Anatomy and Treasures

Schefflera digitata Business as usual! After a much needed (and well deserved me thinks!) short break it's back again to tending to the garden during the weekends. I was actually really looking forward to it after not seeing the garden properly for several days, almost two weeks in fact. Although we have only been away for a few days the lack of daytime light impedes in seeing the garden properly...

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National Botanic Garden of Belgium - Part II

Following on from the tour of the Plant Palace in Belgium's National Botanic Garden, here we explore the rest of the gardens. As I mentioned previously the weather had already turned much cooler in Belgium than at home, so the gardens were further into Autumn. Nethertheless we had a very pleasant walk round in the (cool) sunshine. The garden moved to its current home in the grounds...

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National Botanic Garden of Belgium - A tour of the Plant Palace

Mark and I have had a well deserved short break in the Belgian capital Brussels. Although we did all the typical tourist activities (Atomium, Grand Place, various museums, waffles and chocolate! to name a few), we also decided to pay a visit to the Botanical Gardens.  The first Botanical Garden in Brussels was situated in what is now part of the financial district and closed its doors in 1938...

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Scheffleras in the Garden

One of the group of plants we are frequently asked about are the Scheffleras growing in our garden. In relation to my previous post about having blog backlogs, this is one of the topics I was meaning to feature much earlier in the year but never did get round to. I did however start to write a lengthy post about it a few months ago and was halfway through but some other things got in the way and...

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Blog Backlog!

Gunnera manicata and me! A few moments ago I finally had the chance to sort out some of the numerous photos we've taken earlier in the year, of the garden and various other places we've been to. It's all part of getting the computer organised and making it easier to look back at these photos at any point in the future. Skimming through some of these images I am reminded of the amount of backlog...

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Autumn Bonus!

As it's been such a mild autumn so far, one of our very late flowering Dahlias actually had the chance to flower this year. Dahlia excelsa currently in bloom We grow Dahlia excelsa mainly for it's foliage and stature rather than it's flowers, growing very tall during the season which makes it perfect for specimen planting or at the back of a border. This one is currently towering over 12' tall....

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Wordless Wednesday

Ginkgo biloba 'Troll...

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Fungi

At this time of year towards the end of the main garden path we get quite a lot of fungi, whilst we don't know what type these are they are nevertheless quite fascinating.   Hopefully one of our followers will be able to tell us what they are. G...

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Autumn Days

We are well into autumn in the UK, and the dry mild weather is continuing. We have been able to take advantage of the weather and continue with the pond project, as well as a couple of other jobs that have needed doing for a while. One of the paving stones in the side passage had started to get quite wobbly recently and I thought I ought to sort it out. I had assumed a rhizome from the neighbouring...

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Mornings and Weekends

The clocks went back last weekend, switching from British Summer Time (BST) to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Whilst it was a little treat gaining an extra hour of the weekend it also meant that from now on, gardening is mostly a weekend pursuit. Of course there are also the odd mornings I can spend some time gardening when I don't have to rush to work but even so, morning times are limited and it's...

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