Summer visits - Enys

July has been a month of juggling visitors and work, it's also been a month of glorious hot, sun and miserable, cold rain. A month of busy-ness and gadding about. Hence the blog has stalled again - I really need to have a consistent plan for posting - I just can't stick to anything at the moment!

So now there is a backlog of about 6 posts and I better get on with it

Earlier in the month my mum came to stay and the challenge was on to find some new gardens to her. Every time she comes we visit 2 or 3 and we've been here 10 years now but finding new places to visit is never too difficult.

Our first visit was to Enys gardens in Penryn.

Famed for it's Bluebell Festival in April (it has one of the largest and oldest bluebell meadows in the country - the Lye) I have never been in the summer before so wasn't quite sure what to expect.

We wandered round the woodlands and past the Lye, now just meadow grasses and wildflower seedheads, past the lush ponds to the stumpery...

which in April is stark and bare but now is festooned with ferns - and on through the gate into the flower garden...

where there was an explosion of colour and lushness with drifts of Crocosmia, towering Phormium and tropical Banana Palms...

Alchemical Mollis, Eryngium and grasses.

Insects were rampaging about busily, including red Soldier Beetles, Meadow Brown butterflies and Banded Bumblebees...

Roses, Astrantia and Rogersia flowers burgeoned...

and texture was added by the veined and ridged leaves of an Acer/Sycamore (!?! suggestions please, it was beautiful)...

and the cloudiness of a Cotinus living up to its common name of the smoke bush.

Paths led this way and that, some bright and colourful, some lush and green.

Outside the flower garden we strolled through lush and mossy woodland again to the long walk...

with borders full of drifts of purple and white against the lovely old wall.

There were Cardoons, Verbena Bonariensis, Echinacea, Geraniums, Marguerite Daisies, Lamiums and tall, stately Echinops, all interspersed with grasses...

beautifully restful after the riot of colour in the walled garden.

There was a Food Jam event going on in front of the house - a riot of smells with street food stalls from far and wide. We didn't join in...

but wandered around the decrepit house that is being slowly restored.

Then home for tea, although we could have availed ourselves of the tea room there, the rest of the family were waiting at home.

Enys was a lovely summer surprise, and I will certainly add it to my year round itinerary. There are also lots of events, craft fairs, exhibitions and performances.

Visit their site here: Enys Gardens

These boots haven't seen much gardening - they could almost be mine!!!

xx

June Highlights

I know - it's July (how did that happen - I feel like I'm still at the end of May) and how ever behind I am I think I should stop and look at what filled the garden during June. It's the best month in my garden, however much year round planting I do, by mid July things can look a little blown and tired.

It's so easy to rush headlong onward and miss the gorgeous flowers, plants and smells of early summer. I haven't been in my garden much recently, regular readers will know why, except to loll in my hammock limply, last week was solid rain (good for the garden I know) and latterly blustery wind, so the following images were snatched in fragmented moments throughout the month.

Early June

Gorgeous Iris - so short lived but so lovely.

Beautiful Astrantia, spiky Aquilegia Green Apples and a carpet of Osteospermum and Mexican Daisies following the sun.

Mid June

My gorgeous Ginger Snap Climbing Rose - it smells divine.

My nine foot foxglove - and it's still going!!

The Broad beans are ready...

but I think I only have one pear and one apple - my trees need attention!

but there were strawberries!

The perennial Geraniums loved the sun...

as did the soft, silvery Stachys with Mexican Daisies and Lychnis in the background.

I can never get enough of Oriental Poppies, again such brief blooms but so spectacular.

A shady corner lightened by the lovely starry Campanula that was one of the very few things I saved from the unkempt and bramble strewn garden we inherited.

and a Ligularia Sky Rocket that I planted against a dark, purply Cotinus.

Late June

Purples of bee buzzed Lavender, Geraniums and Triteleia.

The heady scent of Jasmine Clotted Cream cascading across the window, it's flowered more this year than ever before, perhaps something to do with it's radical prune last winter. 

The fiery strength of the Californian Poppy...

and the promise of Agapanthus overload - these are just 5 of my 10 buds...

and the delicate fragrance of the Trachelospermum again flowering better than ever before. It seems  to appeal as much to the insects as it does to me!!

So now on to July, the sun is back (sporadically) and the summer holidays approach, and everything is still growing and falling about fit to bust. 

Staking, weeding and deadheading is essential, but somehow BBQing, G+Ting and Pimmsing seems to be more appealing - guests are on the horizon so entertaining will take over - hopefully lots of it in the garden!

Hey-ho! Cheers my dears!

Next Doors Garden claims another victim!

Quite a tabloid start I'll grant you, but honestly, it has.

Whilst digging up a single huge Weeping Sedge plant my Garden Maintenance Operative (otherwise known as teenage son - he's definitely putting it on his CV and now wants a contract!!) broke my garden fork! I think it became personal, he was heard to mutter - 'that thing was never going to survive'

That 1 plant took three sacks to bag it up and had to be rendered down quite extensively.

There are multiple others that need to come out too - not sure if it's the Sedge that's weeping or me!!!