Summer Showcase

A cheeky welcome awaits visitors from Begonia 'Dragon Wing'  

Regular readers know I'm a sucker for plant trials - my own and other people's - so won't be surprised that at last I've managed to get over to Ball Colegrave's Summer Showcase. This event is aimed at professional horticulturists and the retail trade and shows off more than 50,000 plants at its grounds in Oxfordshire every July. Even on a dull grey day after last week's thunderstorms they made for an eye popping display.

As well as the chance to see hundreds of annuals and perennials - some completely new to the market - I also enjoyed the opportunity to talk to horticulturists from a wide variety of backgrounds, from nurserymen and local authority gardeners through to fellow garden writers and university gardeners, as well as Ball Colegrave's staff.

Some of the trials beds

One of my most interesting discussions was with a couple of gardeners from South Gloucestershire council who were seriously considering the merits of the Phygelius plants in one of the experimental beds. I'd dismissed these as thugs from my experience of growing them in the early days of VP Gardens, but it was that quality plus their long season of colour which made them an attractive proposition for public planting.

Whether dwarf cultivars of usually tall plants like Monarda are OK was a cause for debate on the day

We discussed the need to transition to a perennial 'plant and forget if possible' approach to municipal planting in these budget constrained times, though they also admitted the public still like and react most positively to the more traditional colourful annual bedding schemes.

They were also enjoying the 'kids in a sweetshop' effect of the Showcase, and were keen to home in their choices on 'multi-purpose' plants like the pictured Coreopsis 'Uptick', dwarf Monarda 'Balmy' and Salvia 'Lyrical'™ combinations. These were a riot of colour and were being dive bombed by a multitude of honey and bumble bees.

There was plenty of space undercover and I was happy to look in the greenhouses during a brief shower.

There were lots of colour themed retail display ideas and suggestions for planting combinations using striking pots. It's worth arriving in time for the daily talk at 11am, where marketing manager Stuart Lowen highlights some of the new introductions for coming year.

Note that in this case 'new' can mean:

• Completely new
• An improved version of an old favourite
• New colour options for an old favourite
• Ball Colegrave has acquired the licence to grow and supply an established variety (possibly with improved genetics as well)

Here's one of the new introductions highlighted, a pink version of Petunia 'Night Sky' called 'BabyDoll'®. Somehow it doesn't do it for me like 'Night Sky' did last year, though I do tend to go more for blues and purples. It was clear from the people I spoke to there's a much wider variety of tastes and requirements to be catered for in addition to my own. From a retail perspective this variety apparently behaves better for growing on for sales.

A small selection of the flowers and foliage that caught my eye

We were also invited to select one plant we thought particularly of note. The results of this vote are collated over the Summer Showcase season and announced once the show closes. This was quite hard to do as there were so many plants I liked. In the end I plumped for one of the 700 yet-to-be-named experimental varieties on show. I thought it was more worthwhile to highlight something in earlier development rather than a plant already deemed successful enough to be named ready for market.

Can you guess what I went for?

Yes, for me a single bloomed, dark-leafed dahlia is always going to be hard to beat. Let me introduce you to Dahlia Experimental (V2224).

I also found plenty of scope for my Great Green Wall Hunt in the shape of Ball Colegrave's VertiGarden product, but that's a story for another day...

The arrival of several inquisitive alpacas ready for the one public open evening last Wednesday
"That spotted one is just like an IKEA carpet" has to be the overheard quote of the day ;)

How Advertising Works in Chippenham #36

1. Decide to revamp the opening titles to Antiques Roadshow
2. Use some of the artifacts owned by one of the show's experts
3. Film close to said expert's home and in the surrounding area
4. Wait for a blogger with a PrntScr key on their computer to notice a tweet about it
5. Et voila!

I'd wondered for ages why the opening credits to the Antiques Roadshow looked familiar and finally twigged why on a recent WI treasure hunt around the town. NAH and I watched the opening credits closely the other day and we reckon one of the other locations used (when the garage door is opened) is either on our own estate, or our old one over at Pewsham.

As well as his involvement with the Antiques Roadshow, expert Marc Allum is trying to find the actual location of King Alfred's hunting lodge by hosting a regular archaeological dig in St Mary's Street. He got a little more than he bargained for recently when Roman remains were found in his garden instead. It even made some of the national newspapers, which is another great advert for the town.

Back to the Roadshow, here are the opening credits in full - we need to find out where the other locations are.

If the embedded video doesn't work try this link instead.

Simple Summer Pots

A huge pot plus a large-leaved Heuchera makes a striking statement in Linda Hostetler's Viginian garden

I've always been struck by the bold use of pots at the gardens visited on previous Garden Bloggers' Flings and this year was another visual feast. The planting combinations are varied and exceptional, often using plants - such as coleus - I've dismissed previously as not my 'thing'.

