In The Solstice Garden

Out early in the garden of the longest day, and already it is warming up. I can see the plants around me switching gear: late spring to summer. Some change feels instant, and I’m sorry to see the small cascades of Cornelia and Penelope roses fading fast, their petals suddenly dull and papery. They have flowered since late May, their scent filling our small back garden, competing even with the serial winds. Likewise, I note that several of the hardy geraniums have swiftly departed – yesterday mounds of glorious blue, busy with bees, today a tangle of spent green stems. Time to wield the secateurs.

Meanwhile, the rose in the photo above is just starting out. St. Cecilia, she with the pale and floppy blooms. When we moved into The Gables nearly three years ago, I found her as a couple of weedy stems, much overgrown. I’ve fed her up since, although I have mixed feelings about shrub roses in the midst of herbaceous borders. Vicious to weed around for one thing.

Directly under her is blue geranium Rozanne, a new arrival last year, who struggled to settle in during the drought, and then was disrupted by an ants’ nest in the top of the wall. Usually this is a plant you can’t stop. Once she gets going, she should flower all summer and into the autumn. In fact I often used to curse her in our Wenlock garden as, year by year, one plant sprawled into an invasion many feet wide and long. Now I find I’ll put up with sprawl to have the long summer blue.

In the front garden borders, the earlier mauve shades have given way to the vibrant gold of Moonshine achillea and yellow loosestrife, and to the leafy greens of euphorbia and golden marjoram. There’s also a very vigorous cotton lavender tumbling from the crab apple’s raised bed, presently a mass of yellow buttons on brilliant green stems..

In the back garden, now is the time of bindweed – both wild and cultivated. In the hedge we have the locally feral, pink and white flowered version. It even survived last Friday’s big cut.

And then among the nearby sweet peas, where I planted the seedling some weeks ago, I found the first Morning Glory flower – Black Knight is its name; here keeping company with hardy geranium, Ann Thompson. They both like a good ramble. It will be interesting to see where they end up.

The hedge, as may be seen, is a challenge. It wants to be a forest and is filled with sapling ash and sycamore trees. This has happened because the whole length was once hemmed in with chicken wire and so impossible to keep a check on invaders. And then, egged on by ivy, everything has leaned on everything else so that the holly is horribly meshed with hawthorn, privet, field maple, forsythia, elder, and cherry. There are also some rather strange gaps, which I’m attempting to fill with cherry and field maple and briar rose (these presently at sapling stage). The bindweed does briefly improve the overall look.

In the back garden bed, with geraniums over, the sheep’s bit scabious are the current stars…almost literally, a floral constellation and a magnet for hoverflies and bees:

The feral foxglove season is over now. All through May and early June we had majestic self-grown spires – purple ones, white ones – in every quarter. Some of the plants were enormous, making the most of the overwintering mulch I’d spread on the borders. I’ve pulled most of them up. There are already enough seedlings about the place. In their stead, in the shady periphery under the old apple trees, come the perennial foxgloves. They are altogether more delicate in looks and structure – ivory white and buttery yellow. Very cooling to look at.

In front of them is a path and then a row of raised beds for vegetables.

Here the French beans, cabbages and herbs have all put on a sudden growth spurt – almost overnight. I also appear to have grown something that I can only describe as a brassica bush (top left corner). It is nearly as tall as me and is a mass of branching stems of tender kale leaves, but also among them now, some sprigs that look like purple sprouting. It’s been in the garden since last summer and only now decided to perform, having missed the March-April ‘hungry gap’ when I was expecting it. Ah, well. Am happy to crop it whenever it comes.

The two rows of potatoes are looking promising. The runner beans, too, are growing well, finally each plant up its own stick, now that I’ve untangled the knitting nonsense created by the June winds.

The next big blooming event will involve the sunflowers. They have sowed themselves all over the garden. One is already so tall it clearly has magic beanstalk ambitions. So as they say: watch this space.

