The Mitcheldean Garden 2024
Basket Cases

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2024. Click here for the index.

At my advanced age, I am increasingly aware of two phrases which would have been of no concern to me when I left the UK for the Far East just over 50 years ago. The first is 'Succession Planning', which in my case is nothing to do with passing on 'squillions' but all to do with ensuring that my collection of railwayana, railway books and particularly pictures of ancient steam locomotives finds an appropriate good home. It's something I tend to talk about on those rare occasions that I bump into fellow enthusiasts at steam rallies. A very few have progeny who share their interest but the extent of the problem can be seen in the collapse of the market for even iconic steam locomotive nameplates and my own area of interest, steam locomotive worksplates. Old magazines are totally worthless or worse and not only are second hand booksellers themselves retiring from the business but those that are left are only interested in what we used to call collectors items, an area where supply now comfortably outstrips demand.

The second one is 'Management of Decline'. I will gloss over such things as short term memory loss and declining powers of concentration which are not relevant in a gardening blog. However, as the proud co-owner of a glorious piece of nature, I am naturally concerned that even though my day's work is getting shorter, I am increasingly tired at the end of it. Experience and organisation are a great help but I have a number of hedges, shrubs and trees which are straining at the leash to break free of my control and I know that there will be a battle royal when the steam rally season starts in earnest at the beginning of July.

For the time being though, with Yuehong's able help, I think I can safely say I am still winning, but not by much. 

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My previous post saw the winter bulbs complete their season and the spring residents ready to enter the fray. Azaleas and rhododendrons hate extremes and have enjoyed a mild winter and cool spring. With our sloping garden, the excessively high rainfall has not been an issue (peonies are another matter). I have been slowly introducing azaleas into the rockery but this pink monster predates our arrival. It would not be out of place in Lydney Park Gardens which is saying something. White azaleas, as we shall see later, are the last to flower.

The purple and red bushes are mine and behind is a relatively young orange one which is deciduous. That yellow flower in the middle represents a first blooming, our budget is such that we can't afford to buy mature plants and just have to be patient!

We inherited the 'big brother' purple rhododendron and added the red one on the left and a white one (hidden). With aggressive management we are almost in view of their being balanced in size. There are nine (!) more on the bank in front of the house which mainly came from that up-market supplier, Tesco. As I remark each year, they represent a complete failure by me in terms of planting. They are not only far too close together but they are shielded from external view by a row of camellias and lilacs, However, they look great looking down and I guess the other bushes shelter them from any bitter easterly cold winter winds. The final smaller one is tucked away beside the garage, suffice to say that the honeysuckle behind it didn't exist when it went in!

This honeysuckle is also just over 10 years old. Courtesy of two of its cuttings, it is now marching back up the side of the garage and if I didn't prune it each year then it would not only cover the garage but be half way across the road running past our property. We have two wisteria of a similar age. The one behind above the pond is an awful disappointment but this one, which got moved just inside #35's garden when we put up the greenhouse, is now an absolute treasure even though I need to 'trespass' (with permission, of course) to record it. We hate killing off plants but now this one is half way across the pergola, the other one faces being cut back at least 50% so we can enjoy these flowers from the patio in future. They grow so quickly that any gap will be filled in no time.

I assume that these allium bulbs have divided since we planted them, I can't believe we would have bought so many. Yuehong has a soft spot for geraniums, especially when she found that they would successfully overwinter in the greenhouse. These are supposedly perennial Johnson's Blue and they have successfully colonised the front bank (here) and the bank by the steps up from the patio at the back. The only attention they need is to remove the tall grass which tends to grow up through them.- a sharp tug buys quite a lot of time - digging out would 'throw out the baby with the bathwater'. 

One of the great successes of recent years has been the expanded bed that runs alongside #35 in front of the greenhouse. The lupins survive from a previous incarnation and give a splash of early season colour. The perennial daisies are in the bottom of the rockery next to the large pink azalea, they had a bad winter a while back, Yuehong was all for removing what was left, but I insisted on being patient and now they are fully regrown. These are flowers that open in the early morning and close each evening when the sun goes down.

