Mellow Yellows

"The cure for anything is salt water:

sweat, tears, or the sea" - Isak Dinesen

Gironde Estuary at Barzan Plage -
where ancient Romans came for mud baths!

Whilst salt is a necessity for us humans, it's anathema to most plants. There are gaps in some of the sunflower fields near our house where water from the estuary has encroached in past years.

A mutant thumbing his nose at tourists..?

But on the whole sunflowers - or tournesols - do pretty well around here, providing a welcoming army of smiling faces for arriving tourists, as well as producing the excellent local sunflower oil.

Varieties seem to have shorter stems these days, so there's less wastage at harvest time; even so, these brown and black rustling plants give off great clouds of dust when they're finally cut down in October.

That, and the grape harvest, will be a signal that summer is truly over.

Courtyard seating areas

Meanwhile, we continue to enjoy hot sunny days followed by cool nights, which is the perfect recipe for a good night's sleep and helps to revive our sometimes flagging plants.

Despite high temperatures, we've taken the risk of planting out some of my newly-raised Sweet Williams (aka 'Sooty') so that they can fill the gaps left by larkspur and other annuals.

Lavender, Echinacea and Salvia
turkestanica alba - in full flourish

One can't help panicking when big spaces appear and there isn't an appropriate 'filler' to hand!

Cosmos is indispensible at this stage and luckily some of last year's seeds have begun to sprout in the borders. Given a bit of water, they are easily lifted and transplanted into new spots.

For insurance, I also sowed a small tray of Cosmos sulphurea, which came up straight away and will be ready to plant in ten days.

Crocosmia 'Emily McKenzie'
starting to emerge

After all the pinks and mauves of echinacea and lavender which dominated the first half of July, the hotter shades of late summer are beginning to take centre stage.

With rudbeckias and heleniums now in full flower, the colour of the moment is yellow - and various shades thereof - going through orange into red.

This is epitomised by the swordlike shafts of crocosmia which have gradually come into bloom, starting out rather snakelike (as here on the left) and finally throwing back their heads in a full-throated display of hot colour.

Emily cooling off in a sudden shower

We planted this vibrant crocosmia in our semi-shaded border, next to the dark leaves of Actaea simplex atropurpurea. Captured in a strong evening light, 'Emily McKenzie' glows almost scarlet against the backdrop of deep purple foliage. A really dramatic plant - smaller and more delicate than the popular 'Lucifer'.

Echinacea purpurea

Echinaceas are still a mainstay in the border, attaining a height of almost 2m - due in no small part to Christina's excellent watering system!

I love them in their emergent phase, as shown here; but once again their colours intensify as the flowers mature and they too look wonderful in the glow of late afternoon and evening.

We now have them in shades of pink, green and cream - any of which are useful for cutting.

Yellow Rudbeckia hirta, with white Shasta
Daisy, blue Scabious, orange Cosmos and
Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer'

All the flowers shown here last for a week or more in water, with the exception of Cosmos sulphurea which tends to droop after a couple of days.

Lavender blooms are starting to go to seed, save for those we cut back in June which now have small young flowers. Instead we can pick a few stems of dark flowering salvia, like Salvia guarantiaca 'Black and Blue', which has finally got going after a slow start and provides bold contrast to all those orangey yellows.

Nicotiana 'Lime Green'
underplanted with lobelia 

Every year we promise ourselves to drastically reduce the number of pots we have to water... it seems such a waste of time and compost. But quite often we succumb to an impulse-buy of some colourful annual, only to find we have nothing to use for edging around a pot.

For me, lobelia has always been a perfect accessory, especially the Cambridge Blue trailing variety which is impossible to buy later in the season. So this year, I ordered seeds from Chiltern Seeds in the UK and started growing them in my trusty cold-frame back in April.

Being such tiny seeds, they tend to clump together and, when they finally came up, the threadlike seedlings were pretty impossible to prise apart without causing damage... yes, I should have mixed them with sand before sowing! Hence I had to prick them out and plant them up in clumps, which is not ideal for the development of their roots.