Looking Back Through The Old Africa Album

The Great Rift Valley surely is a world wonder, the four-thousand-mile system of volcanic fractures and fissures that stretches from the plains of northern Syria, across Arabia and the Red Sea, then cuts down through Ethiopia, on through Uganda and Kenya (with a westerly Albertine branch around Lake Victoria), pressing on through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and finally finishing in Mozambique. I read somewhere it is the only geological phenomenon that can clearly be seen from space.

The aging photos in this post, then, show scarcely a glimpse of Kenya’s Great Rift. Most were taken at different seasons from the 9,000 foot viewpoint on the highway north of Nairobi. The road itself, the country’s major route to Kisumu on Lake Victoria and Uganda beyond, climbs from the city, up and along one of the East Rift’s faulted terraces before descending to the valley floor at Nakuru.

The volcano you can see is Longonot, quiescent now and containing a lost wildlife world within its massive crater. You can walk around the rim, and it’s one of my regrets that we never did. But then in the ‘90s when we lived in Nairobi, security everywhere always seemed an issue.

The foreground farms lying in shadow are on a lower Rift terrace. This is Escarpment village where Graham did a lot of his fieldwork on Napier grass smut for his PhD thesis. I went along to hold the clipboard and one end of the tape measure. For that story see Past Lives – Beneath A Tropic Sun.

Next comes a rainy season view. This was probably taken during the very wet 1997/98 El Nino event:

But then…

…the dry season, both above (July) and below (August) on the valley floor:

And finally…

…here’s a late afternoon view, further south from the Ngong Hills near Nairobi.

Looking back on these photos, the biggest wonder is that I was ever there at all. Even at the time, much of what we saw was too astonishing to grasp.

Lens-Artists: Looking back at #1 Wonder This week Sofia reminds us to be amazed by life’s wonders. Please visit her beautiful photo galleries.

Six On Saturday: After The Wind And Rain

Come gusts and squalls, the roses have been holding their own. And then, in late afternoon, if we have some sunshine, they tumble luminously over the terrace wall and look glorious come supper time.

The constant wind, though, is tedious. When did England become so never-endingly blustery? I’ve tried searching on line for an answer, but the sites that deal with weather don’t appear to think it remarkable. As someone who has gardened for over half a century, I know we did not have perpetual wind mashing up herbaceous plants and blowing the new runner bean plants off their sticks.

Perhaps it’s to do with ‘the cold blob’ also bizarrely known as North Atlantic Warming Hole, a region of ocean to the south of Greenland that has been cooling over the past century while the surfaces of the earth’s other oceans have been warming up. Scientists have argued over the possible causes, some citing a weakened Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the system that plays a significant role in the earth’s global climate.

Perhaps the AMOC stole our much vaunted heat wave. If it did, many thanks.

And of course there is much to be pleased about.

Bee happy

For one thing there are so many bees in the garden, this after a long quiet spring insect-wise. They definitely approve of the sheep’s bit scabious, harvesting the flowers for ages, which makes them easy to photograph.

In a bind

It’s usually a weed that provokes gardener’s fury, but the large flowered pink and white striped convolvulus that has just re-appeared in our otherwise horrid hedge is a welcome sight. For a bindweed, it is most circumspect in its habits, and only spreads here and there.

An urge for spurge

Another spreader, presently flowering is the pretty, low-growing spurge, Euphorbia cyparissias Fens Ruby. Its stems look like miniature conifers, and the tiny flowers several colours of green and russet. It likes to nudge up picturesquely with other border plants and, in that sense, it is a very weedy entity, but then any excess is easily removed. Here it is with a coppery coloured heuchera.

Reasons to be cheerful 5 and 6

Then there are the self-gardening regulars that seem to return each year, and with ever more flourish. I love these snapdragons. I don’t mind how much they seed themselves. The plants themselves are shrubby and don’t seem to mind the wind and rain. But most of all, their sun-rise shades brighten the dullest day.

