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| Unlike what sometimes seems like everyone else on the planet, after the abundance of June, I do not get much more from my roses apart from a few fleeting and scattered blooms across the summer and autumn. Consequently, these elusive flowers are even more precious. On the whole, I have always preferred a lot of small blooms on a large shrub rather than fewer large blooms on smaller bushes - I rarely swoop to admire at close quarters and find no resonance in high centred perfection.....but, at this time of year, the clarity of one or two lovely blossoms is a delight. Spring and autumn are the season bookends and eerily mirror each other. Lots of green, punctuated by errant flashes of colour. However, the especial poignancy of autumn adds a febrile quality to the garden. Carnivalesque salvias (what a season finale - dahlias, bah! bright but graceless) aided and abetted by the old lily stems, now shaded plum, claret and gold, with the faded apricot of philadelphus leaves, backed by huge blushed heps of Madame Gregoire (I am ashamed to say that the staggering cost of lithium camera batteries kept my hand in my pockets but I fear I should stump up before the season flees). Despite the droughty neglect against a southfacing wall, a couple of stalwart aconitums cower behind Madame G, emerging when the rose leaves fall in a slash of purple. Everything else is a textural collage of green, apart from a few Graham Thomas roses, lolling on top of the greenhouse. Ah, the greenhouse! In my garden of 36square metres, the greenhouse occupies a full third of that space. Not that it is heaving with colour either. Apart from a vivid anisodontea, green is the dominant theme here also. Lots of it too since I have been in a seed sowing frenzy since getting the wood. The greenhouse is, in fact, my most important tool for propagation - a working seed factory where I raise plants for the allotment, for customers, for my children and now (magnified 1000X) for the wood. Productive....but messy, I have managed to avert my critical eyes from the entire back of the garden (and many other parts too). Of course, my little garden is surrounded by high brick walls and is a tender suntrap - out in the hurly-burly of the open allotments, autumn winds have bleached the landscape to a pale but rather lovely scene. Not everything turns out as planned in gardening (hardly anything, for me) and the late autumn borders, carefully planned and planted with asters, rudbeckias, phlox.....the usual suspects, are overwhelmed by the presence of the giant moyesii rose and equally huge tree paeony, shadily languishing and completely failing to achieve the vision in my head. In contrast, the gravel garden, my sunny June spectacle, filled with pinks, festucas, eryngoes and californian poppies (and wild roses) has been invaded by late blooming verbenas, limoniums and althea cannabina, alongside the billowy stipas and sedums, second go-round of the poppies, looks far better right now than it did way back at the start of summer. Best laid plans and all that...... |
Follow-Up Postings:
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- Posted by kittymoonbeam 10 (My Page) on Mon, Oct 14, 13 at 18:28
| Dear lady Campanula, I thought about you so very much yesterday. The farmers market I go to every week was right next to the Solar Decathlon competition. All these small homes are self powered on the sun's energy and every inch is precious. I'm not a engineering minded person but I tried my best to understand the tour guides ( sweet 20 somethings talking about efficiency, heat exchange pumps, clever computers that turn things on and off and move giant shade and solar structures around. There was more but I couldn't even begin to understand it. Anywho, these little homes were all open for a tour and the one that won the people's choice was the one with all the plants. Not the most expensive or the one with the fanciest materials or the one where computers watch you all day to see how you use your home and adjust the environments with the information they collect. The one with the big deck surrounded by plants won the popularity contest. So I think plants do make a home. I love your greenhouse. I would love to have one. I remember happy days when I worked at the nursery inside the greenhouse, planting, gift wrapping hundreds of poinsettias or just potting and listening to the rain fall. Maybe you could plant one or two floribundas just to have some roses to bring inside before the winter comes. |
Here is a link that might be useful: Solar Homes
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- Posted by poorbutroserich none (My Page) on Mon, Oct 14, 13 at 19:47
| Sounds like a lovely autumn to me! Susan |
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- Posted by mendocino_rose z8 N CA. (My Page) on Mon, Oct 14, 13 at 20:17
| I think you've really captured the essence of Autumn in the rose garden. I feel the same. Though there is a lot to appreciate later Spring is the big show here too. Gardens cannot be perfect every day of the year. They are not meant to be. The changes are charming to me. |
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| I would agree with the concept of fugitive beauty. Many gardens, my own included, pass in and out of a state of beauty several times a year. In the off times, we often see quite lovely vignettes that our eye passes over if we do not look closely. At the moment, the best scene in my garden is the one I see looking out of the bathroom window at an interior corner where the house makes a jog. I've seen gardens that look stunning at all times, but most of them are professionally tended. In fact many professionally tended (and designed) gardens are not really much better at it than the gardens of dedicated home gardeners. I also think that a garden that depends on structure and form as much as it depends on flowering has a better chance at achieving a more year-round appeal. I suppose I am saying that good gardens need trees, something I just realized I was saying as I was writing it. Rosefolly |
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| Rosefully, I so agree about the variations in gardens that are really constantly taking place, and that are natural and satisfying. I don't think that any of us look equally glorious every day of the year or even at different times of the same day. A perfectly maintained garden seems almost static, and I long to see some imperfections which make it more in tune with what happens in nature. I so agree that trees and other large non-rose plants are essential to the garden. I struggle with that but the butterfly bushes, crape myrtles, columnar junipers and two cypresses flanking the top of the driveway are at least partially successful in giving the garden the look I'm striving for. I've often wished I could start over again and undo all the mistakes I've made, and I suspect I'm not alone. But then, I wonder if I wouldn't make different mistakes that would be almost as bad as the original ones! Ingrid |
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- Posted by kittymoonbeam 10 (My Page) on Wed, Oct 16, 13 at 2:43
| Thefanciest gardens have a big behind the scenes area where things are being grown and then when they look just right, they are brought out for display. At Disneyland, everything that was just a little past the peak bloom was ripped out and replaced. I used to collect big bunches of stocks early in the morning before starting my work when the gardeners would pull them out. At home it's a different story because bulb foliage ages naturally and I let my flowers set seeds. There has to be somewhere to grow things on away from raccoons and an area hidden away for a pile of mulch and extra pots and seed flats and trays. Its harder with a small garden where half of it is visible from the street. The all green clipped gardens always look nice but then there are no faded flowers except for some pots and maybe a flowering tree. Japanese gardens look good most of the time to me. I have a small area of green ivies and ferns that is low care but it looks the same all the time. The roses and other flowers are far more interesting to me because they grow, change shape, bloom and get cut back. Right now I have a group of the tall exhibition chrysanthemums beginning to bloom and I am going to move them to the front. It was the first year that I have trained them to have the large flowers. For the last few years I have let them be natural and have not staked or disbudded them. So much work for a few weeks of bloom. My epies look just as wonderful and take no work at all. But if all I had to do was mow and clip green shrubs and groundcovers, I would tire of it quickly. I get bored of gardens that always look the same . Our climate never sees snow and there are so many plants that keep their leaves that I need some kind of change to keep it interesting for me. |
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