Six On Saturday: Fire And Ice

The first frost in Bishop’s Castle this week, but it’s come with brilliant sunshine and clear blue skies. Here in the front garden the Anemanthele Pheasant’s Tail is doing its impression of a burning bush.

Nearby, a recent addition of Miner’s Merlot is glowing too, self-mulching with a scatter of older scarlet leaves.

And then there’s Achillea Moonshine, still with a few fresh lemony flowers to keep company with the remnant drying heads (red glint of Nandina Firepower behind).

In the back garden the blackbirds have returned to finish off any remnant windfalls from the old apple trees along the fence. I’ve learned recently that if we want fewer diseased apples, I should clear away all the fallen ones, along with the leaves. But then I tend towards thinking that the birds’ needs may be greater than ours.

I bought this Phlomis russeliana as a young (9cm pot) plant a year or so ago.This summer was its first flowering – a single stem. Then came the rainless months, but the drought did not stop the plant’s rapid growing. Even by mid-summer I was splitting off a generous clump for transplanting. Thereafter, I was pulling off chunks to stop it overwhelming the rest of the bed. More recently I’ve been giving it the eye, wondering if our smallish garden can really cope with such vigorous vegetative expansion.

But then, come the frost, and how lovely the leaves look:

Finally, not so much lovely as ‘tragic’ – a ‘Dying Swan’ collapse of Hesperantha coccinea Wilfred H Bryant. I’d only recently featured him i.e. in my previous post. He’d been late to flower. Now he is simply late. Ah, well. Perhaps, he’ll do better next year. The frosted Sedum is anyway providing a handsome backdrop.

Happy gardening, folks.

Six on Saturday 14 Nov 2026: Please call in our host Jim. He’s had some frost too, but it’s not stopping the gorgeous display of Wisley Cream clematis.

Today In The November Garden

Here we are, in the second week in November, a time when most herbaceous plants are going to ground. But not so this Cape Lily, aka Hesperantha coccinea ‘Wilfred H Bryant’, caught here in a fleeting burst of morning sunshine. In fact not only is it not retreating, it actually seems to be growing. There are now several lily stems forming graceful arabesques in the wall border; more to come too.

Such an ethereal looking flower with its flush of iced pink. Which this morning then made me wonder about the cultivar name. With no stretch of the imagination does it look like a Wilfred. This thought next led to some internet rummaging. It was a rummage too. All I could discover was that Wilfred was a Somerset grower of cut flowers. The particular cultivar had been identified as novel by his wife, Jennifer Bryant, a flower arranger. When Wilfred died, she chose to give his name to her discovery. A gentle remembrance.

But then it’s not quite so clear cut. In the horticultural trade, Wilfred H. Bryant is also synonymous (deemed to be identical) with Pink Princess. Either way, I’m pleased to see him/her, brightening up overcast days.

Lens-Artists: Wabi-Sabi

Beauty in simplicity, imperfection, impermanence…

Crab apple catching November raindrops

One perfect passing cloud

Teasels against a winter sky

Watching snow melt from under a tree

Earth gold

Wild oats ripening in late summer

Lens-Artists: Wabi-Sabi This week Sofia reprises an approach that celebrates beauty in simplicity, transience and imperfection.

Six On Saturday: All Hallows Eve And Garden Upheaval

Today’s my birthday, but more than that, I’m hoping it marks the end of the vile cold-cough we picked up nearly a month ago in Pembrokeshire. So much for going on holiday. But now, with a burst of restored good spirits, havoc is being unleashed in the upstairs (back) garden.

Last week’s big winds anyway blew the climbing beans (Runners, Cosse Violette and Borlotti) inside out, mashing everything on their sticks. Yesterday I started the big dismantling, untangling canes and chopping up stems – my least favourite garden chore. The upside was that there was quite a good harvest of Borlotti beans. As they were still growing until the winds, most of the pods were undried, so I put the beans straight in the freezer. They’re quicker to cook than dried ones.

The Runners, on the other hand, were over by early October. They’d been looking a sight ever since, but having a virus seemed a good excuse for not dealing with them.

Now they are down and chopped the compost bin is full, which in many ways is annoying because I’m planning to move it this winter. I would have done it sooner but its new position requires some pruning of the old apple tree. In the meantime, in hopes of speeding up the rotting down, I made myself cut the stems into very short lengths, and further gave myself notice that regular turning would be needed.