Likewise, the campanula. Over the past few years it has colonised many dull and unpromising quarters of the front garden – growing up the hedge, out of concrete walls, and along the path. It flowers its purple-blue socks off.

Here it is improving the looks of the privet hedge that surrounds the front garden borders. It’s another plant that copes brilliantly with weird weather, wet or dry.

Six on Saturday 13 June 2026 Please call in on our host, Jim. As ever, he has some wonderful plants to show us this week.

Apricot Afternoon

Late afternoon. Wind gusts in the hedge outside the kitchen window, sending light darts along the sill. Earlier I’d put some apricots there to ripen, but now it is their flesh that fascinates – the contre-jour deep shadow, the sun-blazed cheeks.

Lens-Artists: focused Please visit Patti who sets this week’s challenge. She has lots of tips for different ways to stay focused.

Raindrops On Roses ~ Six On Saturday

Today it’s more like October than June. We’re back to grey skies, gusty wind and rain between showers. But the Peneloperoses are bearing up, even if their frocks are soaked and their flounces crumpled.

Here’s a photo from earlier in the week during a sudden sunny spell. The plant itself is a tending-tall, rather floppy shrub rose that can be trained as a short climber if you only have a short wall. I’m hoping that in time she will simply arc gracefully down the terrace wall without much in-put from me. She’s already doing her best.

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In the back garden the scabious are just beginning to flower – both the usual herbaceous border version which I bought as large plugs three years ago, but are only now performing, and a Sheep’s Bit variety called Jasione laevis Blue Light, which went in as a young plant last September. Both are presently keeping company with various hardy geraniums, but the Blue Light is already making a pleasing low clump on the border edge near the path.

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Another first-time performer in the garden is the yellow Phlomis russeliana. I bought it because it’s drought tolerant, bee friendly, will bloom all summer and the dead flower heads still look good in winter. Last year, however, it sat out the long drought, and only made big leaves. It’s making up for it this year. I’m thinking that in due course it will need to move to the side wall bed, where it can keep the yellow rudbeckia and helianthus company.

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On the edible front, the globe artichokes are making their presence felt. One of the plants has grown up hugely in a most annoying spot, squashed in between the Polka raspberries and the Jelly King crab apple tree. I know I did grow it from seed but somehow it escaped me during the planting phase and dug itself in. Anyway, the rain has brought it on, and it’s about to be eaten. I usually cut artichokes in half to remove the choke, and then steam them. Halves obviously don’t need so much cooking time as wholes, and it’s easier to see if they’re done. Garlicky butter to serve.

Also in the bottom border is a a purple headed variety. It’s strikingly ornamental growing alongside the sweet white rocket and foxgloves.

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While I was inspecting this end of the garden, which takes some doing, what with the mammoth size of the artichoke leaves, I was pleased to see that the neighbouring old cooking apple tree looks to be bearing far more apples than we were expecting. The blossom came and went so fast in cold and windy weather, it seemed unlikely that much of it would be fertilised. But not so! We don’t know the variety, but the fruits are big and rose blushed and need no sugar when cooked.

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And now back to my new favourite, as mentioned in two recent posts – Cenolophium denudatum, aka Baltic Parsley. Coming up is the version I have already settled in the bed along the top of the terrace wall. It grows rather like Cow Parsley/Queen Anne’s Lace, and indeed it was supposed to be white, according to the Great Dixter Nursery catalogue. Mine, however, turned out to be pink. I don’t mind. It looks good with the valerian whose massed umbels are hint-of-pink white.

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But then yesterday we were having a splendid day out in the walled garden at Wildegoose Nursery in the Corve Valley. And there I found a pale lemony version. It had to come home with me.

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And to finish a shot of Wildegoose walled garden where I discovered it (along with a dozen or three other plants that roused acute spasms of gardener’s greed).

Wildegoose Nursery Walled Garden

Six on Saturday 6 June 2026 Please call in on Jim as he prepares for his garden opening.

