We Are Back!

Well, we are back home from Great Britain and have returned safely and happily to San Diego, to our home and garden. My husband and I both had a very hard time to leave England and accept the fact that our annual vacation is over already. The two weeks that we spent there just have gone by so fast. But they flew by, because we saw so much and simply had a wonderful time!

Still we both couldn't let go completely so we tried to bring a little bit of England home. Besides other things we bought a Union Jack flag, which is now proudly flapping in the wind in front of our home. Sadly we missed all the Coronation Jubilee Celebrations so we figured the least that we could do is showing our willingness to join in by getting the English flag up.

But back to gardening. As you can see on the photo above the spring flush of the 'Climbing Iceberg' rose below the flag was over when we returned. Is there a more ugly thing out there in the garden than a not deadheaded white rose, which is clinging to her brownish dried up blooms as if her life is depending on that?




As a matter of fact the spring flush was over for all of my roses planted into the ground and they were in desperate need of deadheading, all at once of course. 

Coming home and having to deadhead all the roses made me feel very overwhelmed and it doesn't help that due to other responsibilities and demands in my life I have succumbed to being a "half an hour"-weekend gardener, which neither I or my garden like. Do I have to mention that I don't get the job done?

So since a few days I have decided that I have to try to squeeze out of my busy schedule half an hour a day to tend to the gardens. Because it is very warm here already most of that time is used to water my plants in pots or in the beds were we don't have an irrigation system in place, but I also do a little bit of the deadheading each time I am out there. So hopefully slowly but surely I get the garden back in control, again. It looks a bit better now already than on the photos in this post!

By the way what actually didn't help at all with my feelings of being an overwhelmed gardener is that every one of the English gardens that we visited looked so well maintained. I simply don't get it how the Brits are doing it. 

Above you see a photo of my Hybrid Perpetual Rose Bed. From the left to the right: 'Grandmother's Hat', 'Reine des Violettes' and 'Yolande d'Aragon'. I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that all three roses are blooming already again. Of course, their second flush, if you even can call it like that, is much less floriferous than the first, but still they are repeating. Last year they just produced a spring flush and that was it.

Besides the roses being in a bit of a desolate state there were also very lovely surprises in the garden like my relatively new hydrangea 'Nikko Blue'. The hydrangea is squeezed in between a huge Queen Anne Palm on one side and a Giant Bird of Paradise, strelitzia 'Nicolai' on the other and I am sure it is fighting a battle for life because of the extreme root competition, but it still managed to bloom profusely. The blooms are even showing a light blue tint, which is so much coveted by me. 

Here is a close-up of one flower of the above mentioned 'Nikko Blue' hydrangea. Isn't the subtle play of colors in just one bloom truly delightful?

Not all roses look bad right now, though. Some of the ones, which are still living in containers do actually very well like this one. It is a Hybrid Tea rose called 'Halloween', which I got as an own root band last year from Vintage Gardens nursery. The color is absolutely stunning and so is the fragrance. The blooms are huge for such a small rose and indicate that they will be humongous, once the rose is more mature. 

I have to admit that usually I am not into hot colors especially when it comes to roses, but this one is an exception. I think it is just plain gorgeous. 'Halloween' is a descendant of the famous 'Peace' rose and has obviously inherited some of the qualities of its parent: the flower shape, big blooms, great scent. I think it has more petals than 'Peace', which I consider an advantage, since I just love the sumptuousness of many petaled roses. In my garden 'Halloween' shows a little bit of a powdery mildew infection at the moment, but it is not too bad in comparison to some of my other roses. 

My dark purple gladioli are blooming so prettily in the front yard.

Here you can see the whole gladoli patch together with 'Black & Blue' salvia and rose 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' in the foreground. I really like the color combination and the different shapes of the flowers and leaves. The gladioli corms have multiplied quite nicely from the six original ones in the last three years and now they have some true impact when they are at their peak. There is one catch though, the show is over fast, but I like the excitement that a plant delivers, which becomes the star of the garden for a short time and then goes back into the shadows until next year.

Also 'Mme Isaac Pereire' has managed to squeeze some blooms out. What can I say, this rose is one of the most beautiful roses ever bred in my opinion and the fragrance is so strong and pleasing to the nose.

Another hydrangea that is really doing well. I got it as an impulse buy at Home Depot last year. Unfortunately it came as an unnamed variety.

This is 'Charles Rennie Mackintosh', a David Austin English Rose, which I am getting more and more fond of. It has a pink flower with a lilac tint, which I was unfortunately not able to capture well with my camera. Believe me it is a truly special color in reality and in my opinion well worth growing for that reason alone. 

See you in the garden!

Christina

News from the Garden

Sometimes things simply do not work out. About a couple of weeks ago, after giving it a lot of thought which rose I might put there, I planted 'Mme. Ernest Calvat' in a big hole in between this group of Queen Anne Palms (see photo below). I was so excited about this that I even did a whole blog post about it. If you want to see it click here. After looking good for a short time the rose started to rapidly decline. It stopped opening the already existing buds, leaves were turning brown, even whole canes looked more and more brown and black, as if they were dying back.

