Camomile spreading

Back in London for a week to discover plums and damsons galore (lots of jam made, and plenty of fruit still on the trees) but most pleased of all to find that the camomile lawn is really taking shape now.

Olive haircut

I really should have continued trimming the olive tree regularly after its major cut-back in March, but I didn't get round to it. A couple of not-so-hot days recently and I continued -with Mike's help sawing the thicker branches. It's now a mere shadow of its former self, with all lower shoots removed and each remaining branch having been cut back to create the beginnings of a new shape. It isn't really the season for major pruning - but I think it will survive and flourish. After all, when we bought it nine years ago it must have been cut back in summer. This is a first attempt at topiary - and it really does look quite pathetic at the moment.

Lost camomiles... but spreading fans

Well, the sad fact is that despite putting in automatic watering, I've lost what seems to be about half of my camomile plants whilst we've been on holiday. I suspect slugs and/or squirrels are the culprits... I'll be away for another few weeks now so can't replace the dead plants until the beginning of July.

More encouraging, though, is that I'm getting my gooseberry and redcurrant fans well established. In the past I've started trying to trains fans, but for one reason or another they've got out of hand and I never succeeded in getting the shape I wanted. This time I seem to be getting it right:

Baby lawn

Last year I prepared the ground to make a tiny camomile lawn under the fruit trees - but I didn't get it finished before the end of the planting season. Consequently the area has been under a tarpaulin recently - to inhibit weed growth. Finally this week the new planting season has begun and our baby, bare-rooted plants arrived and have been planted. I have never grown camomile before so have been dependent on the growers' advice regarding planting and care. If all goes well, next year we will be walking on a sweet-scented lawn to pick our plums, damsons, gooseberries and redcurrants! The two fruit bushes are being tied in to a fan structure as the new shoots develop - something I've tried before but didn't continue, so I'm hoping to have the time to get them right this time. The plum and damson trees have flowered - but as they fruited heavily last year there may not be such a good crop this time. We tend to get good crops in alternate years.

There were a few camomile plants left over - I've planted a few in another part of the garden to use to replace any which don't "take" in the new lawn. With another few, though, I'm trying something different. I have two blueberry bushes in pots, and have had trouble with squirrels digging in the compost. My first solution was to cover the compost with pebbles to stop the digging - but in one of the pots I've now planted the leftover camomile plants to cover the ground (after checking with the growers that camomile like acid conditions, as the blueberries grow in ericaceous compost). To stop the digging while the plants get established, I've used an idea I spotted on the internet - sticking plastic forks in the soil around the baby plants! I wouldn't be surprised if the squirrels don't chew the forks too - they seem to gnaw on just about anything... we'll see.

Here we go round...

...the lemon tree. The new lemon tree is now planted in its pot. All being well there won't be any more really cold snaps now that both lemon and kumquat are potted up. They are at least sheltered from the predominant west wind. Next year I will wrap both up over the winter, and leave a little water going through the system whenever we're going to be away, whatever the season - I don't want to lose these.

The new kumquat had over 1.3 kg of ripe fruit on it - so today I've been able to make six pots of kumquat marmalade.

I've also begun adding summer colour here and there throughout the garden, having bought various annuals from the garden centre. I'll be back here again in a couple of weeks, by which time I think there will be the opportunity to put in more bedding plants.

Replacing the citrus

In the late autumn there was a leak in our water supply in the back garden, so I turned it off completely until we could repair the problem. I imagined this wouldn't be serious for the garden as the winter weather was due. Unfortunately, though, it didn't rain for weeks, and the plants in pots dried out completely. Most will recover, but the lemon and kumquat trees showed no signs of hope. I therefore decided to replace both with new plants (having got the automatic watering working again). A visit to my favourite garden centre in Spain (Vivers i Garden Moner at L'Escala) provided two healthy looking specimens, the kumquat being already laden with fruit (marmalade pan calling!) and the lemon looking nice and healthy - and a lot less prickly than its predecessor.

I'd already prepared the pot for the kumquat, so that is now in its new home. Wind and weather permitting, the lemon will also shortly be potted on.

Time for bedding

Back in London after a few days gardening in France, I completed the job started a couple of weeks ago - topping up the soil level in the raised bed which was begun last year, and in which the new soil had settled down to a level well below the original one. Having cleared out dead foliage and weeds, and brought the soil level back up, I splurged on bedding plants - knowing that if I left a clear area of soil, squirrels would soon come in and mess it up. Part of the bed - the bit which is below the rotary washing line - has been given over to strawberries (transplanting from the various bits of garden and pots where I had set new runners) as these will always be close to ground level. I also split up and moved into this bed a crown of rhubarb - it's not looking too healthy at the moment, but I hope it will recover. Also  in are several pelargoniums which I grew from cuttings.

