linen and roses

I enjoy doing intimate weddings. Especially at Barnsley House and especially for Americans who often have very precise ideas. Yesterday linen bags filled with home made confetti were requested. So I carried on the theme into their chair backs and tied their buttonholes and corsages with linen too...

Cecile Brunner is quite rightly called the buttonhole rose, I'm not usually a fan of rose buttonholes but she is just such a sweetie. Having moved further south west roses are in full burst at the gardens. I am almost sad, I absolutely adore this time of year when everything is so full of promise. Then everything bursts into full bloom and there's a sadness tinging the joy.

Promise of summer

Walking up the lane this morning the smell of summer hit me, that lovely blast of heavy scent, a mixture of wildflowers, mown grass, warmth, general vegetation. And the wildflowers here are spectacular -  fields and hedge edges of lady's smock, bluebells, cow parsley and dandelions have now given way to queen annes lace. buttercups and vetches, clovers and campions, stitchworts, orchids, dozens of different grasses. Though the silage fields are sad monocrops of rye grass, with a few patches of campions and buttercups daring to creep in round the edges. There are lots of bees out and it is particularly good to see butterflies, today I spotted several little blue ones but I haven't a clue which they are.

I keep meaning to take photographs of progress but once again am camera less. I must sort this out,  if anyone has any suggestions for the best smallish but not snap and shoot camera, I'm all ears.... I did have a good Canon Eos something or other., it died, I got a lumix, I don't get on with it at all and the battery holds no charge or some reason so every time I do find it and decide to snap it won't play.

I'm hoping for photos from Lydia's wedding soon, she was the gorgeous bride who wanted guinea fowl feathers in a headdress, she said she liked wearing it so much that she didn't take it off after the ceremony as planned but kept it on all evening. I imagine it was looking a bit faded by then! This weekend was a very relaxed wedding in Bridport, rather fun to do something completely local. Next week it's Gloucestershire on Thursday, Dorset at the weekend.

Sadly three people who were coming together or the course a week tomorrow have had to cancel because of a memorial service so I'm cancelling the day - it doesn't seem much fun for just two people but as one of them is on holiday in Turkey she may turn up anyway though I have mailed her. If she does appear I have promised her a day in the garden helping with anything she would like to do, and with whatever info she wants thrown in, obviously for no charge. Somebody was shocked that I hadn't taken deposits from everyone so I am not out of pocket, but my reasoning goes like this - people pay when they have had a good day, if they can't come that is bad luck for them as well as me, if they are nice people, and they always are, and they can't come for a genuine reason they always offer to pay anyway. The three non-comers from next week offered to pay but that would be stealing as I haven't given them anything in return.

On deposits, I do need to apologise to brides though, in theory I should take deposits three months in advance and some brides do like to work that way. In practice this year any help here is going in the garden, not the house or office, as there is so much to do to get the gardens up and running here, so I am doing all the admin. And I am notoriously admin light because I am rather too busy to do everything though I do try. Sorry!

Best in the garden today - white and dark red peonies, catmint and the first campanula.

Sorry?

It's 2pm on Sunday. The phone goes. I run in from the garden where I'm having lunch with friends. And trip over the pup on the way and nearly go flying, but I was expecting a call and needed to answer.  It was not the call I expected but went like this (verbatim):

Caller: "Are you the flower company?"
Me: "Yes." (it seemed the easiest answer)
Caller: "Can you send flowers for me to arrive tomorrow?"
Me: "I'm afraid that isn't possible."
Caller: "No need to be rude." And she put the phone down.

Um, she phoned on Sunday lunchtime. With not even an excuse me for bothering you at the weekend or any kind of little politenesses......

Backwards and forwards

Back in Dorset and it's pouring after a few beautiful days. But rather a relief as I returned with another vanload of plants which were looking rather exhausted but today all are happy as could be, even unplanted. I'm toying with the idea of another large vehicle full of plants to come down from the Herefordshire gardens as there is just so much in the field still. It is quite interesting seeing what is going to beat the weeds as no one is tending the plants now. I was picking centaurea, aquilegia, alchemilla, nepeta, penstemon and lysimachia rocket foliage, solomon's, astrantias, trollius, ranunculus and the utterly gorgeous little R Flore pleno, a darling little bloom, tiny, white, double, delicate and arching. Also peonies, brunnera, campanula, nectorascordum, sage, stachys byzantina, libertia, artemisias, bistort, sweet rocket.......the list could go on and on and there is just so much to come! And thousands of scillas still in the top gardens and huge patches of Solomon's, now fully established and thriving, and euphorbias large and small. It was actually rather hard to leave and I felt awfully profligate leaving so much behind. I think I may have to go back very soon.

People thought I was nuts putting in so much alchemilla as a whole long crop in one strip of the field, but the year before last we picked almost 100 buckets full for June and July weddings, this year one could probably get at least 200 buckets full. When grown like that it is tall, long and strong stemmed and utterly superb. I like it best at this early stage before it goes very frothy when I think it just becomes rather a lazy cliche.

