London again

We got back to London to find the garden suffering from drought! While we'd been in France, very little rain seemed to have fallen on London, which was not good news for the plants I'd moved before we left. Some of the transplanted strawberry plants looked very sad, other plants had died completely - and the water level in the fishpond was down by several inches.

My first tasks were to give everything a thorough watering (usually the precursor to a downpour!), clean the pond UV filter and top up the water level. After that I continued the task begun last month - preparing the area where the new conservatory will go. The composter will need to be moved, so I've added compost accelerator and thoroughly mixed the contents. We'll not add any new material now until after it's moved.

The loganberry will be lost completely, so although it's really too early in the season, I've started to layer new shoots to propagate a replacement plant. I'll try several at different times in the hope that at least one will "take". The original plant will be left where it is until after this year's crop has been picked. It might be possible then to lift and replant but I doubt it.



One week on from watering the dried-out strawberry plants which had been moved under the pergola, most seem to have recovered. Others remained in the ground but most have now been moved into temporary homes - containers - until the autumn. Earlier in the season I rooted several runners into small pots; they have almost all survived and may go into a strawberry barrel in the autumn. There will be so little garden area left once the conservatory goes up that many more things will have to grow in containers in future.

The corner of the garden next to the workshop was planted with mint, and had become invaded by lemon balm. The mint (two different types) has been moved into containers, and I've now cleared the area which will house the composter currently in an area destined to be part of the conservatory. We will level the area first and pave it before moving the box - there will be plenty of paviors which we can lift and re-use. In fact the pathway next to it has dropped so we will re-lay that at the same time. There were some self-set shrubs (possibly mahonia - I'm not sure!) growing in this patch too, and I've moved them into the front garden, into the area which looks bare, where the tree used to be. In time they may mask the view of the bike shed from the road.

The recent transplants looked very sick for a while after being moved, despite being given plenty of water, but they have now started to recover, so I'm hopeful that they will survive. Still wondering what to do about the bay tree though... RHS recommends semi-ripe cuttings but it's too early to do that; perhaps in August.

Spring cleaning

The last couple of weeks - since the torrential rain stopped! - have been an extremely busy time in the garden.

Last year our escallonia plants - both in the front garden - suffered severely from black spot. The RHS online information was that this is something quite new, and so exact treatment has not yet been identified. I settled for cutting them back hard, removing as many of the spotted leaves as I could from on and around the plants, then treating them with a fungicide. I've used the one I bought for the roses, which is myclobutanil. One of the bushes was cut back much earlier than the other, and is already beginning to sprout new leaves, thankfully showing no sign of the fungus.

With the help of a borrowed pressure washer, the crazy paving has been given a thorough clean - the first pressure wash since it was first laid - between four and seven years ago! Mike was doubtful it would make a difference - but once it was all dried out the difference was quite noticeable. Two afternoons of work, but worthwhile, I think!

Before

After

The biggest single difference - and the longest to achieve! - has been the weeding of the long border along the east side of the garden. This was so overgrown that the weeds were higher than many of the plants. Now it's tidy once again, and our neighbour Véronique has given me cuttings of several ground cover plants which may help to prevent a recurrence of the problem.

Cleared east border

At the front of the house I made a planting error a while ago - I planted an ivy against the front wall of the house. It looks great framing our bedroom window, but would have been more practical against a garden wall instead. Unfortunately its rapid growth threatens the gutter and downpipe so requires annual cutting back to avoid problems. Two long sessions up and down a ladder, broken fingernails and scraped fingers - and this is how it looks now.

We were sad to find that our wonderful wisteria at the front of the house had been killed by bad winter weather a couple of years ago, but new shoots have taken hold and these have now been trained up to the wires originally installed over the front porch.

In the back garden the blackberry border has been cleared, as well as the pots in the poolhouse corner. The oleander has been looking quite sad for a year or two; I hope with some fertiliser and a regular check on the watering we may be able to improve this. The other pots contained a tree peony (now dead), lavender, and a blue hyacinth (bought using a gift voucher from my neighbour Jocelyne for my 60th birthday). All the pots have had fertiliser and top-dressing applied.

The composter has been reactivated using the screw mixing device and a chemical accelerator from Lidl. After some rainfall I collected a bumper crop of snails and consigned them all to the drainage system!

I've also sown a few annual seeds here and there: marigolds (orange flame), zinnia, sweet williams, and eschscholzia. The last named were sown first and have already germinated.