Meanwhile my other half has been repairing the walls beneath the pergola which we built about twenty years ago. One side of the pergola - the side facing the house - is now several inches lower than it was originally - no doubt the effect of tree roots undermining it. He has been dissuaded from taking the whole structure down and is now just supporting it at the new level. A considerable portion of the brickwork has had to be replaced too - but we hope it will now last another twenty years! Yesterday I lifted a section of the brick paved patio so that we could remove one of the tree roots which was forcing the paviors upwards.

I have taken a few more pelargonium cuttings - some from the flowering ones and some from a scented one - and these are in the conservatory. The last ones were very successful in there so I'm hopeful for these too. I used "Strike" rooting powder.

Thinning the olive

It's a while since I posted anything on here... the winter's been very mild and some things have been done but others haven't - the trees are already coming in to leaf and they haven't had any winter treatment, so I expect to see lots of pests on them in the summer.

For a few years now our olive tree has been getting out of control. It produces masses of olives, but very small ones, so hardly worth the trouble of curing and bottling them. The birds are the main beneficiaries, but this means that what used to be clean white gravel under the tree is usually covered with black olive kernels as well as dead olive leaves. I've seen many olive trees recently trimmed back, like this one in Villemolaque:

I think if I could train mine in a similar style, I would have much less of a problem with the mess on the floor. So I've made a start by giving it a severe pruning - removing one of the four main stems (the one which looked very wobbly when the tramontane was blowing) and also most of the top growth.

Before...

...and after.

It should also make walking from the house to the postbox easier, the branches at eye level having been removed!

Progress

Over the last week we've been making progress in the London garden when weather permitted. The steps down from the conservatory doors at least have their base constructed now, but progress upwards is now halted as the forecast is for continuous rain tomorrow.

While Mike has been mixing concrete and mortar, I have been concentrating on getting other parts of the garden dug, raked and planted... well, one other part anyway! We now have a herb border, containing a few plants we'd retained (rue, feverfew and chives), and many more bought on a trip to Ruxley Manor: lemon balm, hyssop, two different lavenders, two different oreganos, marjoram, thyme, angelica, sage, heartsease and tarragon. The bay tree and mint container haven't been placed yet. Interspersed through the other plants are some mustard seedlings which should provide some salad interest.

I'd planned to have the area under the fruit trees as a mini camomile lawn; now that I've levelled and dug over part of it I looked for plants, only to discover that I've missed the planting season so won't be able to establish that until next year.

French weather rules

We've been at our French house for a couple of weeks, and there was plenty to be done in the garden. However, unseasonal June weather has meant grabbing chances to work in between thunderstorms and downpours. That said, the frequent soaking has made the ground much softer than usual, so removing the weeds hasn't been as much of a problem as usual. Several of the raised beds, in place for a few years now, needed a top-up of soil, so I ordered a ton to be delivered on a Monday morning, having checked the weather forecast - rain wasn't expected until Tuesday night. Delivery was made just after 8 a.m. and was in fact nearer a ton and a half. We started work straight away - me moving plants out of the way while Mike shovelled barrowloads of topsoil. The forecasters, though, were out by over 24 hours, and the thunderstorms started just after lunchtime on Monday, downpours continuing throughout the rest of the day. This meant that when we re-started work on Tuesday, the soil was extremely wet and therefore much heavier to shift. Still - we made it. The soil delivered was enough to top up all the raised beds, all the fruit trees, and the bed near the bins too. It's all looking great now - the continuing rain gave the plants I moved a good start in their new homes, and the empty spaces give me a great excuse to go plant shopping on my next visit here.

More hedging and paving

The front hedge is now fully reduced in height, looking very sorry but by next year will look much better and also be manageable.

In the back garden the patio is now almost complete - just 18 more paviors to lay. The process was speeded up a lot when I realised that we had a metal cutting disc on the angle grinder - replacing it with a stone cutting disc made the job of trimming the paviors much easier!

Hedge renovation

The hedge separating our property from our neighbours' is badly overgrown. It's actually their hedge, but they do nothing about it so if the front of our house is to look decent there's nothing for it but "do-it-yourself". Renovating a hedge requires cutting it right back one side at a time. Last year I renovated our side, and this year am reducing the height. I will get it down to a height which I can manage to trim with the electric hedge trimmer. However, there is so much of it that it will take several weeks; the local council helpfully empties our garden wheelie bins weekly, but I can fill both my bin and my neighbours' very quickly with what I'm cutting out of the hedge! Here's what it looks like after two weeks of cutting - only about one third of it done so far:

Once the height has been reduced, I'll reduce the width on the neighbours' side too.