Unlike some Fling bloggers*, I have only a few photos to show what I've liked and learned from this year's trip. Instead, I've realised sights like the one above have influenced the simple summer pots I've put together since I got back.

I've started on a makeover of my front garden and one of the tiny baby steps along that path is to replace the multitude of small pots on the ugly telephone junction box at the very front. I don't usually go for plastic with my pots, but I found this one more attractive to usual. Besides, I need to keep things relatively light in case the telephone engineers need access.

I've planted 3 coleus which will fill out and engulf the pot in a few weeks time. I thought about using just one colourway, but I liked the contrast of the middle plant when I put it with the others at the garden centre. I hope these will flower like those I saw in the States, as the spikes also look attractive.

This arrangement came together by accident when I was tidying up the garden at the weekend. I was cutting back some of my spent alliums ready for shredding and needed to put the flower heads into something as I worked so they didn't seed themselves everywhere. The pictured pot was to hand, and I liked the look of the few heads in there so much, I decided to put in the whole lot to make a temporary display. There are around 100 of them in there.

I love the way the individual stalks of the flower heads tremble in the breeze a bit like some deely boppers do, which adds another dimension to this pot. What do you think?

My final example is the hanging basket by the front door. I usually stuff this with scented petunias like the striking 'Night Sky' I trialled last year. Sadly, my seedlings got some kind of rot and then I couldn't resist the pictured trailing begonia instead when I went to buy their replacements (full name = Begonia boliviensis 'Bossa Nova White').

This is another planter which has still to reach its full potential. Watch this space for a progress report...

I'm sure huge pots with lots of bold plants - even an obelisk or two - like these I found in downtown Charlottesville - will feature in my garden's future in some way. Until then, I'm enjoying the simple summer pots I've put together for this year.

You may also like

• Pam's detailed review of our visit to Linda Hostetler's superb garden in Virginia
• Helen's post about the pots she liked at the Fling, as inspired by Beth's dazzling post on the same subject. This is where bold, beautiful, and quirky are shown in their full glory
• The Unusual Front Garden I found round the corner last year, which helped me begin to see coleus in a new light
• * = see my previous post on why I have so few photographs from the Fling

Disclosure: I was given the two planters featured in this post by Stewart. They're not being used in the way I'd originally envisaged, but I'm glad they're doing the job I eventually gave them.

Photography on tour - a cautionary tale

Just to prove I really was there - a lovely photo of Hillwood with me for scale taken by my friend Barbara 

It's taken me a while to get round to writing about the wonders of this year's Garden Bloggers' Fling, primarily because I don't have photos for most of it. It means lots of the coverage I'd planned from all but the last day won't be blogged, or I'll use post-Fling photos instead.

I got home from a wonderful holiday all fired up to tell you all about it, loaded up my SD Cards in readiness... then found all my photos from the first 5 days of our holiday were missing. I know they were there originally because I showed some of them to NAH, but even his prowess with SD recovery programs failed to find even a ghost of an original photo.

This is what I think happened...

On Fling Day 2 I arrived at our first garden (this wonderful one, full of neat little touches and that bench in Pam's blog post was a shoe-in for a Friday Bench on't other blog) only to find my camera battery died after taking the first photo. Luckily Teri had a spare camera, so I was able to load my SD card into it and click happily away. I then recharged my camera's battery that evening and returned to using my own camera for the rest of our holiday.

It looks like either changing cameras or recharging the battery led to my original photos being wiped. Of course I'm kicking myself for making such a basic mistake, especially as I took a spare camera, batteries and SD cards with me to the States. BUT it was so hot in DC, I decided not to take any spares with me, I even left my phone in the hotel, so keen was I to travel light that day.

Spot me in the Fling group photo - photo credit: Wendy Niemi Kremer

So what should I have done?

I should have taken my phone, or my spare lightweight camera, or a spare battery with me that day, despite the heat. Like Helen does when she's on tour, I should have used a fresh SD card too. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

In an ideal world I would have taken a laptop with me to the States and backed up my photos onto it each evening. That's what I did in France earlier this year, and I got extremely grumpy lugging it around with me as it was so heavy. I knew that was a no-no for the States, besides I've never lost any photos before. That smugness was my downfall.

What else could I have done?

I did take my tablet with me, plus an SD card designed to fit in both my camera and the smaller slot of my tablet. I could have used these to backup my photos onto my Google Drive each evening. I have 21 GB of free space there, which is plenty. Why didn't I think of that before?

At last, one of my photos: Tammy welcomes us to Casa Mariposa on #GBFling2017 Day 3 

Luckily I still have my memories and NAH took some photos when we were together in Washington DC. Plus there are all the blog posts from my Fling friends to make up for the lack of my own photos and posts.