Six On Saturday: After The Heat-Wave

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It’s been pretty darn hot this week in Shropshire, but nearly 9 degrees cooler now. On the whole, the garden, the gardener, and the gardener’s other half have weathered the sudden roasting, but the water butts are empty, one or two plants are looking frazzled, and the hot days have finished off the lovely ranunculus which, until last Saturday, had been blooming wonderfully, making the most of the long, cool spring. Also, some flowering plants like the Perry’s Blue iris, came and went very swiftly, while over the hedge, hawthorn tree’s blossom fried. We now have siftings of crisp brown petals everywhere.

One real hot-weather bonus is that the bees (1), worryingly absent earlier in the month, are now back in the garden, feeding voraciously on the hardy geraniums, Welsh poppies and foxgloves. They seem to be making up for lost time.

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In the back garden border the umbels (2) are the rising attraction. I’m always pleased when the valerian starts flowering, but this year it has a companion, one very like it, if more pink and more sweetly scented. Its common name, Baltic Parsley, sounds most unpromising for such an airy, delicate plant, but then this is hugely preferable to its tongue-twister botanical title of Cenolophium denudatum . I bought two young plants on-line last autumn from Great Dixter Nurseries, whose curated collections are altogether too tempting for the ever greedy gardener.

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This year I’ve decided to rein in the vegetable growing (3). Limited space is one factor, but the main reason is not liking all the ugly netting defences needed to keep the pigeons and sparrows from eating everything. I’m still growing herbs, salad stuff, carrots in containers, a couple of rows of potatoes, some strawberries and raspberries, tomatoes in the greenhouse and also beans – all of which don’t need too much if any protection.

For several of the hot days I dithered about whether or not to plant out the large runner bean seedlings. In the end I decided it was better for them in the ground than drying out in their pots. I surrounded them with an emergency mulch of grass cuttings. Our neighbour had kindly just deposited a load over the fence and into our compost bin. I don’t usually use them for mulching, not wanting either crusts or a smelly, squidgy pan, but they soon dried out and the blackbirds have since been turning them over.

Meanwhile on the other side of the garden, the potatoes are looking pretty good. The Charlotte row is thinking of flowering.

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And talking of mulch, my number (4) this week is a shout-out for the benefits of applying Strulch. This is very much for the small-garden gardener who doesn’t have access to masses of home-made compost. It’s a mineralised fine straw that comes in easy-to-move 9 litre bags. Last autumn I bought 2 bags and spread them over the two front garden beds, spots that are both exposed from the north in windy weather, but also sun-traps during heat-waves. There was still enough strulch left over to scatter less generously around some shrubs in the back garden. The stuff is not cheap, but you can find good deals on-line.

Apart from anything else, I’ve hardly had any weeds, and the herbaceous plants are emerging nicely to do their early summer stuff. I covered the entire soil surface, about an inch/2 cms deep.

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From left to right: Helianthemum Wisley White, Astrantia Sparkling Stars middle, Verbascum Lavender Lass front. And a closer look at the Astrantia. Isn’t she lovely?

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Not everything is going so well. Unseen pests (5) have been busy, most notably in the sweet peas, amongst which something, probably pigeons, have been gnawing off whole chunks of stems. For once, I’d grown some pretty chunky plants, and put them out early to grow up obelisks. But once they started growing, large parts began to go missing. I still have some flowers, but it’s not the display envisaged. I’ve never had this problem before, and can’t think how to protect them – i.e. that won’t end up in a big tangle of netting. (Note to self. The obelisks are probably the problem. Ideal perches for pigeons).

The other casualty, one that’s ongoing despite moving the plant to different locations, is the lovely blue-mauve lupin. Something keeps stripping the flowers. One minute they’re there, and the next time I look…

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But to end on a high note, and a deliciously fragrant one too – Cornelia Rose (6). She burst into flower this week. More power to her little pink petals. She’s growing by my greenhouse so I see a lot of her.

Six on Saturday Despite the heat-wave down in Cornwall, host Jim has some spectacular things on show in his garden, to say nothing of the magnificent Poplar moth in the greenhouse.

