Welcome Tua Pek Kong, the Mitcheldean Garden 2018
Flaming June

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2018. Click here for the index.

If it rained seriously even once in June, I certainly didn't notice it. Earlier in the month there was an occasional few minutes of drizzle but as it moved towards its conclusion, even the clouds disappeared and we had day after day of almost unbroken sunshine. Given the day length, inevitably temperatures rose and since I have a policy of not watering the grass, it first stopped growing and then started to turn brown in patches. We went into summer with a 'stock' of about 600 litres of water which sounds a lot - it's more than half a ton - but given Yuehong's penchant for growing annuals and especially filling hanging baskets, it soon started to run down. One of our water butts has to be kept aside for our small acid loving plants and those other plants that are in their vicinity. The other gets refilled with mains water as often as necessary and is then left for 48 hours for the chlorine to be 'degassed'. Necessarily that means those parts of the garden which can tolerate Severn Trent's Patent Plant Poison get the horticultural equivalent of fizzy Heineken as opposed to a craft real ale.

Daily watering has become a major logistics exercise, inevitably we have had to invest in a further water butt which will go next to the summer house and another 30 metre hose to fill it. Carting multiple 6 litre cans of water up and down has only limited positive effects on our fitness before further wrecking our knees. Right now, a hose pipe ban looks inevitable and as a precaution I have withdrawn most of the smaller tubs from our parking space at the bottom of the garden to the patio where they will be more shaded and can more easily be watered. It's all the complete opposite to our first full summer in Mitcheldean in 2012, when it seemed to rain every day and what was expected to be Yuehong's first steam rally at Much Marcle was cancelled a month in advance as there was no possibility of the field drying out in time.

This month's pictures should be a little different as they are entirely Yuehong's. These days she no longer posts on public sites so it's a chance to showcase a slightly different take on a familiar subject although her IPhone 6 has a mind of its own when it comes to colour balance.

We inherited two bushes above the vegetable patch which did very little except grow a bit each year until the Leylandii came down. The pink Weigela (Florida) is, at best, pretty but not intense, the white one which I have never been able to identify decided this year that it loved the world, while next to it, the small rose totally ignored the drought.

It has taken a while to get our peonies sorted, not least because some got planted in the 'wrong kind of place' The one under the silver birch tree couldn't easily be moved but it doesn't seem to mind and it contrasts beautifully with the gigantic honeysuckle behind which despite my regular attention is now double the size in each direction compared to when we arrived.

When we first arrived I cleared masses of unwanted plants from our rockery to the extent it was easy to walk around inside it. We threw in a few extra plants and these days, I do little more than remove the grass, prune the small tree and I just let them all fight it out. If there was a prize for an unexpected flowering, then it would go to one of our rhubarbs, a first for me. According to the web this happens when the plant is under stress or is getting too old. It can't be the first as it benefits from the juices that ooze out from the adjacent composter and it and its other two friends threaten to overwhelm their neighbours.

It's safe to say that Yuehong was even more excited than I was at the departure of the horrible sycamores, especially as she didn't have to lift a finger to achieve it. For the time being I have no intention of showing their former 'home' in a blog as the area is still a mess and likely to stay that way till next year given the current absence of rainfall.

Long ago a better railway photographer than I will ever be told me "Find the perfect position and then take two steps back..." Yuehong did just that, we now have a panorama of about 150 degrees between Mitcheldean's two churches.

The patio is Yuehong's workspace, like her kitchen it sometimes looks a little crowded but somehow it looks perfect when the camera comes out; by the middle of the month, most of the young plants had been sent to their final locations.

It's no secret that Yuehong's favourites are her roses. However, this year's weather pattern has not been kind to them. The extended winter meant a late start and while the sun was initially welcome, there hasn't been enough rain for it to be a classic year.

The roses at the front, then, were best not viewed close up but probably looked more than acceptable to passers by. For us, it was just a question of keeping things tidy and waiting for the weather to change.

it's a little early to show the display by the road, the dahlias are a couple of weeks off their best and many of the tubs have been temporarily relocated. However, the honeysuckle with the aid of a couple of its progeny in the form of cuttings, now extends the whole length of the garage and in some places half way across it.

Back on the patio, the theme is 'pleasures to come', I'm not sure about this year's non-traditional surfinia's but they certainly look rather different from the traditional ones...

For the first time I can remember, we go into July with no backlog of jobs to be done. The pond has a horrible leak, but that's clearly one for a professional. The liner is almost certainly at least 20 years old, it looked 'mature' and the pond unloved when we arrived. The house changed hands in 2001, my guess is that the landscaping which included the pond dates from before then.

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