In some ways my photo woes are a blessing as I have far fewer stories to blog about, when the garden and allotment are still calling me for attention.

How do you prevent photo mishaps when you're on the move?

Garden Bloggers' Blooms Day: Hemerocallis 'Corky'

This plant is the sole survivor of the ones I bought home from Tatton Show in 2012. I don't usually go for daylilies but there was something about the clear yellow flower and relatively short stature of this one which caught my eye. When I found out they don't mind clay soils like mine, that clinched the deal.

This year 'Corky' welcomed me home from the States with a much larger display than usual. Either it's decided the front of my lower terrace bed is truly home, or it's enjoying the drier and hotter summer we're having... perhaps both?

Sue asked recently whether the large numbers pollen beetles she's seeing currently are prevalent elsewhere this summer. As you can see a couple of them have strayed into the above photo. It's not surprising as these tiny beetles love the colour yellow, and there's certainly enough pollen for them on my plant.

Roadside ditch lilies overlooking scenic and historic Germany Valley in West Virginia

Corky's abundant daily blooms are helping me keep holiday memories at the front of my mind, as at last I understand why these blooms are commonly called 'ditch lilies' in the States. I spotted them everywhere we went and I naturally assumed I must be looking at a native plant, they were so abundant. Wikipedia has served to put me right since I returned home: not only are they not native, their abundance in some of the relatively remote places we visited now worries me. Sure enough, they're considered invasive in some States, who've banned them from being planted.

My daylily is proving to be much better behaved so far. Besides, if it does start to get out of hand, I can always start adding the spicy tasting flowers to our salads.

Garden Bloggers' Blooms Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Shedwork

What horrors lie behind those doors? Read on to find out... 

A little while ago Beryl 'fessed up about the sorry state of a corner of her allotment and challenged others to do the same. I told her I would soon reveal the horror that is my garden shed instead. As you can see, now's the time to do so.

BEFORE: the view inside - I could only just about squeeze in to start sorting things out

How did my beloved shed get into this sorry state of affairs? Well, it's been too easy just to dump and store stuff in there when we've had any major clearing up to do. After a while it got so bad, I felt too overwhelmed to go down there and sort it out.

This spring I found the constant bending over pots for seed sowing and potting up wasn't a comfortable way of doing things any more. At this point the potting bench in the corner of my shed started to send out subliminal messages reminding me I have the solution ready and waiting.

Time to get cracking with that clearout now the weather's decent enough to do so...

Starting to sort out what lies within

As well as providing a major appartment block for spiders, I was amazed at how much I'd managed to cram inside the TARDIS-like interior of my shed AND forget it was there...

• Not one, but two tub trugs. NAH bought another two earlier this year because he thought I needed them
• A compost bin - now added to the collection up at the allotment
• A bag of citrus compost for the kaffir lime I had (RIP, probably because I never repotted it with said special compost), I hope it'll prove of good service to a friend's moribund citrus tree instead
• Four cheap ready to assemble garden arches - now proven to be too cheap as they've rusted through
• A whole mini-greenhouse - bought originally for use at peak sowing time, but that idea was abandoned when I realised the proposed location was too shady from the trees nearby. Now I'm working out how to use it up at the allotment without it blowing away
• Lots of garden ornaments brought in for the winter
• Enough protective fleece to cover the entire garden
• The geological hammer I thought I'd lost
• The usual flotsam of pots, trays, baskets, empty compost bags, supports and bits of 'useful wood for later'
• A carload of various items for recycling or dumping - broken garden ornaments, those garden arches, empty cardboard boxes, rotted through garden bench covers, some of that 'useful wood' etc etc

AFTER: It's not perfect, a repair to that shelf and some more storage boxes will help improve things further

A quick day's work and now I know where everything is and my potting bench can be used again. It's just as well as I potted up 180 box cuttings earlier this week. It was lovely not to have an aching back after dealing with that little lot.

Now to decide just how many 'useful pots and trays' I need to keep for later, then recycle the rest at my local garden centre.

Do you have a horror corner somewhere in your garden or allotment? Beryl and I are eager to hear your confessions...

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Disclosure: This post is sponsored by The Big Yellow Self Storage Company.

Note that sponsorship goes towards my blogging costs; the words and pictures are mine. There are no cookies or affiliate links associated with this post.

Postcard from Washington DC

I'm back from an amazing couple of weeks in the USA and the Garden Bloggers Fling, which this year was based in the Washington DC area, taking in gardens in Maryland and Virginia along the way. NAH came with me, so we spent a few days exploring the States' capital before I headed off for the Fling.

