Dhu Varren Garden

Back in July 2013 a few of us intrepid Irish exotic gardeners arranged a meet with our friends Mark and Laura at their garden, Dhu Varren outside Milltown, Co. Kerry.
Mark is originally from Northern Ireland and Laura from County Tipperary, but they chose to live in the mild south west of the island so that they could cultivate the extensive range of exotic and unusual plants that Mark covets.
Since 2001 they have built their garden on this wet two and a half acre site which was originally a farm small holding in a previous life.
It has come a bit of a way since then......

The area to the front of the house is very naturalistic in appearance, there's a pond surrounded by Gunnera and reeds and a stonking big four meter high triple headed Dicksonia antartica.

This behemoth has been through quite a lot, during a cold snap Mark and Laura arrived home from a trip to find that it had fallen into the pond and was trapped under a thick layer of ice. When the thaw eventually came they had to enlist the help of a local farmer who managed to haul it back into an upright position with his tractor. It looks none the worse for wear despite its ordeal.

To the side of the house is a sign of things to come, an extensive 'rockery' has been created. Christened Red Rock Canyon after the colour of the enormous sandstone boulders that it has been built from, this area is a more Mediterranean than Milltown.
There are no dwarf conifers and Heathers in this rockery, spikies are the order of the day.

These Trachycarpus fortunei will add an exotic canopy as they mature.

Cistus line the path that snakes along the 'valley' floor.

Beschoneria albiflora.

 Multi trunked Yucca, looking really good with the old foliage removed.

A Furcrea, probably parmentieri

One of the best looking groups of Kniphofia northiae I've seen. The secret to avoiding brown withered tips is copious water but the ground must be extremely free draining at the same time.

Spikey and arid, yet still manages a lushness that I really enjoy seeing.

At the rear of the house things take another direction completely with a stunning Japanese tea house and Koi pond. Some of the fish here were absolute monsters but due to reflections I didn't manage to get a photo of them.

Some exotic enthusiasts

The detail was amazing, imagine the water flowing through each of these on its way down during a rain shower.

 Phyllostachys growing through a carpet of Mind Your Own Business, Soleirolia soleirolii.

Schefflera delavayi, who couldn't love this plant?! Mine has some way to go being only six inches high...

A new addition since my last visit, perhaps a more traditional looking rockery but the plants used are anything but ordinary.

Next there's an area where Mark grows many trees and Bamboos either side of a raised wooden boardwalk. What with discussing and discovering so many amazing woody plants I was too distracted to remember to take any pictures. DOH!!

 Ligularia veitchana

Petasites japonicus var. giganteus, I keep mine in a huge pot with a saucer of water beneath, there's no way I'm letting this free in the ground in my tiny garden.

 A tall Tetrapanax papyrifera 'Rex'

 Gunnera leaf, phone for scale.

The new silvery finger like fronds emerging on Cycas revoluta, looks like alien tentacles? Just me? OK.

Schefflera taiwaniana, rock hard in most coastal areas of Ireland and unbeatable in shade.

Cyathea medullaris, The Mamaku or black Tree Fern from the north island of New Zealand.
This is another lust worthy plant, and I'm now on my third attempt with it. They're hard to track down but I've managed to find another and had it shipped over from the Netherlands to be tortured cosseted in Ireland. It's not very hardy so needs overwintering under cover or extensive wrapping and insulation to keep out the cold.
I'm determined that this time I will finally succeed!!!!!!!

A potentially rampant spreader, but Tropaeolum ciliatum is a lovely herbaceous climber and one that I'd consider introducing to my own garden. I do grow invasive plants but something about this one scares me a bit.

 But then look at it here twining up a Bamboo culm, so innocent looking.

Look at the spines on the leaf surface of this un! Seriously cool plant! Zanthoxylum laetum

Schefflera macrophylla, outdoors!! Mine will not, sadly, ever get to experience such a thing. The last one I grew carked it during its first mild winter outdoors, I don't want that to happen its replacement.

Can a garden ever have enough varieties of Schefflera, nope.
I think I'd chop them like I did with mine, though I know their natural tendency is to rocket straight up.

 The unheated arid greenhouse is full of cool succulents that seem to be enjoying life.

You have to feel the felted leaves of Sinningia leucotricha, the closest thing I can liken them to is a Labrador puppies ear. You gotta love this plant, growing from an enormous swollen caudex. Coming from a seasonally dry climate, the leaves and stems are discarded over winter leaving the woody swollen tuber in view.

I'll get my hands on one of these some day, when I have appropriate overwintering facilities.

The 'Tropical' house is jam packed with all sorts of cool stuff.

So much that you really need Mark on hand to point out the 50% of plants that you've missed.

Hedychium wardii, some day my little baby will produce a big fat club of flowers just like these.....

Finally, a view of the herb and butterfly garden, one of Laura's spaces, believe it or not the giant Miscanthus are growing in soil the depth of the railway sleepers. The whole area is covered with a layer of concrete, a remnant from its previous life as a farmyard, so the plants are growing in very shallow soil, yet they thrive.
Mark is eyeing it up as a potential space for yet another glasshouse......

Book learnin'

It's winter, I'm not a fan of winter. I actively dislike it.

That's not entirely true, I like the first sniff of coldness in the run up to Christmas with frost in the air, when it's chilly but dry. Then the holidays come and go the decorations are taken down. The cold light dawns on new years day and and then it's back to work and many of us feel that post festivities slump. Winter drags on, and on and the proper cold weather hasn't even hit yet.
Late January and February are when the worst weather normally arrives and if we're going to get snow it tends to be around then.

Now's the time to retreat indoors with a roaring fire in the grate and get to reading, I've been collecting books for a few months and am looking forward to gettin' to readin'

An eclectic selection, eh? Food, Whiskey and gardening, my great obsessions.

A bit of plant hunting, old school with Frank Kingdon-Ward and more modern day with Roy Lancaster.

I've already read Plant Breeding last spring, but I want to have another go, I enjoyed it so much.

As yet I'm reserving judgement on 'What A Plant Knows', it's not my sort of book usually, but it's good to try new things...

I've more plans for the front garden, I carried out a bit of an overhaul last spring but wasn't happy with the result, it was much too softly and herbaceously floral. More spikes and architectural plants are the way forward methinks, hopefully it will actually come together this time.

Dan Pearson writes well, I enjoy reading his words and he makes me think more holistically about what I'm doing and how I need to plant and plan for my conditions. 

The most difficult decision facing me now is deciding which book I'm going to make a start with....

This is gonna be epic

Pepperoni pizza, currently in the oven and fluffing up nicely.

Happy New Year!

Well tomorrow marks the beginning of another year, the festive period is coming towards its end and soon this years decorations will be coming down.

It's been a great year all in all. The garden has been so so in parts, I want it to be so much better next summer, with plans and schemes afoot to make it a great space.

I gave my first two gardening lectures, the first in Belfast and the second in Dublin at the prestigious National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin.

I admit, when I saw the size of the lecture theater I had to take a very sharp intake of breath!

But I needn't have worried, they were a very friendly, attentive and interactive audience.

Who knows there this all will lead in the future.....

I've also met some new gardening friends, and I hope the four of us manage to do a bit of garden visiting in 2014.

Fingers crossed the incoming year is mild and that we don't get the kind of freak weather experienced in Northern Ireland last March, with excessive amounts of snow that stayed for weeks.

I'm not one for New Years resolutions or any of that nonsense, but here's to a bigger, better and happy 2014, where the days are sunny and warm and ample rain falls, but only at night. 

Bargain bulbs

Ah crap, I've done it again.

When is a bargain not actually a bargain?
When you buy an excessive amount of anything, including bulbs.

As I said, Crap.
That's pretty much what I'm thinking now that I have to plant this lot. Late, much too late, they should have been in the ground weeks ago.

I'm a sucker for a sale on plants and bulbs are no different, add a 75% off sticker and I'll almost buy anything. I'm an exotic plant nut, so these almost grotesque parrot Tulips kinda fit in.

Dwarf Narcissus can be squeezed in anywhere and die back relatively unobtrusively, so you don't have the same problem that occurs with the rank leaved large hybrids.

A pink Muscari? Hmmmm, we'll see if it's worth the garden space being a nice clean pink, or if it's a dirty murky colour.....

 I get excited just looking at the picture below, the potential explosion of colour that awaits in the spring. :)

Alliums. Can a garden ever have enough Alliums. I'd say NO!!

Weather permitting tomorrow will be spent trying to get a load more of them in the ground as well as a bit of a reshuffle of existing plants in the front garden,

Is it a bird? Is it a plane?

Slugs, they're a bit of a problem.
Many gardeners are in a bit of a quandary when it comes to them. They feel slightly guilty about controlling them, especially using poisonous pellets in these environmentally responsible times. But then, they also have a major issue with them eating prized plants.

We're told to use the organic and supposedly harmless (to wildlife, pets and people, not slugs and snails) pellets based on iron phosphate. But after recent reading I'm not so sure if they're anywhere near as safe as we've been led to believe.
The poor, confused gardener then feels that their only hope is to resort to using the deterrent method for dealing with the problem.
Try coffee grounds he's told. So off to Starbucks he goes and grabs a couple of bags to spread liberally around the base of Hosta plants. After a few days the slugs outright ignore the fine mulch and slide right across, presumably having a feeding frenzy while high on caffeine, meaning they can eat twice as much leaf in half the time.
Build up a ring of crushed egg shells around the plant, the books say. I refuse. It might work but I haven't tried it. I've tried composting egg shells but they take an age to break down, then when you spread your compost as mulch there are unsightly flecks of shell all over the surface. I certainly don't want an ugly ring of broken shell that will detract from the plant that its designed to protect.
Nematodes are an option, but such methods of control bring back traumatic memories of Sigourney Weaver in the Alien films. Something I try not to think about, having watched them at a much younger age than I should have been allowed.
Then there is the method of partially sinking a ring of copper in the ground completely encircling the plant, along comes Mr (and Mrs, 'cos they're both at the same time) Mollusc, (s)he approaches the succulent Hosta, thinking that the low wall of copper is a an easily surmounted obstacle. 'Ha, think that will stop me do you? (s)he scoffs, but the gardener has the last laugh as the copper gives the unsuspecting slug a mild electric shock which stops it in its tracks, so off it must go with its slimy tail between its nonexistent legs.
But the now confident gardener has not won yet, those cunning and acrobatic gastropods have another trick up their metaphorical sleeves.

Enter Super Slug.
Super Slug is a wily, nimble, but secretive character, rarely seen and not often spoken of. Like the fabled Loch Ness monster, some photographic evidence does exist but it is often unverified, grainy and poor in quality, much like the snap below taken by yours truly.

Super Slug eschews slithering over the ground like mere mortal molluscs.
Not for him(her) the daily drudge of sliding through mulch, over spiky gravel or across shards of broken egg shell, (s)he will not suffer the pain of electric shocks from your ring of impenetrable copper tape.
(S)he scales a tree and slithers along an overhanging branch, clambers to a porch roof, up your garage wall or some other high vantage point. It then produces a thick and strong slime mix and slowly but surely lowers its leaf munching body down onto the prized plant, bypassing all the high tech security measures that the smug gardener has put in place. I mean, abseiling slugs, really?? What will thy think of next to outwit us poor hapless souls?

Having witnessed this event last summer the gardener feels that he now has only one option left in his arsenal, garlic spray. But it seems that the resourceful slug is always one step ahead, so it's likely that they will develop a taste for Hosta and Canna leaf salad with a nice dressing of homemade garlic spray.
The only hope, if they do chew the treated plants, is that any potential mates will be put off any thoughts of amore as their breath will smell so bad, thus ultimately decreasing their numbers.

Well, that's the plan anyway.....

Lilies of summer

I've just been looking at pictures taken in the summer, in some ways it seems like I was snapping them only a few weeks ago. Yet, being outdoors today with a cold cutting wind blowing it was very obvious that summer was some time ago.

The optimist in me knows that spring isn't so far away, the shortest day of the year is this Saturday 21st December so it won't be really long at all until the warmer days and longer daylight hours work their way around again.

Lilies are one of the most stunning groups of flowers that can be grown for summer colour. New to me this year were these two. The first, 'Tiger Babies' is an American Hybrid created by Judith Freeman, a famous Lily breeder. Apparently its parents were lancifolium and regale so it gets a slight scent from the second parent, but it's not strong. However it is a very vigorous grower and the colour is a soft peachy orange so is easy to place in the garden, here growing through the almost black foliaged Sambucus 'Black Lace'.

Next is 'Karen North', one of the North Hybrids or Mylnefield Lilies created in Scotland by Dr Chris North, a stunning and subtle hybrid group.
They're hard to track down and I'd love to be able to grow more of them in the garden, they have an elegance and grace that many Lily hybrids lack, and most are delicately scented as well.
Plentiful reddish orange spotted flowers with dark maroon dashes and gorgeous red speckling are produced in summer and it also has a stoloniferous habit, meaning it will wander about a bit below ground but without becoming invasive. It's one I'm really looking forward to bulking up in the garden.