There are no pictures of the patio area (yet, it is full of dahlias being started), It's looking very smart because Yuehong has bought herself a 'power washer'. It's not the only one in the road but most of them are used for washing cars, in the case of the young gentleman opposite, usually three times a week. Yuehong has taken on my unfavourite Albertine rose which runs along the trellis and it's her turn to get her hands and fingers full of the thorns. The rather nice irises were placed in a pot on the patio pending our next redigging of the lily bed up by the summer house.

Now we know that you can't overwater clematis in our garden, they are running riot. This monster is now wrapping itself around the Rhapsody in Blue rose in front of the summer house. 

The peonies at the top of the garden got waterlogged even though they are on a steep slope, some failed altogether others simply produced few shoots this year. No such problems for this one which is in the bank next to the steps in front of the house. It's only been there a few years and this is the first significant bloom I can remember, simply fabulous. I have chronicled the 'deer problem' at some length, this blue moon was given refuge in a large pot on the patio. It's not a solution, come the Autumn I will try to find a suitable place in the upper garden but realistically its best days are gone.

In a spirit of experimentation, Yuehong planted a clematis at the base of our silver birch tree and gave it some string to climb up. Cue a 'pause for thought' and this year we had this flower. The other is an Agapanthus which looks like some sort of giant bluebell to me. It's found a home in the corner of the lily bed where it appears to be quite happy - this year it produced two stalks so I suppose the original bulb has now divided.

I've always liked the phrase 'Rainy Day Money' and this year we needed to access our own pot of it. While we were in Penang, the living room ceiling developed a brown damp patch and when we returned, I battled my way through the loft space, found a drip and effected a very temporary repair. In 2023, we had struggled to find someone to sort out our tired bathroom, but this was much more serious, and more expensive. The bungalow is about 50 years old and apart from when the extension was added, I doubt the roof had been touched since, except when we added a strip of plastic along the bottom set of tiles in 2011 (or so). The 'felt' was more than life expired, the lead valleys were extremely tired and 100+ tiles cracked or broken. By a strange coincidence I had a cash ISA just matured and in what seemed like no time it disappeared. The roof looks very good, I am no expert in such matters but it ought to see us out. I dare say that an inspection in 10 years time would be a good idea!

The Albertine at the back escaped cutting back but the roses at the front were not so lucky. Never mind, they will come again. Despite how it looks now, the gang didn't believe in tidying up as they went.  There was 'rubbish' everywhere and despite promises to be careful, lots of plants at the front got trampled especially the annual snapdragons. We are still picking nails and rubble out of the lawn and beds... White azaleas must have some significance in the Sikh religion because they escaped almost completely, but maybe they were sufficiently obvious that it would have represented conscious vandalism to step on them, the other, less fortunate, azaleas had essentially finished flowering.

As a consolation for Yuehong, this year's hanging basket plants from Lidl were their best ever, even if the price had 'gone through the roof'.  Best of all, she got a set of top class large empty ones with matting at a bargain price from the local garden centre near Newent. It was as well that we already had the filling as they had managed their plants much better this year and there were no bargains to be had.

Yuehong has a soft spot for Busy Lizzie and this year for the first time Lidl had this fancy variety which found the conditions in the baskets irresistible.

Even the Million Bells mostly went well although, as always, there were initial failures.

When we first arrived we used to mount hanging baskets at street level, but now they are a luxury we can happily forego, with the bonus that we no longer have to traipse down the steps regularly to water them and don't have to worry about them when are away even if the days of our long distance excursions are necessarily over. As you can probably work out from the above, our gardening budget is a fraction of what it was 5 or 6 years ago, in particular we are experts in recycling compost and only the hanging baskets get to benefit from fresh stuff - fortunately we have quite a few years' stock in the garage.

It's now the second week of June, the garden may look near perfect but the hedges at the top haven't been touched and neither have any of the bushes and shrubs there; all of them need cutting back. We can allow ourselves a pause for breath but not a long one. Most of the dark dahlias are in the ground and the dwarf and patio dahlias are in tubs with lots of buds. The main season dahlias are on their way but they are mostly 'tired' because there never seems to be enough time to wait for them to die back in the autumn before we vanish off to Penang. Quite acceptable corms don't have to be expensive and next year I think we shall have to invest in fresh stock.

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