But then when the bin is gone, the easterly edge of the garden will be free for a new planting scheme. I’ve finally accepted that treating our modestly sized garden like my erstwhile allotment is not viable. Not only that, the number of pests that visit us, make for disappointing results. I now have a weekly delivery of a small organic veg and fruit box instead. And next year I will stick to beans, herbs, salad stuff and some soft fruit.

I also want to continue developing the garden so there’s something of interest all the year round, plus an extended flowering window to entice and support beneficial insects.

So with the beans gone and the compost bin scheduled to move, the re-planting began yesterday with my new garden favourite: crab apple Malus toringo Scarlett a tree that also comes in a compact bush format. It arrived on Thursday afternoon in a very big box from Ornamental Trees in North Yorkshire. Oh, the excitement as it emerged so redly and amazingly unscathed by its long journey.

The deep red-purple autumn colour is a particular feature, and in spring it has attractive pink scented blossom, followed by small dark red crab apples. There’s a photo of Malus toringo Scarlett in bloom at this link. I’ve planted it in a re-sited, raised (formerly Borlotti bean) bed to give it some height and also so we can see it from the kitchen.

Now the Borlotti beans are gone, our kitchen view also includes (to the left of Scarlett on the back fence) Aster Ageratoides Ashvi. It is just coming into full flower, this after some weeks of sporadic blooming. What a star she is. Unscathed by the gales, and supposedly keeping the show going into November. Then in the winter there are a mass of white tufty seed heads. Ashvi is fine with dry shade, though there were times during the summer drought when she looked a little stressed, albeit still keeping her upright bushy stance.

And there are more garden stars this week. I have failed with Astrantia in the past, but back in June I bought a couple of bare stems (white flowers) from a local plant sale and popped them in the semi-shaded bed under the kitchen window. As the summer receded they started to bulk up and flower. So then I moved in a struggling ‘Sparkling Stars’ pink version that looked rather weak from all the heat. Now they are ‘shining’ beautifully together.

And finally this week there are the Cosmos. The plants themselves look awful. The big winds tried to blow them out by the roots. Yet still they are flowering and so I am picking them and filling vases around the house. What a lovely autumn gift, even for someone who claims not to think much of pink.

Happy Halloween!

Six on Saturday Please call on Jim. He still has some lovely plants on show in his garden.

In A Low Light: Monochrome Madness

I’m always fascinated to see how photos taken in very poor light conditions will turn out. I’m particularly drawn to twilit subjects, as in just after sundown. In consequence I have lots of images of rooks and jackdaws coming home to roost.

I also like winter days when the light is almost lifeless. The header photo of Wenlock Priory was taken on one such February day. (You can just see the catkins on the right.) The limestone ruins and the bark on the Corsican pine seem to radiate their own mysterious light.

This rocky scene in Looe, Cornwall was taken on Christmas Day, in late morning too, when it already seemed as if it were going dark. But then there was light enough off a stormy sea to make these silhouettes stand out.

It was an equally dark and dreary December morning when I photographed these trees in Falmouth. They struck me as posing for a Japanese print.

Monochrome Madness: Low Light This week Ritva hosts Leanne’s Monochrome Madness with a gallery of wonderfully moody compositions. Go and see. Be inspired.

We Were Here ~ ‘Out Of Africa’ Revisited

“I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.”

Karen Blixen 1932 ‘Out of Africa’

A view of the Ngong Hills from Karen Blixen’s veranda (above). The house (below), now belongs to the National Museums of Kenya. It was built in 1912 by a Swedish settler and engineer, Ake Sjogren, who owned the Swedo-African Coffee Company, and in 1914 sold the house and land to Bror Blixen who hoped to make his fortune from coffee growing. Six hundred of the 6,000 acres bought were planted with coffee bushes, but the enterprise foundered from the start. The site was wrong (too high for coffee). It also took several years for the bushes to bear, during which time, the rains often failed.

“The Mountain of Ngong stretches in a long ridge from north to south and is crowned with four noble peaks like immovable darker blue waves against the sky. It rises eight thousand feet above the sea, and to the east is two thousand feet above the surrounding country, but to the west the drop is deeper and more precipitous – the hills fall vertically down towards the Great Rift Valley.”

