Gardening and dogs

At this time of year, the clematis are growing as if their lives depended on it.  Well, I suppose they do – they have to get tall enough to get their heads  in the sun before their flowers form.

Believe it or not, I tied in this clematis yesterday and it has grown 6 inches in 24 hours.  So the lesson is that for the next few weeks, check and tie in your clematis every day. 

This is all the more important when you garden with dogs as the stems are very vulnerable to canine paws and the last thing you want is to have the stems snapped off before they reach their prime by a passing dog.  It may be a chore, but just think of how you would feel if you lost a number of those beautiful blooms for the year.  Just a few minutes now will be worth hours of pleasure in the months to come.

I use soft green twine to tie the clematis into their support and make sure that the string isn’t too tight so that in the days to some I can tuck in the stems that have had a little further to come to reach that height.  This is something that you have to be careful about doing though as I have occasionally asked a stem to bend a little more than it wanted to do and it has broken.  This year, I promise to my clematis that I won’t be too mean in my use of string and use more if necessary to allow all my stems to grow to their full height :).

It really is worth the time to sort out those rampant clematis – why not check yours now?

Have you come across Photina Red Robin?  It is a wonderful shrub with red translucent new growth at this time of year.

Photinia red robin

The only problem with Photinia is that it get a bit lanky as it grows.  I planted one at my previous house.  I left it for a few years as it was a shrub and it didn’t need any pruning – did it?  Then I decided that it had outgrown it space and so one day, I set out to prune it.  I started gently, but what ever I did, I just couldn’t manage to get a decent shape to the plant.  Eventually, I had pruned the plant to within an inch of its life.  I should have just left it – I’ll explain in a minute.  But I decided that the plant looked so awful that it just had to go, so I dug it up.  All the while there were tears in my eyes as I had killed such a lovely plant :(.

When I moved to the new house, one of the first shrubs I bought was a Photinia, I needed to have my old friend back.  But I still didn’t know how to look after it.   Luckily one of the mature shrubs that we bought when the garden was re-designed was a lovely large compact photinia and the designer explained what needed to be done. 

Pinching out the new growth

At this time of year, just as the new growth is coming through, you have to pinch out the tops of all the  new growth.  It is a time consuming and painstaking job, but creates a lovely compact bushy plant.  As I do it, I always think of the people doing this to tea bushes, only I don’t fancy making tea out of a photinia :).

So, going back, what should I have done with the plant I killed?  Well, just what I am doing with the photinia that I planted when I first moved into this garden.  I cut it back to a stump which has started to regrow.   A year on, the stump is starting to disappear and the shrub is on it’s way.  Now I have started pinching out the tips on this one and I should soon have a pair of beautiful Photinias at either end of my “long walk”.

Photinia reborn

I love just staring at the garden.  I often wonder if it is the words that my mother said so often when I was young that ring in my ears and give me such peace looking at my garden.

Part of my morning routine is to spend just two minutes looking out at the garden.  You get a very different perspective from upstairs.  It is very easy to see which shrubs are out-growing their allotted space, that the rowen tree is acting as a climbing frame for the clematis armandii (needs sorting after the clematis has flowered), which branches need pruning from the willow.  I line up the jobs in my mind and marvel at nature at the same time.  

Even looking at the garden each morning, you notice the changes so easily.  As the seasons pass by, life ebbs and flows.  Snow covers the ground and then melts, little green shoots become green mounds, they get taller, flower, return to green mounds and then, in autumn, the brown takes over and then they disappear (my work) and the circle begins again.

Then, all too soon, those few minutes are up and real life once again demands my attention again.  The special time with my garden is over, but there is always tomorrow ……………..