A cautionary tale: Box caterpillar

We've been on box-watch the past week or so and keeping our fingers crossed that the pesky box caterpillar we spotted on one plant didn't migrate to our other topiary balls.

It's a case of so far, so good.

This is the third box bush, the one that's most visible from our patio.  There's a few singed leaves, but given the weather we've had it's doing quite well.

BOX NUMBER 3

The next box bush along, is topiary ball number two and in between this and the one above is the pot of white agapanthus, still just about in flower.  It's browner than the one above, but is greener than it has been over the past few months.

BOX NUMBER 2

And then there's the box plant that we spotted several box caterpillars on:

Yes, we took drastic action!

As you can see from the photo below, it really didn't look very healthy at all.

It was full of these pesky little critters.

Who are clearly greedy souls. 

Our plan is to remove the root from the plant that we've disposed of, but that was proving trickier than we thought.  Looking back we realised that the plants have probably been in these waist-high pots for the best part of fifteen years, so I suspect it's quite comfortable.  It'll be interesting to see just how large it is, and as you'd expect I have a plan for unearthing the root and I'm hoping we'll get that put into action in the next week or so, weather permitting.

When the pot is empty, our longer-term plans include replacing it with a fern that we hope will like the position in the garden alongside the conservatory.  We'll need some pot juggling too, as with two box balls and two pots of agapanthus, the single fern will need to be in the middle.

The remaining box balls have survived a couple of weeks since box-watch started, so I'm hopeful our drastic action has helped.

Fingers crossed.

A billion dreams at Chelsea

We’re heading back to this year’s Chelsea Flower Show and one of the artisan gardens for today’s post. The garden was commissioned by The British Council and designed by Sarah Eberle and  “was sparked by the hopes and dreams of young people in India, and also drew on the UK and India’s shared love of cricket. It was a celebration of the 70th anniversary of the British Council in India.”

Timely then that I’m posting this as England play India, cricket must have reached into my psyche, and when it is a garden as pretty as this, that’s ok with me.

The inlay work on the low height walls was stunning and reminded me of our trip to India for our honeymoon back in 2007.  We brought home a coaster which uses this effect, and is stunning, but I’d forgotten how much more spectacular larger pieces were, totally breath-taking-away. 

Much of the press coverage for this garden during the show focused on the pair of rather large cricket stumps, and large cricket balls that matched and given the purpose of the garden that’s probably fair, but there was so much more to it for me.  The intricate jewelled walls and bright, jewel like planting too. 

With such oversized stumps, a normal sized cricket ball just wouldn’t do, would it?  Although I’m not sure I’d want to be on the receiving end of this one, or have it land amongst my borders. 

The colours of the planting picked up the bright colours in the wall, and are a riot of colour, shape and texture and not all “exotic” plants either - at the forefront of the photo beow you can spot some French marigolds.  The attention grabber in this photo is the yellow “filament” flower head.

There was also the iconic blue Himalayan poppies, or mecanopsis, stunning aren’t they?  One of the true blue flowers I’ve seen, and much bluer than bluebells, which in comparison don’t seem that blue after all.  

Even now, seeing how the light bounces of the blue petals, it’s clear that these are something special.  The garden was awarded a Silver-Gilt medal - I still don’t know how the judges can separate any of the gardens, when they’re all so lovely, but...

Even if cricket’s not your thing, I suspect this garden might hold your interest - what do you think?

My garden in July (and a bit of June too!)

July in the garden has been pretty parched and practical, and as such not so pretty, so I'm going to sneak some pictures in from June at the end of this post, as somehow with everything going on I missed posting a June update.

The grass has been straw-like, and some of our plants are crispier than I'd like.  I resisted watering them for a while, because we were away for a week, and I didn't want them to get used to it.  As usual I had a massive potting on session in the greenhouse before we went and left upturned water bottles plunged into the soil to tide the plants in the greenhouse over.  

They survived and as it was so warm when we got back I decided to fill them up and keep them there. That is until I realised they emptied overnight, so I wasn't saving myself any watering time at all.  But it did make me doubly proud of the tomatoes and other greenhouse plants that soldiered on that week.

The tomatoes in the greenhouse are reaching the ceiling and looking quite lush.  I've been surprised that the tomatoes outside in pots are further advanced than those planted into the bed in the greenhouse but, there you go.

We spent some time a weekend or so ago preparing for the new trough pots - which still haven't arrived, despite being ordered over a week ago and being on a one day delivery, I'm not impressed.  Part of the preparations included sorting out the compost, which was a job I'd been keen to get done for a while now, and strictly wasn't essential but it was a good opportunity to get it done and it gave us both some mindless labour to do and letting our minds rest for a while.

I'd struck on the idea that the new small shed would be much nicer to look at than one of our dalek compost bins, and so the dalek needed to be moved - but of course, it was full.  With some persuasion and a bit of brute force, its plastic outer was removed and placed next to our second bin. 

Thankfully it just about fitted. It's now on a paving slab, and it will have to manage with that.

And so we set about moving the compost.  We've ended up with the good stuff at the top, which works for us as we'll be using a fair bit if my new pots ever arrive.  The second bin, which we've never emptied should also be ready, and if we need it we'll empty that one from the bottom in the more tradtional way.

And look what was left.  A small shed sized hole.  

Reassembling the part-assembled shed we brought home from the allotment is still on the to do list, but it will fit here, even if we have to make some adjustments to the surrounding area, but that's for another day.

I told you July in our garden wasn't pretty, didn't I? 

June was much more colourful...

In the cherry-less cherry tree we've been seeing some bird activity, and I'm sure I saw some tits disappearing into the yellow bird box.  On other branches in the same tree we've a sage green and pale blue bird box, so it's a bit like a housing estate for birds.  I'm curious to know if we do have residents, but will have to wait a while before checking the boxes out.  

And if we do, I wonder why they've gone for the yellow one.  Maybe it's the equivalent of a bird des-res, who knows?

With all the lovely weather I've moved some of the succulents outside, so they can enjoy it too. Although the aloe vera looks to be coping well, it took a turn for the worse and I've moved it back inside where it's flourishing again.  The other one though, which should have leaves up its stem, is relishing being outside.  

Not only has it grown more leaves than we've seen before, and more quickly, it's also starting to sprout new branches from the roots.  And where it's touching the pot, on the bend, it's starting to grow from there too.  It'll be interesting to see how far it gets.

We've been slow in keeping on top of our garden this year, partly the weather and partly as weekends have been taken up with family things, but there's still a fair bit to do.  With the hot weather continuing, we're continuing to take it slowly, but of course things are growing faster than we're pruning.  It's how gardening goes though, isn't it?

For the past four or five years we've been managed to see the stag beetle's annual visit.  This year we were treated to several fly pasts before on one occasion it crash landed into the agapanthus and posed for this photo.

It seems to be attracted to our sycamore tree, so even observing that is interesting and I was able to add that to the annual stag beetle survey which I also learnt of this year.  Around the garden there were the blues of the Canterbury bells, the whites of the dogwood flowers, the pinks of our Gertrude Jekyll rose and the scent of the honeysuckle as we've sat outside on the patio in the balmy evenings that we've come to take for granted.

As well as the scent of jasmine and honeysuckle on the patio, we've been surrounded by roses and clematis, which I've realised are the opposite of each other with their light and dark petals.

It's also one of my favourite photos from the garden this year, so any excuse to include it in a post!

How's your garden coping with the high temperatures?