Karen Blixen 1932 ‘Out of Africa’

“I had time after time watched the progression across the plain of the giraffe, in their queer, inimitable, vegetative gracefulness as if it were not a herd of animals but a family of rare, long stemmed spackled gigantic flowers slowly advancing. It was, in giant size, the border of a very old, infinitely precious Persian carpet in the dyes of green, yellow and black-brown.”

Karen Blixen 1932 ‘Out of Africa’

“Bror and I came up here for a weekend…It is delightful here – I think Naivasha is a paradise on earth, very like Scotland, with the water and the mountains around the lake, and the air so lovely here”

Karen Blixen July 1917 ‘Letters from Africa’

Naivasha is the only large freshwater lake among Kenya’s several soda lakes. The first commercial flights into Kenya on Imperial Airways, and later BOAC flying boats (1930-1940) landed on Lake Naivasha. Travellers then had a sixty mile road trip to Nairobi.

For a time in 1918 the Blixens lived on the lake shore in a shanty hut made of sheet iron, lined with local papyrus, this while Bror supervised a ploughing contract with his ox teams and steam plough at a settler farm at nearby Longonot.

Longonot is one of the landmark old volcanoes on the Rift Valley floor. In the next photo there’s also a foreground view of Kikuyu shambas, the kind of smallholdings we were surveying for Graham’s smutted Napier Grass research in the late 1990s. More of that story HERE.

On 14th February 1992 I flew to Nairobi, Kenya, intending only on a three month stay. Graham had a short-term consultancy contract, working on controlling the Larger Grain Borer. This was an introduced storage pest, arrived with food aid from the Americas, and was then infesting farm granaries. I was ‘camp following’. (More of this story HERE.)

After that, who knew where we’d be. On my first day in Africa we went to Karen Blixen’s house. It seemed to fit with our own uncertain futures. Eight years later, in January 2000 we finally left Kenya. Much happened in between, and these are a few ageing glimpses from the ‘old Africa album’.

Lens-Artists: Memories This week Tina sets the theme to inspire us. Please see her post.

Six On Saturday: Autumn Fire

This week the back garden is looking pretty dishevelled after some days of stiff winds, but the front garden is holding its own: lots of reds and golds and russets, plus a touch of pale lavender-pink.

The miniature Evereste crab apple is probably the star. Those tiny apples seem to glow.

Behind it, and utterly living up to its name (as well as complementing the crab apple’s colours) is Euphorbia griffithii Fireglow. Quite a blaze, isn’t it.

Calming things down at the back of the border, in front of the privet hedge, is a pale cloud of Symphyotrichum Les Moutiers. This is its first year of flowering and I love its airy looks. Also that the daisies’ yellow centres turn bright russet red when they have been fertilised.

I have another Great Dixter Symphyotrichum in the opposite corner (just glimpsed in the main photo. I’ve lost the label, but I think it’s Laterifolium, also pale lavender and flowering for the first time. For now it’s rather put in the shade behind the Fireglow.

Another fiery feature is the Pheasant’s Tail Grass (Anamenthele lessoniana), now around two years old and continuing to do its own rendition of a Roman Candle.

Several of the summer flowering plants are on the rebound. The evergreen Cotton lavender (Santolina rosmarinifolia) (bottom right) has just produced some new yellow buttons. It’s growing under the crab apple along with a Wisley White Helianthemum (centre) and Kent Beauty origano (far left now very faded):

And finally the Achillea Moonshine is coming out for a third showing (Nandina Obsession with the bright crimson leaves behind)

And that’s it from our Bishop’s Castle garden. Please call in at Garden Ruminations to see what Jim’s been up to.

Six on Saturday 17 October 2026

Where Does It Lead?

Paths are mysterious things, tracks through time and space, spanning decades, centuries, millennia; the footworn proof of repeat passing.

This first path runs along the top of Wenlock Edge, a twenty mile limestone ridge that crosses from east into south Shropshire. These days it is a popular resort for recreational walkers, but the route itself is probably thousands of years old, used by prehistoric traders who travelled the county’s less wooded uplands into Wales. The traded goods included finely worked stone axes of the Neolithic era, 5-6,000 years ago. Later, itinerant smiths (and seeming recylcers of damaged metal ware, including fine cast arrow- and spearheads of the Bronze Age) came this way.