Fans started

The redcurrant plant arrived today, and I've got it planted. This is stage 1 of the fan formation... it actually looks quite pathetic with most of its shoots removed, but all being well it will establish itself.

Progress at slug's pace

Hours and hours in the garden over the last couple of days to achieve - well, not very much by the look of it. Extending the patio over where a fishpond used to be seemed like a good plan - there were brick paviors laid either side of the gap - so it just needed to be levelled and joined with more paviors - sounds so simple. Unfortunately there is just not quite enough space between the two already paved areas to make a seamless join without a lot of fiddling about - only millimeters extra needed but there is absolutely no "give" in these paving blocks, so the only way to get them to join up is to remove the pips off the ends and/or sides of the paviors with an angle grinder - one by one, until enough have been removed to get the blocks to join up. Hours of fun! and I'm not quite half-way with it yet.

The reason the header included "slug" not "snail" was that several of the bags of sand had attracted some of the biggest slugs I've ever seen in the UK - they were put out for bird food, and I think some birds have a full stomach today, as I could see slug trails ending in the middle of nowhere.


On a more positive note, the water butt is installed - just waiting for some rain now to see if it fills up! 

Also, wires have been installed on the wall between the fruit trees - I hope to train gooseberry and redcurrant plants into fans against that wall. As the redcurrant I planted in the autumn didn't survive, I have a replacement on order (Rondom again - we used to have three very productive Rondom plants so I'm keen to keep to that variety). It's not the best time of year for planting but I don't want to waste another year before getting going on the fan training.


Where the two above-ground fishponds used to be, I plan a raised bed - but before this can be constructed, the foundations for the supporting walls need to be made good. This first stage is almost complete so bricklaying should begin in the not too distant future - which will serve the dual purpose of creating the new raised bed and reducing the stacks of reclaimed bricks cluttering up the garden! That in itself would make a huge difference to the appearance - actually it will serve a third purpose too, as it will give me somewhere to put the soil being excavated from other parts to lay paving.

Off again in London

Last September I was beginning to get to grips with re-building the back garden in London, and had got as far as laying enough of the patio extension to put up the washing line, when I had a fall and broke my left hip. This put me out of gardening action almost completely for a while, and it's only now that six months have passed that I'm able to get down to garden level to do something about it. During the time I was unable to work on it, not only was no progress made but the areas I'd cleared became covered in weeds... the weed suppressant blanket broke up - it really needs to be covered to be effective. The only task I managed - with great difficulty! - was to plant a gooseberry and a redcurrant, which I'd ordered before the accident. Sadly the redcurrant doesn't seem to have survived, though the gooseberry is doing well.

The last few days have finally brought us some reasonable weather; I've removed most of the weeds, cleared a car load of rubbish, and started again with the rebuild. The plan was made last summer, so I know what I'm trying to achieve. I've planted a blackberry (Merton Thornless) and a loganberry (LY654) - the same varieties which used to give us wonderful crops, but which had to go to make room for the conservatory. These are planted on the south side of the garden, and will be trained over arches. I've also put a blackcurrant on the same side, and planted a blueberry in a container (as it needs acid soil).

Today's success was to make a soak-away for the down-pipe from the conservatory roof, and re-lay the end of the path to where the tap and electric socket have been installed. I've also prepared a water butt to stand next to the down-pipe.

Here's the latest "bird's eye" view - still a building site, but a tidier one than it's been for months!

Herby update

Spring 2014 - sage plant replaced

I've finished clearing the herb wheel - replaced the tarragon and thyme with new plants, clipped the oregano, topped up all the sections with new compost... and dug out as much as I can find of the mint roots. There's one section now left to plant with something new to replace the mint. More chives and parsley will probably be added in the spring.

The sage has grown a lot since the new plant was put in less than a year ago - probably needs cutting back a bit, but that's a job for spring time.

Rejuvenating herb wheel

January 2008

May 2010

Seven years ago, I created a herb "wheel" in the French garden by screwing together six hexagonal planters, then planting them with various herbs. Over the years these have been productive, but some herbs have done much better than others. Thyme and oregano produced lovely shapes in the planter, and fennel gave some summer height to the centre. Sage was a good plant but gradually grew too woody so last year I replaced it with a new specimen. A big mistake, though, was planting mint in one of the outer sections. I should have known that wooden edges would be no barrier to the intrusive mint roots spreading under the surface. Over the years it has got into every section and even forced its way between the wooden slats and outside the planter completely. I'm now trying to rejuvenate the entire planter and spent some time today attempting to remove the mint shoots from a couple of the sections. In future I will confine mint to a ceramic planter on the steps, so that it doesn't have the opportunity to spread into unwanted areas! However, to eliminate it from the wheel means digging out each section to clear the roots, so I'll be replacing the existing plants one by one.

