What's Blooming This Week?

Best known for their roses, the Delbard family have also been breeding dahlias of unparallelled beauty at their nursery about three and half hours south of Paris for over sixty years.

This is a 2010 release, "Canaries", blooming here at The Drip, Mudgee for the first time this year.   

Unfortunately we neglected to stake this huge plant and shortly after producing its first bloom it fell over, snapping the stem at ground level. Damn! The "Manana, manana" approach to gardening does not work.   Hopefully the tubers will reshoot and we won't have lost this treasure from The Cutflower Garden.  For more on The Cutflower Garden click here.

Notes from the Library #30

An idiosyncratic, yet increasingly influential, style of garden design emerged in Provence in the late twentieth century, developed by Nicole de Vesian.  Her passion for clipping evergreen shrubs into intricate designs was influenced by the great clipped box garden of Marquessac in the nearby region of Dordogne. This masterpiece is featured in Stephanie Alexander's delightful book "Cooking and Traveling in South West France."

Nicole de Vesian, who had established a fine reputation as a fashion designer, worked predominantly with the native shrubs of her region ... box, tuecrium, rosemary, lavender and santolina.  She soon established a devoted cult following and her work first came to the attention of the international garden design community in the early 1990's.  Her influence continues to grow with the 2011 publication of "Modern Design in Provence" which we have recently purchased for our library here.

The similarity between de Vesian's approach and the karikomi which I mentioned yesterday and which we are developing as a feature of The Hill Garden here at The Drip is obvious. It seems that the more we develop our personal style, the more we find our inspiration in the great traditions of topiary, karikomi and niwaki.  The common factor running through all these traditions is the use of plant species that are local to the area, and it is this approach which we are now exploring here at The Drip by utilizing local species such as Bursaria spinosa.

Karikomi in The Hill Garden

Karikomi is a form of  abstract topiary practiced in Japan.  The creation of these "blobs" by pruning shrubs is a staple of Japanese garden design.  Karikomi are sculpted, traditionally from azaleas, into asymmetrical, organic shapes, never into perfect spheres as would be more common in European topiary.  The azalea is native to Japan just as Box and Yew, the staples of European topiary,  are native to Europe.  These two great traditions of garden design have both arisen from the use of local species, these native plants being clipped into complex formal compositions which reflect the local landscape.

We have begun experimenting in The Hill Garden with this style of pruning using our local species, Bursaria spinosa, commonly known as Black Thorn.  Bursaria is currently unpopular in cultivation and can be very invasive in disturbed or degraded agricultural land,  forming dense impenetrable thickets. This has occurred here, where Bursaria rapidly colonized the hillside after the removal of blackberry infestations which had previously dominated the area.  We have decided that clipped Bursaria may well be our equivalent to the clipped box and azalea of the Northern hemisphere. Interestingly a nineteenth century name for Bursaria spinosa was "Australian Native Box".

Here Peter Marshal uses mechanical hedge clippers to begin pruning the Bursaria hillside.  It will be fascinating to see how this hill of clipped Bursaria, our local version of Karikomi, develops over the next few seasons.  To see more about our work in The Hill Garden click here

Giant Sunflowers

Over the years we have grown many different types of Sunflower.  This one which just popped up in The Old Cottage Garden seems to combine the characteristics of several varieties we have grown here in the past.

It is enormous, already reaching almost 3 metres and still growing. This suggests it is descended in part from these Giant Russian sunflowers we grew a few years ago in The Espaliery.  

It has multiple flowers, suggesting it is also descended from these Lemon Queen sunflowers. which we grew in 2007. But where did the delightful two-tone colouration come from in our new giant?

Water is Life.

Summer has arrived at last.  Temperatures are regularly hitting the mid-thirties.  Watering newly planted trees and shrubs is now  a matter of life and death. One day missed can result in disaster.

In 2011 we invested a considerable amount of time and money in new plantings. A Hazelnut hedgerow comprising sixty trees, an advanced and rather expensive American walnut, a Pecan and an English Mulberry were planted in The Nuttery.  We relocated fifteen Silver Birch in The Horse Paddock and replaced a Japanese Maple.  In The Parterre Garden we planted fifty Dwarf Box, Buxus suffruticosa,  and eight climbing Cloth of Gold roses on the pergolas. On The Eastern Terrace a new hedge of one hundred and twenty English Box was planted.  In The Hill Garden we planted new Mt Fuji cherry trees and relocated a Magnolia denudata, three Magnolia grandiflora "Little Gem" and some Camellias into The Camellia Grove.  New grape vines and Crepescule roses were planted along the stone walls of The Old Cottage Garden; in this garden we also planted two Moss Roses, "William Lobb" and "Nuits de Yong" plus a Granny Smith Apple.  In The Old Orchard we planted a Pink Lady apple and in The Main Courtyard dwarf peaches and nectarines were planted in wine barrels. A Chinese Liquidamber, Liquidamber formosana,  was planted in The Water Garden. And a new garden area was undertaken with the planting of Proteas and Silky Oaks The Western Acre near the camping ground next to The Gully.   It was a busy year.

Although we have had significant rainfall recently it would be foolish in the extreme to think this means that regular watering is not necessary; this is a common error and results in many deaths.  The routine of weekly watering must be continued through midsummer, regardless of rainfall,  for the first two years after planting.  In heatwave conditions even more regular watering is often required  These new plantings will therefore require careful attention until the summer of 2013/14.  To see more information, including complete plant lists, for these garden areas at The Drip, Mudgee click on the links above.

What's Blooming This Week?

These huge lilies in The Parterre Garden are the undoubted stars of the week.

Each plant is  two metres tall and carries over a dozen intensely fragrant blooms.  The bulbs have multiplied slowly over the years and we now have four of these spectacular beauties.

But what are they called?  Unfortunately we have no idea!  Help please

For more on The Parterre Garden click here

Compost - Everything Old is New Again.

Waking up early on this New Year's Day I decided to spend the day spreading compost.  

All the weeds and spent plants and clippings and prunings that had accumulated in The Old Cottage Garden over the last year, have by now transformed into dark, sticky, moist compost, warm and sweet.  

Returning this to the soil, bringing new life to our garden beds,  seemed to capture the spirit of the day very nicely and a perfect way to start the new year. The cycle starts afresh, the future of our garden built upon the past. Happy New Year.