Lens-Artists: In The Early Morning Garden

In this last week of May, the weather has switched from weeks of blustery cold to days of enervating heatwave. How did this happen?

Things began to warm up last Friday. By sunrise on Sunday, there was no doubt about it: summer had well and truly come to Bishop’s Castle. Towards 7 a.m., the sun just topping the town rooftops, I went out in the garden. There had been a heavy dew and all was glistening. I kicked off my shoes and walked on the wet grass. It was very cold – champagne for the soles!

It’s odd, though, how you can go into a familiar place at an unfamiliar hour and feel an intruder. The garden was not expecting me. It was immersed in its own business. There was a sense of immanence. A discernible energy. Still cool, but also voluptuous as if you might wallow in it. Also in the early light, the flowers had other-worldly looks; their intimate, intricate structures very strange at close quarters. Again, a sense of intrusion.

But then that made it just the moment to ponder on Egidio’s this-week’s theme at Lens-Artists. He’s put us on the spot, and literally too, proposing that we restrict ourselves to a well-defined small space and photograph what strikes us there. It seems a perfect exercise for exploring the familiar, the taken-for-granted, with fresh eyes.

And so the header photo – a result of peering more closely. Quite eye-opening actually – to notice the astonishing number of miniscule components needed to make a blackberry. Here it is again:

These next photos conjured thoughts of alien spacecraft…

And then there’s the extraordinary pollinator guidance system of foxgloves – not only the captivating flight path of spots and dots, but also a landing pad covered in tiny filaments – and for what? Massage services for bees as well as the pollen fix?

And finally some simple things that pleased this gardener’s eye…noticing a corner by the shed that is entirely the garden’s own work – assorted volunteer columbines and another foxglove.

…and then the lantern-like looks of alliums and snapdragons, caught with surprising vividness in early morning shadow…

Lens-Artists: Stuck in place This week Egidio asks us to focus on a particular space, no more than 10-15 paces in any direction, and consider its parts with fresh eyes. How will you capture them?

Six On Saturday: Frigid May

We might have lost the cherry plum over the hedge, but we still have the hawthorn tree (1). Just now it’s a tumble of creamy curds – may blossom in May. It’s a shame there are so few insects about to enjoy it. Even the stalwart bumble bees are scarce, which is worrying. I’m hoping they’ve tucked themselves up somewhere cosy until the Arctic winds have blown themselves out. So far, then, it’s been a very chilly May in Shropshire, and dry too, until these last few days. My water butts were empty, so even as I whinge at the cold wind, I’m pleased that rainwater supplies have resumed.

And spring is still happening in the garden despite the low temperatures. The apple blossom has been and gone, though signs of pollination looking sparse to absent on some of the trees. Now, then, is the time of columbines (2). As ever, they have grown themselves everywhere, including in the horrible hedge where one plant, trying to outdo the holly and privet, has used them for support and grown over four feet tall. It greatly improves the look of the hedge. Size-wise, they are more restrained at the bottom of the garden, but this year have arrived in many colours from white to darkest claret, and shades in between.

I’m also pleased to see some lemon coloured Welsh poppies (3). Last autumn I pocketed seed from a neighbour, and scattered it under the old apple trees. We already had the self-sowing orange ones in the bed above the back terrace. For some reason I’m not too keen on the brassy version. This year, though, they’ve popped up among the Ranunculus. I’m thinking they look rather good together.

The blue flowered hardy geraniums are beginning to open, but the cranesbill Geranium phaeum Album (4) is well ahead. It does sprawl about, but its flowers are so delicate. It is supposed to be shade-loving, but I also have one that seems quite happy in full sun.