Another thing that is lovely in those gardens now is the Sorbus Joseph Rock, gorgeous pinkish white berries in absolute profusion. It looks as though everything is going to fruit heavily this year, so much blossom everywhere. Iris sibirica don't look so good though, probably just overcrowded after six years in the same place without division.

It is very strange leaving a garden that I have loved so much and put so much energy into. The cottage gardens is looking really quite lovely now, yes it is going wild and there is quite a lot of couch creeping in but it doesn't really affect the look as the garden is so full. Clumps of white and pink love lies bleeding seem to have trebled in size, nectaroscordum are colonising different areas, Anthriscus Ravenswing is appearing all over the place, brunneras have completely lined one bed, and euphorbias flowering in huge clumps. There seem to be a lot of different scabious appearing where they fancy, self sown seedlings from a lovely dark mauve knautia I originally got from Charis Stockton at Abbeydore, and I think other seedlings from the large yellow one and probably also from the little dark K macedonica. I didn't bring any back, but may yet do so! Astrantias are doing well, and campanula Anna Loddon has clumped up hugely in the top garden and the field. I'm too late to move any of my lilies (I forgot about them earlier on) but it looks as though it's going to be a good year.

So the garden here felt very bare in comparison when I got back. A day later, when the comparison is not so fresh in my mind it feels a lot better. And it will fill out in time, with a whole different palette as well as some of the same. I'm particularly looking forward to my long line of agapanthus under shrub roses as aggies didn't do so well at Hay. Roses are beginning to flower here, not just the R lutea which covers the east wall of the house, but white shrub roses that I don't know the name of (how I wish I'd listened!), dark red shrub roses ditto and all the main season ones are budding up well. The tree peonies are fabulous, there's a bright yellow one but also two deep deep red trees, completely covered in flowers. And I've counted at least 15 clematis at various stages. And the iris are beginning...So it's not all bad.

But I can't believe I carefully moved several good clumps of self seeded poppies as I had such beautiful colour combinations in the field, and each clump seems to be dark red. None of those delicious double frilly white and pink numbers, or the delectable mauve and white. Just red. I have sown lots more though, so let's hope there will be some lovely colour combinations as I do love their delicacy.

On the annual front cornflowers are about to flower here, dill is doing well, ammi is nearly there and nigella is bursting. And there are rows and rows of germinated seedlings of all sorts of others. I think it's going to be OK!

Hay time

I'm really enjoying being at the Herefordshire gardens for a few days..... and being in the cottage looking out at the cottage garden when it is just soooooo windy on the field!

But it is time someone bought the cottage now and enjoyed the joys themselves.  http://www.mccartneys.co.uk/Property/Property_Details/3-bedroom-property-for-sale-in-Clifford-HR3-mccrps-HAY120196-1369384229

My Latest Helper

It's official, the puppy is into arranging.....

I'm getting happily wild in the flower shed . Outside Maddy is gathering her materials, making them into a bed, and going to sleep. 

Chelsea already beckons

How does time pass so fast? Could it be because we're still planting as well as picking and organising flowers to come down from the other gardens and going up to the other gardens this week and weddings and mail orders.....? And we've planted 18 trees in the field this week which is a great joy - perhaps my favourite specimen tree of all, a tulip tree, takes sort of centre stage among beautiful special birches, sorbus, malus and a walnut. One of the reasons I planted them fairly near this end of the field is to try to prevent myself expanding the flower plot too far into the field. Then I realised I can always go the other side of the trees.

Rosa banksia lutea is blooming all over the front of the house, Thursday began with my leaning out of my bedroom window to pick for a bouquet. Heavenly way to start a day.

Chelsea this week, always mixed feelings, I will trip around and see if anything new is going on but I found last year's many rather wild gardens rather uninspiring and the mad tower not quite my thing. I'm taking flowers up for the Gardens Illustrated/RHS lecture at the RGS again, this year it's Piet Oudolf and Jinny Blom, I think I"m going to go completely wildstyle  with lots of trailing foliages and wildflowers, and maybe find a spot for a smallish display majoring on wonderful field grasses, I always think that PO and friends are trying to recreate a large scale posh meadow with their swathes of natural planting so I think I'd like to use ordinary traditional meadow as inspiration, and bring stems and blooms from the field and nowhere else.

Meanwhile 4 pallets of mushroom compost with manure arrived and the only place the driver could drop them was in the yard where they are rather smelly and blocking everything. Do I have the energy to get barrowing? And I also have hundreds of herbs to plant, some shrubs, the house to clean and clear before the housesitter/dogsitter's arrival, dogs to walk, dog to take to the vet, people for lunch, van to pack with everything I need for Chelsea and for the Hay Festival gig (apart from the flowers) and for a wedding on Wednesday in London. Why am I sitting here?.......