Helen's Garden Renovation Project

The lilies that J Parkers sent me free of charge with my order have started flowering.

A Giant Oriental Lily (Mixed)

Not only does this lily look beautiful, but I can smell it at the other end of the garden. I tried planting a few lily bulbs some years ago but the plants got eaten, and so I gave up and never tried planting lilies again. But of course, if someone sends you the bulbs, you might as well plant them. I put lots of slug pellets around them at first, but apart from that have given them no protection. And nothing seems to have eaten them. Which is more than can be said for me. I went out at dusk on Wednesday to water my plants, and got bitten very itchily on my arms and face.

On the day of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, I lost the biggest competition on the gardening calendar: the Willowherb Elimination Stakes. For those who have never partaken in this great event, the rules are very simple: pull up all the willowherb before it sets seed. Today I found one with a couple of fluffy seedpods attached, and as I pulled it up, a few seeds drifted down to the soil. I am not disappointed, because I always lose.

We had a brief shower this morning, but apart from that it has been dry for a week, and I have now emptied out the shallow pond. Sorry to the frog who visited earlier this week, but alternative accommodation is just a few yards away. My aim is to stop the leak between the render around the stone edging and the pond liner by neatening up the render, filling any gaps, and then using a pond sealant to plug the gap between render and liner.

I also want to install some cobbles around the edge, gluing them to the liner with the pond sealant. I like white cobbles, but I think they would look strange with everything else being brown or black. So, a few weeks ago, I bought some rainbow cobbles from B&Q. You may not think that they look very pretty.

Boring sandy cobbles

In fact, it wouldn’t be unfair to say that they look like a load of potatoes. However, after giving them a quick scrub underwater, their appearance has been transformed.

Rainbow cobbles after washing the sand off

I need to wash the cobbles thoroughly, not just for appearance, but so that the glue will stick properly. This is quite a nice job to do in hot weather.

Suddenly, with very little warning, summer turned up. This meant that when I came home from work, I had to water my plants. While I was at it I pulled up the weeds sharing the pots (surprisingly few) and gave the plants some nice bonemeal and ericaceous granules, as appropriate.

It was a perfect day for sitting on the edge of the raised pond and looking at all the life going on within it. In the past week or so the water has cleared and now I can see just how many creatures there are in it. There are millions of very small round ones which are probably water fleas, and some mini-worms, and also some insects which could be water boatmen. I think these tiny little things are collectively responsible for eating some of my plants. But not all of them. The Upright Milfoil has won the day, with its beautiful foliage still intact. I have put it in deeper water and it’s more than equal to the challenge. I am wondering if it is mainly responsible for the clearing of the pond water, since the only other oxygenator still alive, the Water Crowfoot, is only just growing fast enough to avoid being eaten completely.

The Upright Milfoil growing uprightly and doing a fantastic oxygenating job

The shallow pond has no vegetation in it yet because I still need to repair it, but I was delighted to have a visitor.

A frog happily cooling off next to my luxury rainbow cobbles in the shallow pond

My path behind the apple trees is now overgrown, mainly with buddleia. I am probably still going to keep the path there, though, and just accept that in the summer months it’s a bit of a squeeze getting past. It does demonstrate that it’s worth checking the viability of paths in both summer and winter.

The path overgrown with buddleia and apple trees

And finally, when I opened the bag of ericaceous compost in the greenhouse, I found that it had turned into a giant ants’ nest. I still used the compost to mix in with ericaceous plant food and spread it around the base of my rhododendrons, camellia, blueberries and kalmia. I’m not sure whether these bits of nests will turn into new nests. If they do, I will have an awful lot of ants by the end of the summer.

The three readers of my blog will have noticed that there have been no entries for nearly a month. This is partly because I have been away on holiday but mainly because it simply will not stop raining. The damp weather started at the beginning of April – just after the hosepipe ban came into force. The hosepipe ban was lifted over a week ago, which we hoped would stop the rain, but no.

However, there is some hope that there may be some dry weather next week. When that happens, there will be a lot of maintenance tasks to do. The Willowherb Elimination Stakes are still in progress. And I do hope that one day I will be able to mend my shallow pond.

In the meantime, here is a colour combination that simply would not occur to an average garden designer.

Crocosmia with Lychnis

I planted the Crocosmia Lucifer deliberately. The Lychnis just turned up, as it always does, and I hadn’t the heart to pull it up.

Here is a Lychnis flower holding up its face against the rain. Brave little thing.

Lychnis in the rain