The greatest difficulty in successful gardening is to find plant compositions that work well for the plants and are aesthetically pleasing. Most of the time we have a plan in our heads and try to implement it, and then, at the time when everything should grow up, the most surprising and pleasing vistas are those not really planned at all. Nature's behaviour can never be predicted precisely and if one actor in a carefully devised play is late or missing, the whole effect is lost. So every year again and again I enjoy in our garden the surprising combinations that plants create without our help.
I have kept a written gardening diary for a long time to record new planting experiments and other details, flowering times etc. and I always regretted not having taken pictures that clarify many details without the need for words. Therefore this Photographic Gardening Diary: it will hopefully support us with the planning of the garden year.
Here are some combinations in green hues that show up in our garden now.
Choisya ternata "Sundance" is a wonderful evergreen background shrub, that starts to flower now. It is a pity that photographs cannot transport a scent - in the evening sun, this part of the garden wears a warm wonderful vanilla scent. It is frost hardy here; in some winters it sheds many leaves but will recuperate in a very short time before the flowering season.
This is an early filled primula, that is in flower now. I don't particularly like it because of the artificial flowers but it was a leftover from a pot planting a few years ago and we moved it into the garden in a shady corner. There it proliferates and cooperates very well with Ophiopogon nigrescens, the black grass, that once caused a visitor to wonder openly, why I left the plastic binders from the mulch bags lying around in the garden... on the other side are the leaves of little Astilbe chinensis pumila, that requires a lot of watering in late summer and may disappear completely if not watered and overlooked.
Here is a variegated Buxus sempervirens Elegantissima and below Helleborus orientalis with Symphytum grandiflorum as ground cover.
A gardening diary not only helps in the cases where you take a stroll through your garden in spring and realize that while you planted 500 tulips in pink and white in the autumn of the previous year, now not a single one is showing up... and suddenly you see all those well-fed little creatures scuttling around in the garden, crossing the walkway in front of your feet, as if it was their home - which it is by now, and you gave them the sumptuous buffet to feed on. And now you also realize why your dog is so mesmerized and excitedly staring for hours at the compost and the dry walls. I once put a water hose down one of the holes between the stones of a dry wall and out came 2 m further along the wall from another hole a wet and angry little mouse trying to clean its dripping face and eyes like in a funny cartoon. Luckily the dog never got it.
We all share our gardens with many other creatures. For years, a robin had his territory in our garden and he often came to greet me in the mornings when I went down to the gate to fetch the newspaper. Last year, he decided to build his nest in a buxus pot next to our front door. I felt grateful and honoured that he decided we posed no danger, and his wife laid four tiny blue sprinkled eggs into his nest. However, he was too trusting. A neighbour's cat got wind of this and robbed the nest when the little ones had just hatched. We have not seen him since. Maybe the cat got the whole family :(.
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I have kept a written gardening diary for a long time to record new planting experiments and other details, flowering times etc. and I always regretted not having taken pictures that clarify many details without the need for words. Therefore this Photographic Gardening Diary: it will hopefully support us with the planning of the garden year.
Here are some combinations in green hues that show up in our garden now.
Euphorbia characias in front of Choisya ternata "Sundance" and Pinus Mugo
This is an early filled primula, that is in flower now. I don't particularly like it because of the artificial flowers but it was a leftover from a pot planting a few years ago and we moved it into the garden in a shady corner. There it proliferates and cooperates very well with Ophiopogon nigrescens, the black grass, that once caused a visitor to wonder openly, why I left the plastic binders from the mulch bags lying around in the garden... on the other side are the leaves of little Astilbe chinensis pumila, that requires a lot of watering in late summer and may disappear completely if not watered and overlooked.
Epimedium rubrum in front of a Hosta under Acer palmatum dissectum . The different shapes of leaves combine nicely.
Here is a variegated Buxus sempervirens Elegantissima and below Helleborus orientalis with Symphytum grandiflorum as ground cover.
A gardening diary not only helps in the cases where you take a stroll through your garden in spring and realize that while you planted 500 tulips in pink and white in the autumn of the previous year, now not a single one is showing up... and suddenly you see all those well-fed little creatures scuttling around in the garden, crossing the walkway in front of your feet, as if it was their home - which it is by now, and you gave them the sumptuous buffet to feed on. And now you also realize why your dog is so mesmerized and excitedly staring for hours at the compost and the dry walls. I once put a water hose down one of the holes between the stones of a dry wall and out came 2 m further along the wall from another hole a wet and angry little mouse trying to clean its dripping face and eyes like in a funny cartoon. Luckily the dog never got it.
We all share our gardens with many other creatures. For years, a robin had his territory in our garden and he often came to greet me in the mornings when I went down to the gate to fetch the newspaper. Last year, he decided to build his nest in a buxus pot next to our front door. I felt grateful and honoured that he decided we posed no danger, and his wife laid four tiny blue sprinkled eggs into his nest. However, he was too trusting. A neighbour's cat got wind of this and robbed the nest when the little ones had just hatched. We have not seen him since. Maybe the cat got the whole family :(.
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