Lobelia erinus pendula 'Blue Fountain'

That said, most of the plants survived well and have been blooming away in three different containers; the green tobacco plant above was a spare seedling which we couldn't bear to throw away and it's turned into a handsome pot plant.

The lobelia itself seems to do best in semi shade where its blue flowers are two-toned and look lovely with grey leaved plants such as lavender. I'm hoping it will seed itself around the courtyard and provide us with easy-grow plants next year!

Verbascum nigrum

 Yellow natives

On a recent stroll around the site of a Roman amphitheatre which is being excavated locally, we walked through a meadow of lemon yellow mullein which was alive with buzzing insects. This is a shorter, more dainty version of the statuesque mullein, Verbascum densiflorum, which can reach to 4m on chalky banks and has grey-green foliage like the garden variety.

Tetragonolobus maritimus

In the same area of scrubby limestone soil, we came across these soft pillows of yellow vetch - a wild flower which goes by the surprising name of Dragon's-teeth, due to the long seed pods which eventually form.

It's a salt-tolerant plant and may well have existed there since Roman times when the supposed port of Novioregum would have been much closer to the shore.

An estuary vineyard, unfazed by salt-laden winds

Good Companions

"Collecting ripe seeds and growing plants from them

is one of the great joys for gardeners."

- Christopher Lloyd

Dianthus superbus and Stipa tenuissima

In hot summers it's vital to have some light and airy plants to give the impression of a draught wafting through your garden... even if it's only the mildest of breezes!

The popular Mexican grass, Stipa tenuissima, took hold in our courtyard some years ago and we liked it so much we've just let it flourish.

Dianthus superbus 'Superb Pink'
- from Chiltern Seeds

It seeds itself happily in the chalk base of our gravel courtyard and just needs a comb every once in a while to draw out the dead 'hairs' which tend to get matted after rainfall.

Then, voila, it looks like the finest of blond tresses after a rainwater rinse!

Now we've found a similarly tall, wavy companion flower called Dianthus superbus 'Superb Pink', which I grew from seed last year. It must have taken about twelve months to start flowering and patience was wearing thin as some of the grass-like specimens in our raised bed started to look very dry and frazzled.

Dianthus superbus and
Veronica spicata 

But, finally, it has rewarded us with a positive exuberance of flowers - delicate and fringed, ever so slightly scented and good for cutting. As light levels decrease in the evening, its finely cut petals glow beautifully against the dark shadow of our little garden house behind.

We also grew some of these in a shadier border under the ash tree and foliage has stayed a better, deeper green. The flowers are just as good, having come a little later but lasting for longer in the relative cool.

When my cousin came to stay recently we took her to one of our local beaches where there are carpets of wild pinks flourishing in sandy soil beneath the pine trees. She noticed that some had already formed ripe seed capsules, so we took a few just to see if we can grow them in the garden.

Wild pinks by the beach

I have to agree with Christopher Lloyd that raising your own plants from seed is hugely satisfying.

Pinks are amongst the easiest to grow, provided you use seed when it's fully dry and ripe, scattering it over sandy or gritty soil in a warm site. They need very little in the way of watering - in fact putting them into humid compost is probably the worst thing you can do for successful germination.

In England I was told that mixing a bit of brick rubble and mortar into your soil would make a good cuttings medium for pinks... Over here we just add some of the chalky bits that accumulate down our back lane.  Another way of using what Nature has so generously provided for free!

Scabious caucasica 'Fama Blue' with
Marbled White butterfly

Recent hot weather has encouraged lots of butterflies to visit the garden, especially when we've used the watering system and they can have a drink at the same time as collecting nectar.  It seems the large blooms on these scabious are popular with most winged insects and a single flower can host two or three visitors at the same time.

Tree poppy or Romneya coulteri

One of Christina's favourite plants, also grown from seed, is the flouncy tree poppy or Romneya. It sits well amongst a border of tall echinacea, coming into flower now.

The RHS classifies Romneya as a "suckering sub shrub" (not easy to say after a glass or two!) but gives it their seal of approval for the garden. It grows to about 2m, with tough but attractive grey-green foliage which enables the plant to thrive in hot climates and be fairly drought resistant. 

