Favourite Things

your garden looks wonderful Bulba. the photo's are excellent too. I expect your talk went down a storm.

I am sure we all would have loved to have been there Bb. A lovely talk at this time of year...bliss.

What a beautiful garden both you and MG have B! I think this is the first time I've seen it like that - a credit to both of you. I'm sure you kept the folk interested :)

Very Nice my sort of garden

What a wonderful garden and gorgeous flowering plants. I like that lilium pyrenaicum best but as they are probably all out at different times I would likely have to say that of each one when I saw it.

Lovely to see this wonderful garden, during the cold months of Winter Bulbaholic, its is beautiful...:>)

Very colourful! Lovely views too. :o)

Thank you all for the nice comments. This seems to be a particularly late season. I knew that many of the people I was speaking to grow Cyclamen coum so I asked if any of them had flowers yet - all said 'no'. In a normal year I would expect to see the first one or two flowers in mid-December. Here we are at the end of January and still only buds.

Edit the above!!!! As of this morning we have flowers on the coum. Only a month late but better late than never.

wonderful garden!

My mahonia is still buds with just a little colour beginning to show, snowdrops late too
I second others, lovely to see some colour
Roll on spring........

A lot of beauties there to look forward to Bulba, it must be grand to sit out and admire your garden with that view as a backdrop.
I`ve been around the garden this morning and spotted my first Aconite, I`m trying to get them to naturalize without much luck but delighted to know I do at least have have one that has returned....
Really appreciate you naming them and added to my favs for future reference.......

so many beautiful plants, they look so lovely in your garden ~ and what a view you have too!

A garden with a view and what a view, and what a garden, you have a delightful selection of plants, love the alpines.

The photos were taken at different times of the year from the Mahonia and C. coum in January to the irises in summer. And, they were not taken in any one year.
The view is one of the reasons that we bought this garden and it is very important to us as it is what we see from our wide sitting room window. We do plant large growing shrubs and conifers within the range of this view and do not hesitate to cut them down once they start to get too large! In the final picture you will see the trunks of a multistemmed ash tree in the top left corner. This was a large and fine feature tree of the garden when we moved in 22 years ago but has kept growing ever since. It was with great regret that I cut it down at Christmas but it was casting just too much shade over the garden and there was a huge area of rain shaddow beneath it.

i can understand you buying the garden for the view Bulbaholic ~ i would like that too!

we have a view of the garden from our house, which we like but there are giant trees surrounding it ~ they dont belong to us so not much i can do. but i would love an open view like that ~ never mind ~ its on my wish list for next time!

We used to have a wonderful view from our upstairs lounge but now we look out on a gas tank, oil tank and a garden shed. Until the NFH moved we also had a view of their undies on the washing line every sunny Sunday. At least half of the previous fine view has disappeared behind an 8.6m high villa which replaced a small bungalow. It is south and west of us and is a nightmare. DO NOT EVER BUY A HOUSE FOR THE VIEW. The view had been there for over a hundred and twenty years and our house is listed but even so it is not entitled to a view nor are we entitled to privacy in our garden or house if the planning officer says so. He has the last word and the councillors go along with it. He is the acknowledged expert.

We, including the neighbours, have already fought off one planning application, Sg, and I don't think that there will be another anytime soon.

Thank goodness for that Bb. I came back to remove the comment because I think the weather is depressing enough without me adding to it. Planners are being pressurised to increase the number of homes available in our area and we expect there will be another much bigger application and some very powerful arguments made for it between us and the next village half a mile away. We are being urbanised by the back door. I'd emigrate if there was a guarantee of anything better elsewhere but there is not so we are having to accept the inevitable and get on with our lives.

you are right SG, sadly we are not entitled to a view, seems awful to me cos thats what puts the price up, but you do have a right to light!

A very sad situation, the only way one will ever get a view is to buy a castle with acres of land, or a lighthouse!!

Lol Dottydaisy I always thought I married beneath my station. After 50 happy years I'll settle for what I've got.

i would love a castle but they are a bit big and cold ~ the lodge house would do me!

I really enjoyed this blog Bah, your garden is very beautiful. My favourite pic is the next to last of the elegant yellow lilies contrasted with the acer and I've never seen a yellow pulsatilla before either:-)

Thank you, Ba. The yellow pulsatilla is very beatiful. It is species P. from the European Alps and the Dolomites.

Did you grow any of these from seed Bb? I'm currently reading my way through Ian Cristies bulb logs on the srgc website and want to try my hand with some of the seeds in the seed exchange catalogue. As my reading does not match the speed at which the year is going along I'd be interested in how you sowed your seeds and approximately how long from day one to flowering size.
I got my Pancratium maritimum that I wanted. I sowed half yesterday and will sow the others tomorrow. They need to sit in a cold greenhouse for the first two years before I can plant them out.

We grow a lot of stuff from seed, Sg, particluarly from the exchange. Of the above the pulsatilla and some of the crocus species we have grown ourselves.
Most our seed is sown in 3" square plastic pots filled with a compost of 2parts New Horizon compost, 1part grit and 1part sharp sand. The seed is sown thinly on the surface of the compost, covered with a thin layer of grit, labelled and put outside. For bulbs with small, rounded seeds like crocus and narcissus I push a small hole in the compost in the center of the pot using a finger, one joint deep. The seed is dumped in the hole and covered over. As the small bulbs grow they push themselves appart. They may stay in the same pot for several years until they are nearly flowering size and after the first year they do get fed with weak tomato feed.

Thank you for that. I was given this info but I need to write things down nowadays or I forget. Old age etc.