This second path is of more recent origins despite the sepia looks. It marks a segment of the Severn Valley Railway, opened through Much Wenlock in the late 1860s and closed in the 1960s. Now the original track bed is much colonised by ash and hazel and ivy, kept in check by the county footpath wardens. It’s hard to conjure the steam trains that once came roaring through here, bound for the Wenlock Edge quarries to take on truckloads of limestone, the flux needed for South Wales’ steel making.

And then there’s that other ghost train, the festive Great Western special that every July brought thousands of people from far and wide to watch (and take part in) the Much Wenlock Olympian Games. Back then, this still popular annual event) comprised many and varied sporting activities, devised by the town’s doctor, William Penny Brookes to foster good health and wellbeing among ordinary folk. His activism did not stop at health either. There were livelihoods to improve too, so he also fought for the line extension that brought the railway to Much Wenlock.

Over the years we lived in Wenlock this was a favourite place to wander, and in every season.

And so paths like these extend in ever more dimensions: of imagination; of history; of recollection and memory; of the telling of tales.

Lens-Artists: Where does it lead? This week Egidio sets the theme with an enticing gallery of photos. Go see!

Six On Saturday ~ Summer into Autumn

Asters, Symphyotrichums, Michaelmas Daisies, whatever you call them, they’re a cheering sight as summer ends. I even overlook my inkling to dislike the pinkish-purple shades that so many versions come in. I much prefer the mauve range. Anyway, here’s another good reason to grow them: bee food. Now’s the time honey bees are stoking up reserves to get them through winter.

And talking of mauve asters, the Monch in the corner of the garden (which I’ve mentioned before) is still going strong. The flowers may have paled, but they’re still coming – three and half months after the first opening.

Growing beside Monch is a single stem of an unknown aster. I’d rescued it from somewhere else in the garden, where it was the only surviving sprout of a failed purchase, its label vanished. For once, I’m rather pleased with its pinkness, and the large size of the flowers. Some further nurturing required.

Other bright sparks include Anemone Dahlia Inca which is now on its third flush. It’s definitely putting its neighbour, the Bishop of Llandaff to shame. That particular Dahlia did not like the summer heat one bit. Its first flowers only started opening this week, sporadic, very small and deeply unimpressive for a bishop.

And then there are the Tagetes – French Marigold Brocade which is in the same big tub as the Bishop and more than making up for his deficiencies…

…and a ground cover, tiny flowered Signet Marigold, called Red Gem (Tagetes tenuifolia). I grew both marigolds from seed but the Red Gem struggled during the heat, being shallow rooted. In recent weeks, though, it’s been blazing away in a rather garish setting with a mauve aster. An unintended pairing at the time of planting.

Our dwarf Red Devil apple tree finally managed to produce three apples that don’t look to have been codling mothed. We ate the biggest one this week. It was perfect – deliciously sweet and crunchy. A shame about the infestation.

In the vegetable department, the runner beans suddenly revived themselves and produced further modest crops, sufficient to make a few pots of chutney. But now it looks as if they will be overtaken by the Borlotti beans. I hadn’t been holding out much hope for them. The plants did not develop well during the drought, this despite regular watering. And then they went and made a huge amount of foliage so I couldn’t really see what was going on underneath. But now, as the leaves dry and blow away, all is being revealed. I love them for their fiery pods alone.

And finally, an image to mark the seasonal change: a sunflower in our dwarf pear tree: summer and autumn together.

Six on Saturday 10 October 26: Please call in on Jim to see what’s happening in his lovely Cornish garden this week. For one thing, he has some stunning Nerines.

Sunday’s Sunset Garden

So autumn begins, and yet summer lingers. We’ve just returned from a last minute trip – a week by the sea in Pembrokeshire. It was surprisingly summery and warm there too, despite strong winds, but it must have been warmer still in Bishop’s Castle. We came home to a garden full of flowers: Asters, Cosmos, Rudbeckia, Japanese Anemones, Roses, Morning Glories, Sedums, Bee Balm, and Sunflowers. And a fine welcome it was too, though I must confess to a pang of gardener’s disgruntlement: see what the garden gets up to when left to its own devices, when I’m not here to interfere tend it.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge