Snapdragon's garden

A bowl of cherries

My favourite thing in the world to eat is cherries.  Dark, warm, luscious cherries.  I am so envious of people in the South with roadside stalls groaning with trays of cherries - driving round Sussex one June I ate pounds and pound of them.
I had always assumed that there was no point in planting a proper cherry tree here as it is too cold.  We have a morello cherry - the only proper tree in the garden - which is a favourite with the blackbirds who beat me to the fruit, but they like north walls so are quite different.
2 years ago I planted some saplings to divide the drive from what will be the front garden - they were meant to be bird cherry - to flower twiggily in February - but it quickly became clear that we had the wrong variety.
I was going to dig them out and move them to the boundary hedge when they began to fruit - dark, juicy, luscious cherries - pictured above.  I am in heaven.
J
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New home wanted for thugs

This is the time in the garden when I can see which plants are getting out of hand.  In a couple of months Fiona and I shall be sorting out the long borders that run the length of the cutting garden and chucking out the thugs that are taking over.   When I say chucking out I actually mean "moving to a more appropriate place" but it does occur to me that I shall have lots of plants left over and it would be good to sort out a new home for them in advance.
The first on offer is the leopard lily - not really a thug at all, except for in this garden.  Anna Pavord visited last year when it was blooming gloriously, she is writing a book on lilies and had been unable to get it to grow for her at all. So obviously it is a soil and situation thing - we are slightly acid, lots of rainfall, retentive soil - and the 30 bulbs I planted 3 years ago have romped away, squeezing out anything less robust.  I love this lily - it has healthy looking whorly leaves and then between 5 and 15 dark orange turks cap heads.  I shall be replanting these in rows but there are probably about 40-50 bulbs going a begging.
The next is a thug - but what a beautiful thug - white willowherb, the white version of that railway siding flower.  This is the first year that the flowers of this have not been eaten by deer and it is absolutely gorgeous - but it is already 1/2 way across the border and I know it will not stop.
I once saw a photo of white willowherb growing in a meadow and I think that I shall move ours down to the orchard where it can look ethereal in amongst the grasses.
However, thug or not, this would be ideal for anyone who has an area away from other plants that needs lightening up.  Again - I suspect that come October I shall have a lot of roots of this.
I am quite happy to pack these up for free but I would need postage refunded - but if anyone is looking for lovely robust plants this is your chance - e-mail me for more details.

EDIT - GOODNESS YOU ARE A GAME LOT! ALL THESE SCOTTISH THUGS ARE NOW RESERVED AND SHALL BE SENT ON THEIR WAY IN OCTOBER

J

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How the blog works and why you probably aren't on my mailing list

Over the past couple of weeks I have been out and about talking to small business owners about weblogs and how I think that they are an essential part of a business that wants a web presence without employing a Search Engine Optimisation firm.
It has been very interesting and rewarding - particularly when you see that light-bulb moment on people's faces - the realisation that here is a free medium that is theirs to use, that there is no need for a web designer or techie.
It has also pushed me to think about my blog and what it is for and how I use it.  I had a few e-mails from people last week saying that they hadn't left a comment on the notebook giveaway as they had a policy of not entering these things after having bad experience of being spammed in the past.  I was shocked that that had happened to them and annoyed that some business bloggers are taking advantage and undermining trust. 
So I thought that I would take the time to lay out how my blog/website/newsletter division works.  A while ago I  moved by blog from Blogger to Typepad specifically  because you get the e-mail address of commenters.  For me this means that if someone takes the time to leave a comment or asks a question then I can reply directly to them rather than relying on them returning to my blog to read my answer.  I felt that it gave me toe opportunity to be a bit more polite as I do so appreciate all the people who read and comment on this blog.
I do not, and I think it would be immoral, keep people's e-mail details and add them to my general mailing list.  To get onto my mailing list you have to ask.  To my mind it is bad business practice to bulk e-mail people who haven't asked for it. I'm sure that it would just annoy people and annoyed people won't buy anyway.  Immoral and a waste of time.
My newsletter - which is sent out as an e-mail link every couple of weeks - is a definate opt in thing.  It has seasonal tips, demos, & special offers.  It is increasingly going to be the place where you can buy things that I make in too small quantities to justify putting them onto the website.  It also allows me to keep a track of the people who support me (my cheerleaders so to speak) who tell people about my site, who suggest things I should be doing, who are invested in some way in my business.  The top ten supporters will get a special Christmas present.  The newsletter is also a way of my targetting special offers to regular readers - a way of giving something back of splitting the bit of the price that usually goes on marketing or commission. I make more money if I sell direct and quickly so it makes sense to reward those people who buy immediately and from my website.  If you want to get the newsletter (and have the chance of a specially made Christmas present from Snapdragon) just drop me an email and ask.
Jane Robertson was round this week taking some photos of the alliums that I have left - alliums that are meant to be going to seed so that I can dry them - I think thay look fantastic against the broom.

Iris bouquet

I had an e-mail earlier this week from a fellow blogger who is getting married in September - she wants to make her own wedding bouquet and was asking about how difficult it would be.
I thought that the easiest thing would be to do a photo step by step; she is to have roses but as I had lots of iris in the cutting garden I used them in the demo.  The demo is in the newsletter which is out today - sign up  here if you want a copy

Meadowy bunches

This is an interesting time in the cutting garden - after the tulips and the bright alliums are finished we have a couple of weeks where there are no big showy star flowers.  It is a time when the beautiful delicate cottage garden flowers fill the beds - all those flowers with old fashioned names; Hetty's pin cushion; columbine; love lies bleeding; meadowsweet.
Sally has been making up really gorgeous bouquets for subscriptions this week - they look like a patch of mad meadow - flowers that are so complex and delicate that they are best seen close up.
Today I have been sketching a few of them to try and find out how they are put together.
The giveaway on notebooks is still on and yes I will post worldwide (though it might not be feasible on A3 size; I'll have to check)
Hoping you are all having a lovely weekend,
J
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Foraging for flowers

Foraging for food is now very fashionable - people have realised that there is something life enhancing about returning to our roots, finding free food in the hedgerows.
Foraging for flowers is a quite different matter - it comes under the category of picking wild flowers which is not a good thing at all.
It is an interesting distinction.  I find foraging for both food and flowers equally acceptable as long as you stick to sensible guidelines.  I am not advocating picking scarce or endangered flowers from the wild or for diminishing the pleasure of walkers that come after you - I just find it an interesting distinction.
Anyway, as many wild flowers don't work well as cut flowers I thought it would be useful to mention a couple that do, which are very plentiful weeds and which you might even have (and be cursing) in wilder parts of your own garden.  These are the flower equivalent of the food forager's nettles and sorrel, invasive, thuggish and beautiful.
The first is creeping buttercup, the lacquered bright yellow flowers that can easily take over damp grassland - these look fantastic higgledly piggledly in a jam jar and will last a week; in the past I have used them in more formal table arrangements mixed with garden flowers and they more than held their own.  They are ideal on a table outside for an informal lunch as they don't wilt.
The second is flowering pignut - again a meadow flower that foragers dig up for the tubers - hazelnutty nuggets that taste great with a salad of sorel and oranges.  I can't quite see why it would be socially acceptable to dig up the tuber but not to cut the flower . . .but it seems to be.
Anyway - if you want them to last, pick them into water, let them rest somewhere cool for an hour before arranging and then position away from fruit bowls and direct sun.
Remember there is a notebook giveaway on the next post down - I'm a bit worried - yesterday 648 people looked at this and only 5 people seemed to want a notebook enough to post a comment  . . .

The last tulips

These are the last tulips in the garden - the last fabulous swansong, swooping and swooning amongst the euphorbia.
Usually people come to my garden and are amazed by the lack of flowers - it is difficult to explain that if the flowers are still in the beds something is wrong as they haven't sold . . .
These voluptuous grande dames have lived out their lives in the cutting garden as they have dodgy stems - the outer coating has a flaw and they can't be picked without their heads falling off.
They seem to stay intact in the garden though - and there they are one of my favourite flowers - Orange favourite indeed - late flowering, long lasting, sweetly scented.
I'll be sad when the petals fall.

A warning (or 2)

If you let chickens free range in a veg patch . . .










This is what happens to your salad.

On a more sinister note - checking my stats and referrers on Typepad I found a google images request with the search string "My little girl" - we appeared on page 12 of the results so, whoever the searcher was, he was persistent.  I have been trying to convince myself that there could be an innocent reason for such a search.  I have failed. I write this here as I know that I am not alone in mentioning my daughters from time to time, and though I have always been careful not to do it too much and not to give too much information, I now feel sick.

Sunny garden day

A couple of people e-mailed me last week asking for wider photos of the garden.
I suspect that they had their reservations about the details photos of single flowers - what kind of chaos do they bloom within.
And yes, to be honest I am never as on top of the weeds as I would like and the long borders are unbalanced this year to say the least.  Some things died off in the miserable winter, other things flourished to the point of thuggishness.
Anyway here are some photos - taken in todays bright sunshine (though I notice the BBC has us under cloud again) so they are a bit glarey.
First a view towards the airstream - where Euan is busy building a deck out of reclaimed joists so I don't traipse mud into it all the time.
Second a view the other way towards the house and the shed that Euan built from a corrugated barn we bought on E-bay.  The sweet pea structure, the polytunnel and the raised beds are all his handywork too.
The business really couldn't work without him!  Its such a pity that he has to go into work on weekdays . . . .

parrot tulips

We seem to have moved from winter to summer without a break in between.  One minute it was horizontal rain and a northerly gale, next balmy sunshine.
I could get used to it.
This rather glamorous bouquet went out as a transport/packing trial yesterday. It is a sultry mix of tulips queen of the night, rococo and a double form of Princes Irene along with a deep red wallflower and some hornbeam.
I grew the double orange tulips as a replacement for orange favourite - a glorious orange and green parrot tulip which would be the ideal tulip (gorgeous, long blooming, scented) were it not that its stems have a habit of snapping about 2 inches down from the head. It seems to be a fault line rather than a case of the head being too heavy. Unfortunately this orange one has the same fault - both are scented of freesias, I wonder if the snapping stems are genetic too. 
I popped the three sturdiest looking stems into this bouquet, hoping that the hornbeam twigs and wallflowers will keep them safe, but they obviously can't go into a non-trial bouquet.
The search continues . . .