I'd always wanted to see the Lincoln Memorial, and it was an emotional time for me there, despite the hordes of tourists all vying to take their photographs and selfies. To the side of Lincoln's statue are some of his iconic speeches, which give great cause for thought.

Post-Fling we had a week exploring what Virginia and West Virginia have to offer, particularly in the mountains of Shenandoah National Park and the George Washington/Monongahela National Forests. We discovered some early US national history too, including sites from the Civil War.

A visit to Monticello - Thomas Jefferson's Virginia plantation home - was especially timely as we were there on the 241st anniversary of his presentation of the Declaration of Independence on 28th June. It was only later the 4th of July was declared the nation's birthday.

There are more posts to follow...

Garden Bloggers' Muse Day: Tomatoes

A fun sign spotted at Chelsea Flower Show this year. It's true!

Bonsai: care tips from the experts

Part of the Federation of British Bonsai Societies gold medal exhibit
at this year's Chelsea Flower Show, including some from Swindon.  

I have a confession. I usually leave the bonsai exhibits at flower shows alone. They're quite difficult to photograph and until recently this is a branch of gardening which was a mystery to me ('scuse pun).

However, I was given a bonsai tree in March and it's clear I need some help to look after it properly. I'd read they should be kept outdoors, which was fine until April's hard frosts. My poor tree ended up with lots of leaves sporting an unhealthy bleached look.

So this year for once I made a beeline for the Federation of British Bonsai Societies' exhibit at Chelsea Flower Show, where a friendly expert was more than happy to give me a few tips.

My tree is probably Ligustrum sinense and is approximately 9 years old 

As you can see, my tree is quite small, even by bonsai standards and my first piece of advice was to bring it in for the winter for quite some time to come. Here you can see it in the final spot I've chosen for it for the summer, on the table on our patio.

This is because I need to see it from our kitchen so I'm reminded to water it daily - my second piece of advice, the tree should not be allowed to dry out. Ideally it should be fed daily too, with a dilute solution of the plant food I usually use. I was told there is no need to buy the special feeds available. I'm currently trialling some seaweed feeds, and my tree's looking much happier... it did go through an alarming period of the bleached leaves turning yellow and then dropping off. Now there's a lot of new growth - phew.

I was concerned about my tree's exposed roots and I was reassured to hear these are fine. If there are any exposed ends, then these can simply be snipped off. I spotted that most of the bonsai on display at Chelsea showed even more exposed roots than mine, with many sporting moss between them which looked quite decorative.

Now my tree has recovered from its frosty shock and has started to grow it's time to think about thinning out the foliage and training it further into shape. For this I will need some wire and I was surprised that training can also involve anchoring some of the wires into the soil. Mine is vaguely growing in an s-shape (not one of the traditional forms I was told) and this gave my expert a clue to my tree's origin:

'Aha', he said, 'you've got one of those trees imported from China via Holland.' I don't think he was that impressed.

I'll persist with my tree, though going on holiday may prove a challenge. My neighbour's kindly agreed to water it every day, thank goodness. If you think a bonsai tree is an ideal gift for a keen gardener, do give it some thought. You're giving them something which requires daily attention. Will they be up for that?

Blightwatch revisited

Once upon a time I wrote about potatoes and the excellent service called Blightwatch which warns when weather conditions become ripe for an outbreak of potato blight.

Back then the service looked out for a Smith Period i.e. a time during the potato/tomato crop season when the weather served up 90% humidity over an 11 hour period in temperatures above 10°C for 24 hours, and for both conditions to exist over a period of two days. If this occurred for my postcode area, then I'd get an email warning me that a Smith Period had happened, or one saying there was a near miss if the conditions only occurred for a day.

These emails usually started around July/August time and I always received them with a sense of impending doom.

Now since May this year I've had several emails called a Hutton Alert from the same service instead. This is much earlier to receive a blight warning and slightly worrying. Is my practise of growing early spuds to avoid late blight in danger now?

It seems the Smith criteria are no longer performing well, so the James Hutton Institute conducted some research to see if the system could be improved. All aspects of the criteria were tested and their results showed lowering the humidity factor to a mere six hours improved blight prediction significantly.

From what I've seen so far, it means pretty much any period of rain or damp weather results in a warning email and as a consequence I've become more blasé about the future health of my crop. I'm sure the farmers for whom this service is really designed take it much more seriously than I.

I do remember an incredibly early blight year a couple of years ago (in June) so I do have anecdotal evidence of the need for a different system, perhaps in response to a change in the way the blight fungus performs. However, my allotment is on a windy site, which I'm sure helps keep the blight at bay.

In the meantime, I'm watching my potato leaves for signs of an earlier blight than usual. All's well so far *crosses fingers*.

How's your potato crop faring this year? Do you subscribe to the Blightwatch alert system?