now well over 8 feet tall and similar across. This seems to be growing faster this year, so much so that it may need hacking back. If we do then we must try and get the propagating technique right. 

On the other side of the old koi pond from patio the Gunnera also seems to have enjoyed the mix of rain and warm weather and has taken off this year.

The other aspect of the Jungle - The Jungle Hut had to be rebuilt following the fire in 2013. Now it doesnt look like anything happened in this part of the garden, with a wall of green greeting us from the verandah.

All in all the garden seems to be enjoying the early summer well. Lets hope it continues!

Gaz

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The Rebirth

We had planned to go to our local HPS monthly meeting last Saturday but the sun was shining and the lure of the garden was so strong that we abandoned the idea and spent most of the day gardening instead, oops!

Usually Kniphofia thomsonii almost totally disappears in the winter but this time it remained evergreen and the old growth has gone floppy hence it's received a good trimming. White crocus have emerged between it and the Cotula hispida

Now the garden has been pretty much left to its own devices for most of the winter. The areas that were affected by the fire last summer were pretty much untouched from the point when the builders had finished constructing the new jungle hut up until last Saturday when we started clearing and tidying up.

Eremurus have started to creep up, together with Cyclamen seedlings

The garden recycling bin was filled up in no time!

Trimmings get dumped in the middle patio first before they get taken to the recycling centre

How nice it was to finally get stuck in again! We didn't do any clearing out of debris and dead plant materials in the autumn and winter and now that spring is looming we must remove all of them to make way for new growth, and more importantly to make our garden look nice again.

This Dicksonia antarctica fell down during the fire and was never propped up since then. Late in the summer it threw out new fronds much to our delight but as it was lying sideways the growth continued to go skywards...

It was well rooted on to the ground before the event. We'll be propping it up again very soon and bury almost a foot of the trunk on the ground to give it the best possible chance of recovery and make re-rooting much quicker (and make it more stable too). It will be one of the first things we'll do in this month before the new growth comes out so the fronds won't be lopsided in relation to the trunk.

This one wasn't a victim of the fire but of winter 2010-11. It will be used as a pathway edging.

It looks like there are loads to do and it also feels like we are starting all over again. But after spending nearly the entire day clearing out and making plans we reckon it won't take us long to sort things out. 

The gravel is heavily contaminated with ash, broken glass, and other debris that the top layer needs to be skimmed and replaced with fresh gravel

Where a tall Magnolia delavayi once was has now been finally cut down to a stump. Some new growth sprouted at the base and we'll let that take over. Hopefully its growth will be vigorous.

Some surprises - Chamaedorea radicalis sprouting back and...

Chamaedorea microspadix making a comeback after this potted plant was totally burnt to nothing but a charred root ball. The plastic pot was gone and was just a black ball but the rains have washed the soot to reveal the roots and looks like also triggered it to throw out new growth.

We're feeling quite excited on how the garden will shape up this year. The rebirth of the garden has begun.A Phoenix will rise.

Mark :-)

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