Rain stopped play

Spending the second half of May in London, I was hoping for a chance to do something about the garden... but it rained so often that I only managed two days gardening. One of these was spent half at the front, half in the back.

The front garden doesn't need much maintenance - mainly hedge-trimming. I've reduced the height of the hedge on the northern side so that I can manage to trim it myself, but I can't manage the top of the hedge which divides us from our neighbours at number 9. It's actually their hedge, but as they never do any gardening we've taken it upon ourselves in recent years to trim it - otherwise the appearance of our own house is spoiled. I would like to reduce the height of this hedge too, so that I can reach to trim it, but that's for the future - for now, Mike's higher reach means he cuts the top of this one (this time, he did the sides too).

The back garden was not only looking like a building site since the removal of the ponds, but an overgrown building site at that, having been left to its own devices for some time. My other day-and-a-half of reasonable weather were spent clearing as much as possible of the former ponds area - and having done so, laying a weed suppressant blanket over the cleared ground to prevent a repetition of the jungle appearance, as I'll be away for nearly all of June.

It wasn't just weeding - a car load of rubble was also shifted (retaining bricks which may still be re-used), bagged up and taken to the tip. The new fencing which I started to treat earlier is still unfinished, due to the weather - it can only be done if the timber is completely dry. Blackberry blossoms over the one remaining arch, but I'm concerned that I don't yet see any new canes emerging from the base to provide next year's fruit. I did pick - and share! - the first strawberry of the season. More will ripen while we're away, and I've asked Eva to help herself to them so that they don't go to waste.

While I'm away I should still be able to do something about the London garden - planning! I need to make a priority list of work to be carried out, that which I can do myself and that for which I need help.

May flying visit

In the middle of May I came to France just for a few days, so that the garden didn't get too overgrown - and I also wanted to keep fertilising it. When I arrived I was really pleased to see how the geranium on the porch had burst into flower, and in the back garden the philadelphus was also covered in bloom, for the first time since it was planted about 8 or 9 years ago. I spent about three days working in the garden but didn't get round to posting any update here. Several areas needed work.


One of the "Desmond Tutu" roses was suffering really badly from rust - so much so that I had to remove almost all the foliage and just hope it would recover. Fortunately the rust had not spread to the other roses, though there was black spot on some.

The furniture in "Yvonne's corner" needed more protection, and I'd brought several bottles of teak oil from the UK (where it is MUCH cheaper than in France). Mike had sanded off some rough parts and applied the remainder of our teak oil in April - the bench seat and table have now had three coats of oil applied so should be well protected. The outdoor dining table has been covered this winter (though the cover wasn't a good fit, and has several holes where the wind has rubbed it against the table's corners). I tried to repair the holes with duct tape, but really I need to source (or make?) a cover the right size before next winter.

There was good news on the citrus front: both the kumquat and lemon trees seem to have recovered from the drought they suffered earlier in the year; they have new shoots and plenty of new foliage. The orange tree has several tiny fruits so we may even have an orange or two later in the year!

I spent some time (and money!) at Jardiland, and have replaced some plants which died from lack of water (lavender, white gaura) as well as adding quite a bit of colour, mainly in the east border which has never had much. I was really pleased with the way it looked after being thoroughly weeded and stocked with flowering plants - mainly annuals but one or two perennials - lupin ("Persian slipper") and salvia (Salvia gregii Fuchsia). The watering system in this border had suffered badly from the neighbour's cats knocking it as they leapt on to the garden wall, so I've replaced it with soaker hose.


In the front garden I cut the photinia back hard. It had grown far too tall for its position - as high as the fig tree next door - and was keeping light from the plants beneath. It will need regular pruning in future. The cordyline growing in a pot by the fence I had thought was dead, but a new shoot proved me wrong. As it recovers, I've given the pot some colour by adding a couple of petunias. I bought another cordyline, too, and planted it in a tall blue pot we brought out from London. It's now on the decking.

Why ever did I plant ivy?

I really should have known better... and would have, if I'd paid any attention to how big the ivy trunk had got in the London garden. Looking back over my photos, I see I planted it in 2007, and it looked good as it began to cover the front wall. However, once established it began to grow very rapidly. By 2011 it had reached the top of the wall, and the following year began to encroach on the bedroom windows and the porch. 

May 2010

Since then it's needed regular attention to keep it away from the downpipe and gutters, as well as the shutters and front door. This is fine now, but what would happen if I became unable to climb ladders to deal with it? Judging by the thickness of the stems in the London garden, it could force the guttering off the wall.

April 2011

I now pull/cut off enough of the plant each time to leave several inches of space between ivy and gutter/window surround etc - but haven't noticed how long it takes before it needs doing again. I should now be able to look back at this blog in future to track its progress.

April 2014 - after cutting back