Romneya in full flounce

I find many types of poppy difficult to raise from seed because they don't like being pricked out from a tray to a pot and are better  grown in situ where they are to flower... which can be awkward in a small garden, with space at a premium and weeds liable to overtake seedlings at any moment.

So, Romneya is ideal in that respect: easily grown from seed and happy to be transferred from tray to pot.

Nerium oleander

Another Mediterranean-type plant which is popular here is the oleander.  It does particularly well in town gardens where it's more protected from frost and harsh winds and, so far, we've resisted the impulse to try and plant one on our own wind-battered site.

They are, however, sold quite cheaply in pots at the start of the season and do make a handsome container plant which doesn't need too much water.

We chose two different pink varieties and the paler one has come out well before the other for some reason.  No matter, they will provide a couple of nice punctuation marks on either side of the driveway.

Here you can see it next to the lavender border which is in its second summer.

The lavender plants have grown quite large and now need to be kept tightly trimmed... we experimented by cutting back every other plant just as it was about to flower.  

This had the effect of delaying flowering and it's noticeable that new blooms are smaller and shorter than the first growth, which is somewhat lax and inclined to flop over our black edging. For the sake of neatness and uniformity, we may decide to give them all a June-prune in future.

Cotinus coggigrya or Smoke Bush

Shrubs like smoke bush put on a huge amount of growth in midsummer and we suddenly noticed that ours is about 4m tall, with lots of dark leaves which almost burn with colour in the evening light.

Raised bed with Achillea 'Terracotta'
and Catanche caerulea in foreground

By contrast, our new raised bed falls into shade by late afternoon, so the pale blues and whites really stand out.

We looked for a long time to find the achillea called 'Terracotta' because its lovely apricot hue complements anything with a bit of mauve in it. Hence we planted it close to a small catanache, which is slightly lilac in tone, and to Veronica spicata which is a darker mauve.

Playing with colour gives you an almost Monet-like ability to turn your garden into a canvas, with constantly moving light providing some deft brushwork which can be caught on camera and creatively manipulated for hours in Photoshop. 

But, contrary to appearances, the following shot really hasn't been cloned!

Young storks in a freshly mown hay meadow

Gardening Zen

"Summer makes a silence after spring"

- Vita Sackville-West

Serenity reigns... well, sometimes

Not sure that I totally agree with Vita's comment, given the manic twittering as a flock of goldfinches eyes up the birdbath for a drink, or the repetitive clucking of a black redstart warning the world that our cat is on the prowl. Even insects thrum noisily past your ear as you settle down for a doze in the shade. 

Drenched but not bedraggled -
'Scarborough Fair'

But finally those chill winds and sudden rainstorms have calmed into welcome breezes which refresh the midday heat and allow butterflies to roam lazily between flowers.

It seems that some roses recover better from rain than others...

'Scarborough Fair' is possibly my favourite climber and her delicate blooms seem to survive a fair bit of punishment without being blemished or losing petals.

She's also planted in semi-shade which is a help on hot days.

Rosa mutabilis growing with
Galega officinalis var. alba

Light and dark planting

Another rose, which seems to do better in shade, is the fragile Rosa mutabilis growing outside our living room window where we can watch its orange buds opening to pale pink flowers, which quickly become darker with age.

It's undeniably pretty but can be a bit leggy so I tried underplanting with a ferny-leaved Galega officinalis var. alba, which has the RHS stamp of approval.

I sowed this last year and we had a few flowers; but it's now more robust as it pushes up between the rose stems, giving the relaxed impression of a natural hedgerow.

I see that Galega is commonly known as 'goat's rue' or 'French lilac', and the flowers do in fact have a hint of lilac when you look at them closely; but I've not come across any wild versions rambling in meadows around here!

Some garden writers are a bit sniffy about galega but it works well in tandem with the rose and I enjoy its airy foliage which freshens up an otherwise shady corner of the courtyard.

Salvia turkestanica with
 Penstemon 'Husker Red'
and Dianthus barbatus 'Homeland'

Other pale accents are currently provided by this creamy-greeny salvia from Turkestan, which is drought resistant, and Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red' which is going over now but still looks fine with its dark stems and leaves.

A contrasting background is offered by the annual blue larkspur - always a mainstay in June - and magenta flowered lychnis. We used to have a white version of the latter but this hasn't come back from seed, unlike its brash rival which pops up everywhere.

Our pink and white sweet williams - called 'Homeland' - have been a great success and people have remarked on the fact that they're taller and more striking than the ordinary plain varieties, some of which have got rather lost under the abundant foliage in our borders.

Dianthus barbatus 'Homeland'
- after weeks in flower

One plant in particular has produced lots of white streaks on its petals as it goes over, so the flowers still appear remarkably fresh after some six weeks in flower.

As they're biennials, I'll leave a few stems for seeding purposes and dig up the rest to make space for my next batch of babies. In this case I've potted up some Dianthus barbatus 'Sooty', which the catalogue promises will be fetchingly dark all over!

  

Penstemon digitalis 'Husker Red'

Here you can see 'Husker Red' in its prime - another handsome plant grown from the Chiltern Seeds collection. 

The few penstemons we've found on sale locally have been rather garish and I've noticed that their flower colour doesn't always sit well with a pale green foliage. 

I've found 'Husker' to be variable depending on where it's sited in the garden: if there's too much shade, the foliage doesn't darken properly and it can look a bit insipid. You need that sharp contrast of white petals against deep maroon stems for it to be truly effective.

Catanche caerulea or Cupid's Dart

Something you will be able to find in garden centres here is the pretty little Catanche caerulea which grows well in chalk (as shown here) or in sand, where its stems are slightly longer at about 50cm.

The one listed by Chiltern's as a 'Best Seller' sounds very similar but apparently grows taller - to a height of two to three feet - so I may have to try some of their seeds just to find out if there's a difference in the type we have growing locally.

Bupleurum rotundifolium
 'Garibaldi'

For those who, like me, are not familiar with growing Bupleurum rotundifolium, I can now report that it's a useful 'filler' in the border, offering some architecture along with those striking yellowy-green bracts - so reminiscent of euphorbia but with no messy sap to deal with!

It's difficult to make out the overall shape when grown amongst other plants, hence I've used a plain background to isolate both stems and leaves. Height varies, depending on whether it's grown in sun or shade - anywhere between one and four feet.

I still need to work out the right kind of planting combination to make the most of its attributes, so will probably bring some stems indoors to arrange in a vase together with a few possible companions.

Meditation and observation

Meditation of the feline kind

In actual fact I find it hard to sit outside and do nothing... like so many gardeners my mode of relaxation is to potter, secateurs in hand, looking for plants to dead-head or weeds to pull out.

As a child I used to think these were the most boring tasks imaginable: I'd rather be on my bike or climbing up into a tree house - even digging the veg patch held more appeal!

So we get older and turn into our mothers, reaching for trug and trowel rather than carving out a new patch for ourselves.

But that's only possible because the hard work has been done earlier and your garden should be  in good shape now; it just remains to enjoy it and keep an eye on everything.

To that end, dead-heading has become a pleasurable routine which I prefer to do in the cool of the morning, when shadows are still soft and low light shines into the depth of your borders, illuminating any little problems which might need sorting sooner rather than later.

Early morning teasel

It's all valuable maintenance; you can focus your attention on the details whilst your mind wanders elsewhere. (Zen?)

By removing the spent flowers on almost everything - from larkspur to lychnis to roses - you're putting energy into more growth and flowering, keeping the magic going a bit longer.

And by looking closely into your plants, you notice if there are any problems with weeds or pests.  Sometimes we take action if growth seems particularly threatened; other times we find that natural predators come to the rescue, or that there's enough food and flowers for everyone... so why worry?

  

Nature and Nurture

"Great things are done by a series

of small things brought together". 

- Vincent van Gogh

June evening on the marais

It's been said many times that gardening is good for the soul. For that reason it is used as a means of rehabilitation for offenders and as therapy for people who have been emotionally damaged in some way.

Peony lactiflora with
climbing rose 'Scarborough Fair'

Done properly, gardening breeds in us an empathy for the natural world, for life cycles of blossom and decay and, probably most rewardingly, for combinations of simple, uncontrived beauty.