And then there’s the rocket (arugula) (5). I’d never thought of it as a flowering plant till this year. All through the winter we were cropping a short row of it. Then, come March, it began to go to seed and I pulled most of it up. And then for some reason I left a clump. Now it’s a tall plant covered in a mass of flowers that seem to go on and on. They have curious, wonky propeller looks about them. I also thought the insects might like them if there were any about. Meanwhile, the bits of greenery down the stems are still perfectly edible, surprisingly mild in flavour. And it’s providing a bit of floral interest in front of my presently empty raised beds.

And to finish, here’s one of my newest plants bought in March. Iris Sibirica ‘Perry’s Blue’ (6) has just begun to flower. I’m rather taken with the startling contrast of the pale lavender with the russet-gold tones ofSpiraea Japonica Firelight. At a distance, as the wind blows, the flowers look like big butterflies.

Six on Saturday 16 May 2026: Please call in on our host Jim. There’s always something new to see in his garden. This week, among other lovely things, he has a gorgeous fern and some self-replenishing corydalis.

Of Bossy Birds And Icy Blasts

I can well understand why small beings like blackbirds need to keep stoking up with fresh food supplies. Not only are there chicks to feed, but our spring days persist on the frosted side of chilly. He who is currently casting his own coping stones for the terrace wall tells me that the high pressure over the Atlantic and low pressure to the north and east is causing Arctic air to be sucked down upon us, thus creating the UK’s coldest May in five years.

And the upshot: the winds that the weather people have been telling us are ‘fresh’ have been, and continue to be bone piercingly frigid. Nor does it help that our street is aligned due north, thus greatly facilitating the funnelling of icy blasts to our doorstep.

In consequence we’re still in winter woollies. Also, we’ve continued to keep the hedge bird feeder well stocked with fat balls, this on the grounds that the sparrows et al still need energy for gathering food for their young. They’ve certainly been getting through them.

Out in the garden the blackbirds have other strategies. This male blackbird starts chivvying me the moment he spots me. If I don’t respond at once, he moves in very close, finding a perch whence he can fix me with those beady eyes. And if this still doesn’t receive the desired response, he starts shouting.

And I must say, I do feel a touch affronted – to let myself be bullied by a small bird.

But needs must. The other day when I started earthing up the potatoes, both mister and missus swooped in, combing through the disturbed soil, chuntering in tones of unalloyed blackbird ecstasy. I have yet to spot exactly how they manage to hoover up quite so many small worms in one beak full. It all happens so fast.

[Spoiler alert: not for the squeamish.]

This morning I spotted the male in the apple tree, not far from my left ear. As ever he gave me the eye. The rain had moved in and I was late on parade. But today it seemed he’d managed to gather his worms without my intervention. More surprising though, he also managed to give me song without opening his beak. No worm was lost.

Songs for worms, I thought. Fair exchange.

Lens-Artists: Elephants In Words And Pictures

“I have seen a herd of elephant travelling through dense native forest…pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world” Isaak Dinesen

No dense forest here, only a rare scatter of thorn trees on the Maasai Mara plains. And yet early one December morning, when we found ourselves in the path of an elephant herd, the sense of their concerted purpose flowed round us like a slow tide. They did move as one – elders, adolescents, infants. And so softly too. An elephant mirage then.

As they passed on by, not one member of the herd showed any reaction to our presence. And so there was that moment – the urge to follow, to walk with elephants, pace for pace. How astonishing might that be? (Or how invasive).

Of course we were not on foot, but in a truck with our driver-guide, Dan. He drove quietly away and parked on a ridge above the thorn trees; even suggested we should get out and eat our picnic breakfast while we watched the herd fan out below us.

Some members climbed over our ridge, but again seemed not to acknowledge our existence.

“The herd moves as one, yet each elephant knows its place.” African saying.

At sundown the herd met up with us again, travelling at the same slow, purposeful pace, but now in the opposite direction. We were on our way back to camp. Dan stopped the truck while they moved on and on around us. So close we felt their presence as they passed. The musky smell of them.

Lens-Artists: favourite quotes illustrated This week Ann-Christine asks us to illustrate our favourite quotations (No more than 5 photos). She has some stunning examples. Go see!

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge