The Flâneur Husband and I are spending our summer holiday in that most exotic of places, the garden. We took a week a few weeks back, and now we have another week off in the run-up to our annual summer party – this year we will be 16 people for lunch and frolicking in the garden.
The weather last week was perfect summer weather – hot and sunny every single day – so it was great for our two mothers who arrived at the summer house on Wednesday. We, though, arrived Friday for the last sunny day, and since then it has been a very mixed sort of weather – blue skies alternating with dark clouds. A quintessentially Northern European summer, so much better than the summer so far!
My Mother-in-law left on Sunday, and my Mum left on Monday, so it’s not like we’re spending our entire holiday under adult supervision, but it was really nice to have them here – and they got loads done while they were here alone; they painted part of the fence around the courtyard and one of the facades, not to mention that my Mum weeded the Evening Border and most of The Ambitious Border. (The Sunny Border is still too new to need much weeding, whereas the other flowerbeds definitely benefited from it. I wouldn’t trust my Mother-in-law to know the difference between weeds and perennials, but my Mum knows, especially since we hardly have any perennials that she didn’t used to grow in my childhood garden.
Also, my Mum HATES slugs. I mean HATES! She’s the sort of person who brings a pair of scissors when she’s weeding, just in case she’ll unearth some slug burrowing in the flower bed – and then she’ll cut them in halves! On Friday evening I noticed that just 55 hours after my Mum arrived in the garden there were significantly fewer slugs than I’d normally see when I arrive for a weekend in the garden. And after a whole weekend with my Mum AND me in the garden, well… This morning I just killed 5 slugs, and not because I didn’t feel like killing more but because I didn’t SEE more. I’ll be lucky if I end up killing 20 slugs today, where I normally kill a hundred in a day.
Anyway, I promised I’d stop just posting close-ups, so here’s a view of the side of the garden I’ve done the most to so far since we bought the summer house. To the right is The Sunny Border, which is at the same time a success and a failure this year – its first. It’s not as lush and full-bodied as I had planned/dreamt it, and I definitely don’t like how much bare soil is visible, but on the other hand… The dahlias have survived in spite of slugs – MANY slugs – and a severe flooding – it was under 4″ of water Friday before last, and that seems to have killed off a lot of growth and a couple of plants entirely – and the ones that flower are spectacular. Also, The iris germanica from my Mum’s old garden bloomed well in May/June, and the Austin roses L.D. Braithwaite that my parents gave The Flâneur Husband for his birthday are doing well. The Anemone hupehensis seem all but dead, though; I’ve seen them grow in full sun in other gardens, but clearly they don’t like it here in mine, so most of them have died. Never mind; I’ll relocate the remainder to a less sunny spot!
To the left in the photo above you can see The Ambitious Border. There are several issues with this border; for one it’s too narrow! It needs to be widened, and of course if you look at the picture you can see that it has a gap between the border at present and The Puddles further down along the same hedge. Eventually I want The Puddles to join up with The Ambitious Border, but this year I prioritised creating The Sunny Border. After all, the South-Western facing part in front of the house is probably one of the best planting areas in the garden!
The Puddles are doing well in their end of The Ambitious Border; the sedums I planted look somewhat tumble-down, but that’s to be expected since I moved them from a spot in tall grass and ferns to a spot where they have to hold themselves up. Likewise the slug damage to the hostas was to be expected, though it’s still appalling. And the Perry’s Baby Red water lily is getting ready to bloom, hopefully in time for the summer party!
Oh, and I didn’t mean to, but… Yeah, the internet is a dangerous place, full of temptations, so yesterday the mailman brought me a box full of these… Three double day lilies Firecracker, three day lilies Frans Hals, three hostas – one of each of Northern Exposure, Tardiana Halcyon and Regal Splendour – three alchemilla mollis/lady’s mantle, one astilbe Purple Rain, one purple astrantia major – Lars and one Echinacea Purpurea.
I’ve wanted some Lady’s mantle for a while since that’s a perennial my Mum used to grow in my childhood garden, and the hostas are just because hostas are lovely and the Evening Border needs filling-out. I’m finding it hard to argue for the astilbe and the echinacea, except that they are pretty flowers, and of course the day lilies are vital, considering that I’ve discovered that we have far too few perennials that bloom in July. (If you look carefully at the picture above you can see that one of the Frans Hals day lilies was even delivered with a flowering stem that survived the postage!) The purple astrantia is also a must-have, and since the Flâneur Husband likes our “normal” pinkish-white astrantias I’m sure he will LOVE the purple one.
The star of the garden right now has to be the white dahlias; for some reason they seem to do better than the darker ones, both in terms of slug resistance and flood survival. They are blooming in profusion and quite saving the Sunny Border from being a mediocre place, simply by virtue of the size of their flowers and the generally stunning appearance.
Finally I’ll give you another cloudscape; I do not garden in a vacuum, and the fjord is very much part of the identity of this garden – and part of what gives this neck of the woods our very special micro-climate. We might have had a rather too wet summer, but generally speaking this is one of the sunnies places in the country since clouds have to first pass the sea, then land, then sea again before they hit us, almost regardless of where they come from.
-And if you look closely you can even find a fragment of a rainbow in the picture above…
Let’s hope August brings us some relief from rain, I’ve never known so many slugs, and I’m with your mum on thi sone, the only way is scissors – revolting but quick!
It sound slike you made some great purchases too, those kind of purchases can always be justified. And agreat shot to end with🙂
I personally prefer my spear so I don’t have to get too close to them. – And if I don’t have it at hand there’s always the edge of a clog! My lawn is littered with dead slugs, but the advantage of this is that since the killer slugs are cannibals they tend to feast on the corpses of their dead fellows, so if I kill one slug in the evening I can kill five others in the morning when they are busy devouring it…
And I spent less than 50 quid on the new perennials, so I think it was a bargain, and they look healthy and happy, so what’s not to love? They will be nicely settled in before the frost in October/November, so I will have some lovely plants next year!!!
How nice to have your Mum and her flowers…she is quite the slug slayer. How exciting to see the puddles are ready to bloom. I have a hard time resisting internet plant bargains. My dahlias are non-existent with the drought. Too bad too.
My Mum and I have been planning this visit for a while, but the timing had to be right. -And it was; my dad has died, so she needs the distraction, and she went back to work on Wednesday so it had to be before that.
Your dahlias can happily have some of our rain; we’ve had plenty this summer to say the least…
Loving the sound of your mum. If you run out of slugs for her to kill there are plenty here!😉 The weather here was stunning last week, a taste of the Med in Wales. Of course it didn’t last long and we’ve reverted back to cool with sunshine and heavy showers. I think the garden looks lovely. It always take a year or so for plants to get established and fill out a bit. My mistake was to buy so many plants in my first year because there was so much bare earth but by the end of the second year I was already having to divide plants and give them away. Loving those white dahlias.
Considering that all the dahlias need to be lifted and stored frost-free over the winter, I’m guessing I will have something else in The Sunny Border by next summer… I will do my best to keep the dahlias alive, but there are no guarantees!
I think Wales has pretty much the same weather as Denmark, only one-two days before us; the wind continues to be from the West, so we get all the spent UK weather over here.
My Mum won’t run out of slugs here, though; as long as there is moist ground there will be slugs, and there will ALWAYS be moist ground here where the water table is one foot below the lawn…
(And I love the white dahlias too, though I’m slightly – shamefully – disappointed that it’s not one of the coloured varieties that is doing so well.)
I appreciated seeing the long view. It really is an ambitious set of borders which now, is quite understandable when you talk of The Ambitious Border. It is lucky you have two helpful mothers. I too would rent out your mum for slug patrol. My dahlia are all eaten to sticks with a big flower on top. That is a pretty sky/water view in the last photo.
The Ambitious Border is planned to be 20 meters long, and though at present it’s only 2 meters wide I do hope to expand it to 3 meters eventually. Maybe more…
My dahlias are a mix of survivors that thrive and survivors that only JUST survive… Many of them won’t flower this year at all, but since they’re mainly grown from seed I’m okay with this. (Growing dahlias from seed is highly recommendable, especially if you have the space to let them grow large enough to sustain a certain amount of slug damage..)
Those white dahlias are superb – hopefully your anti-slug campaign will keep them safe… I can’t bring myself to chop ’em up, so I go for slug-hurling instead; I suspect they just crawl back. I must learn from your example…
Slugs must die, and that’s the end of it… I hurl snails, but slugs are killed at sight. (This morning I passed a slug, thinking I would kill it later, but when I returned 10 minutes later it was nowhere to be seen… They are faster than you suspect!)
The white dahlias are great, though, and they make it all worth while. (Growing them from seeds in flats in the apartment, carving out the flower bed from the lawn and digging it over to make it plant-able.)
Scissors? I can’t do it. Hurling is my only choice. But I don’t think I have the hordes of slugs you describe, so I am more tolerant of them. (Note: I did read once that slugs evolved from primitive boiled okra, but I’m not sure about the science on that.)
You bought a nice selection of perennials. The ladys mantle will likely seed around. You can of course change lead into gold using the silvery dewdrops that occur some mornings on edges of the leaves, very handy alchemy in these hard economic times.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a border that did NOT need to become wider (and wider) as time went by. All is looking well in your gardens!
I can’t do scissors, either. It’s too close, somehow. Cutting them in half with a spear, though, is a different matter!
I didn’t know about Lady’s Mantle’s ability to combat financial woes, but I’m sure it will come in handy. I’m not bankrupt, but I’m not exactly loaded, either…
And borders need widening. Always. But that means digging, so not this year. Maybe next year, eh?
Very nice that your mother can weed – and take care of the slugs, too! Your dahlias are truly stunning. Almost as beautiful as that view!
My mother is a mean and ruthless woman when it comes to weeds and slugs – and otherwise quite a nice person, albeit somewhat eccentric. (My Mother-in-law, on the other hand, doesn’t know her nettles from her nasturtiums, so she is forbidden to do anything at all in the flower beds.)
Soren, Is your mother interested in a second, later-in-life career? She could probably market herself as a new, very effective, organic slug control method. I’m sure people would be happy to have her come and stay in their guest rooms and patrol their gardens for a few days of slug cutting!
I don’t think any perennial border can be evaluated very effectively in its first year. The plants grow so much more in years 2 and 3 (and fill in most of that empty space).
All your new plants are favorites of mine. I saw Hemerocallis Frans Hals in bloom at a garden tour last weekend, and it is a really lovely plant. Enjoy!
To be honest I think she has quite enough work in her own garden, though her arch nemesis there is a rather stubborn population of thistles, intent on growing in her lawn and borders…
The Sunny Border is not a perennial border this year, really; the dahlias aren’t hardy in Denmark – unless you plant them in a very sheltered position with excellent draining and provide ample coverage over winter, none of which I can supply – so the roots will be lifted once the first frost has killed the plants off and then re-planted next year. Perhaps in the same spot, perhaps elsewhere. I might just dot them around the borders, rather than have them all together.
The Frans Hals was even delivered with a surviving stem of flower buds that have bloomed over the past few days, so I was really pleased with that. Instant gratification, whereas the other purchases will only really pay off next summer.
Is your mother available for hire?
I’m afraid she is only available to people who marry one of her three sons, and since we’re all taken you’d have to queue up and cross your fingers for a divorce… (Fortunately that doesn’t look very likely in my family as of yet.)