(you can click on the photos to enlarge)

Knowing that the palm roots will shoot back into the planting hole very quickly I realized that the rose would not have much time to recover before it had to deal with severe root competition. So I did not want to "wait and see", but decided to take it out and replace it with another rose out of my rose pot ghetto. This is one of the rare moments when it is actually a good thing to have a big pot ghetto, since you can pull other roses from it if needed. After again quite a bit of thinking I decided to go with 'Georgetown Tea' this time. Initially I had some doubt to plant a tea rose in a spot where it gets partial shade at certain times of the day, but considering Georgetown Tea's petals which are very thin and fried when we had some real hot days lately I am now assuming that for this particular tea rose a little bit of shade at the hottest time of the day might be even a good thing. This rose is another generous rose gift from Masha, a befriended Rosarian, who also writes a great garden blog (if you want to have a look at her blog please click here). Thank you so much Masha for this lovely rose! I am so glad that I finally got it into the ground. 'Georgetown Tea' is supposed to be a very vigorous rose and to become tall. That is exactly what I want from a rose in this spot!

Out came 'Mme. Ernest Calvat' and in went 'Gerogetown Tea'. The whole area looked immediately better. I also realized that 'Mme. Ernest Calvat' has quite some dark leaves, which are very nice, but do not show off that well against the dark soil in this location that is partly shaded by the palm fronds. 'Georgetown Teas' leaves are a lighter green and look more fresh in this setting. I liked it much better in this spot than 'Mme. Ernest Calvat' the moment it was in.




On the photo below you can see 'Georgetown Tea' a little closer. Isn't this a pretty rose? 'Georgetown Tea' is in the ground now for around three weeks and it is doing fine. First it opened all the flowers that were on the bush (as shown on the photo below) when I planted it and just four days ago I spotted new active growth. Yay! I am crossing my fingers that this time things will work out!

'Mme. Ernest Calvat' looks worse and worse despite the effort to rescue it by potting it up again. I think it is very likely I will loose this one, which is really sad since it also is a really beautiful rose and it was a gift from a befriended Rosarian, too, which makes it even more precious.




Another little project I have been working on is to improve the look of the banana-shaped bed in the front yard. There was a big gap between the two roses, since I took out 'Burgundy Iceberg' a floribunda rose a long time ago. 'Little Miss Sophie', the new alstroemeria that I bought recently found a home in this bed in the front yard recently.  I am still in love with this plant. The white color of the blooms with the very blush pink stripe in the middle of the petals is so much more to my liking than the bold colored alstroemeria varieties. I hope it will mediate between the lavender color of the 'Sweetness' rose to the left and the light pink color of 'Our Lady of Guadalupe' to the right.

 

Here you can see a close up of 'Little Miss Sophie'. Isn't it an adorable plant?

I also acquired a new hydrangea lately (see photo below). The variety is called 'Nikko Blue' and as the name says it is supposed to bloom blue. It looks pathetic, I know. It did not look very good in the first place, but then I drove it home in the car on a very hot day and the blooms got burned and fried during the ride. I am sure it will recover. You may wonder why I buy a plant that does not look good even at the vendor. The reason is simply that I wanted a hydrangea so badly that day and after visiting three different places where most of them were sold out I settled on this one, because I think it is a good variety and even though it may be ruined for now, hopefully it will grow nicely soon.

This is a close-up of one of its blooms. I love it when they are fading to green.

Before planting I groomed the plant cutting of all the brown and green blooms and also the broken branches, which have been more than I initially had noticed. So we are down to this little guy now.

At least I got some nice hydrangea blooms to decorate the house with!

On the photo below you can see the hydrangea planted in its permanent spot in the backyard close to the garden gate. It is tucked in between a giant Streltizia Nicolai and a Queen Anne Palm. I hope it can withstand the root competition and grows there. I think it can look quite nice in this garden location when it is a little bit more mature.

There are more news even though not directly from the garden but related to my garden blog. I recently took the leap and listed my blog on Blotanical, a garden blog finder. For me that is a big step to appear in a public garden blog directory, since I always question if my garden blog is interesting and good enough for people to read and follow, and even more so if my garden is worth it to write about and photographed, since it is still a very young garden and my husband and I are only moving forward in a snail pace to get it planted.

On the other hand I just love my little humble garden and I would like to share this love with anyone else who is open to it. I was also interested to meet other garden bloggers and explore the possibilities that come with being a member of Blotanical. So far I have gotten some very nice messages on my Blotanical account and some visitors that I guess found my blog over Blotanical left very kind comments regarding my posts. Thanks everyone who came over from Blotanical to visit my blog! If you want to check out the blog directory click on the logo below:

 

Besides the heat (we are having temperatures in the upper 80's) some of my roses are blooming and have given me beautiful flowers for small plonks like the one that you can see on the photo below. Even though most of the rose blooms are a little smaller than usual I am very grateful for every cut flower that I can get!  The little bouquet contains three 'Black & Blue' salvia flower stalks, one 'Sutter's Gold' rose, three 'Mister Lincoln' and four 'Charles Darwin' roses. All roses in this plonk come with a strong fragrance. They smell so good when you bring them into the house! The fragrance alone is enough to make me happy!

See you in the garden!

Christina