This is the month for roses, for extravagant peonies and, in the hotter parts of the garden, bright clumps of pink dianthus exuding a subtle scent of cloves.

Rosa rugosa - 'Rubra'

In addition to some showy hybrids from David Austin roses, we're also fond of Rosa rugosa - a rough and ready shrub, which thrives in dry areas of semi shade and produces fat red hips after flowering. I normally cut off the first lot of seed heads which form in June, enabling the plant to put its energy into creating more blooms later on.

The flower here has lovely stamens and might be from a hybrid rugosa called 'Rubra' with a particuarly strong scent.

'The Pilgrim' rose from David Austin

However carefully you nurture your roses, you can be sure that Mother Nature will try to trip you up just as they reach a peak of flowering...

Usually it's a sudden storm but this year we went from cool, overcast skies to scorching sun in less than 24 hours. Luckily the forecast had predicted a rise to 34'C, so we prepared most of our plants by watering them well in advance and surrounding them with a well-rotted mulch of leaf mould.

Many of those hybrid roses, such as The Pilgrim (above), produce heavy blooms which soon fade and die if exposed to a lot of rain or sun. So we picked several clusters whilst they were still looking good and brought them into the cool shade of our living room.

Feeding and watering

Under the shady ash tree

Fortunately, the high temperatures lasted but a day and we're now back to a stiff northerly breeze, which can be equally drying but a lot less scorching.

We have a shady corner set aside for making compost and leaf-mould - not the most attractive area perhaps but, in addition to housing compost and canes, we've  added some shade-loving plants like Lamium maculatum and Geranium 'Kashmir white', which have flourished with the aid of our watering system and make it feel more like a woodland glade.

Arching stems of Deutzia scabra hang over a
French brouette and watering-can

Another form of nurturing which helps to get the most out of your plants is to use a natural fertilizer to promote flowering. We cut up stems of comfrey, plucked from a nearby meadow, add them to a can of water and leave the rather foul-smelling brew to steep for a couple of weeks.

Metal watering cans are useful for this purpose as long as you cover the openings to keep out mosquitoes.

Depending on how strong the mixture becomes, dilute it with more water before using it around your flowering plants - and take the rose off your watering can otherwise those holes get clogged up with nasty bits of comfrey!

Christina's obelisk 

Garden structure

We're always looking at different methods of adding height to our small garden, whether it's with climbing plants, or tall flowers like verbascum and foxglove, or actual structures like this obelisk.

And, when I'm on the computer writing my blog, Christina is always casting around for a new project... so, hey presto, she turned her hand to woodwork and soon came up with this handsome frame for her favourite moss rose.

'Shailer's White' moss rose - in the pink!

Much as we love these old-fashioned roses, with their prickly stems and sticky buds, they can be awkward to train neatly without their getting entangled in neighboring plants. (It's interesting how many of our so-called 'white' flowers end up with splashes of pink on their petals..!)

Caro's 3D birthday card

Talking of pink - which isn't usually my colour - Christina put together this very artistic card for my birthday. As a miniature vase, she used the small plastic container found in certain hair-colouring products and her little posy actually lasted a whole week. Yes, sometimes the best gifts are ephemeral.

Young stork being weighed in a bag

When having coffee in the garden the other day, our neighbour Robert cycled over to tell us that people were coming to ring the baby storks which had been born on his platform earlier this year. Would we like to take some photo's?

I baulked at the idea of climbing up the tall, wavering ladder to photograph the birds in their nest, but it was interesting to observe the 'birdman' who carried out his job of weighing and ringing the chicks with great confidence and dexterity.

White stork in flight

This year there were only two juveniles, compared with three or four in previous years; one weighed in at 2k and the other at 4k. Sadly, the body of another baby lay beneath the platform... accident or murder, I wonder?

Whatever the cause, we noted that at least one concerned parent was keeping a close eye on the proceedings, flying in wide circles above us. The other, presumably, was crouched down on the platform with its nestlings. 

The whole operation took just minutes and this data will be recorded by the LPO which closely monitors the growing population of storks in our part of France.

Blue larkspur and Stipa gigantea

A fish in the grass!