A day of disasters. Crawly caterpillars ate half of my ornamental cabbages overnight and my matthiolas as well, hard rain bent "Ayesha" to the ground, its spoon like sepals collecting so much water, The wind flattened the H. quercifolia, a tray of foxglove seedlings was overturned, sending 25 baby plants all ahoo, one of my three plants of sweetpea was pulled by mistake while weeding, and one of my growing pumkins was misteriously slashed and pierced, ina Zorro like vindictive style. No idea how THAT happened.
In days like this one should probably only crawl back in bed to be spared further troubles.

Yesterday I took a number of boxwood cuttings, and I believe I will take even more in the next days. I dug steps into the steep bank dividing the garden proper from the kitchen garden and I intend to flank it with a low hedge of box and lavender. I hope that if I can impose some structure and order in the layout of the garden the flaws of the former planting can be obscured a bit. They cannot of course be obliterated bet perhaps they can be made to fade in the background.

Flooded with food from the garden we cannot eat enough, despite giving away bags of zucchini and salad. I am sure there are worse problems, but I swear I have had nighmares of invading hordes of marrows. I begin to see what C. Lloyd meant when he wrote that he didn´t like to feel hounded by his vegetables.
Baking the largest apple pie I have ever seen, to relieve our overloaded trees of some of their burden. The apples are not really, completely ripe yet, but for a pie they will do nicely.I had to throw four buckets of small apples in the composter, they have fallen with the wind of the last storms all over the place. Even so the branches of the poor trees are touching the ground. Are unripe apples any good for horses? There are so many around here, may be they would have liked the treat?

Yesterday a visit to a private garden in Benzweiler, open to the public for one day. The pubblicity was in the Hunsrück-Mittelrhein GartenRoute booklet from the tourist office, a booklet that had been lost in the pocket of a jacket until a few days ago. Pity, there are lots of private gardens in the region occasionally open for visiting, and I wish I had seen more of them. Next year... The Country Garden I saw yesterday is not as such memorable (a bit too wild for my taste, even for a country garden) but it´s full of inspiring little ideas, and it includes a tiny shop and green house selling garden plants, bedding annuals and herbs. Some of the perennials for sale are definitely more unusual and interesting than the average GC choice. The really funny thing is that I - unexpectedly, I never win anything - won the first prize of the raffle organized by the owners, and got myself two tickets for the big garden show in Bingen... the hubby is not happy, but such are the dangers of indulging a gardening wife for half an afternoon.

I bought myself a Cosmos atrosanguineum, the famous chocolate cosmos. Such a splendid colour, and the scent is enticing. This morning I found a bee asleep in the flower, voluptously curled around the central tassel of stamens. It flew away in confusion when nuzzled, with a visible list to starboard and a somewhat drunk sway.

Today yet more cuttings, Hydrangea quercifolia "Snowflake", Hoya imperialis, various macrophyllas that I promised to a british friend.

Propagating day. Cuttings of Pieris Japonica, of lavender, of Prunus laurocerasus "Otto Luykien", more hydrangea cuttings. The yew cuttings are finally starting to show new shoots and I have some cuttings from a hedge nearby of a prettily berried plant yet to identify.

The single little "Otto Luykien" came from a garden centre where I hoped to find some decent cannas, but alas they all looked suspicious. I am resolved to grow mine from seed now, even if it will probably mean postponing the planting of the exoctic corner yet another year. The ground there is improving visibly, a nice brown sponge. Worms are finally working their way into it. 940 liters of organic matter added so far. The two compost heaps started in april are coming along very nicely.

In the kitchen garden everything has spilled over the boundaries I had set, and the whole place looks luxuriant, actually scarily so. We have more zucchini than we can eat, and all the rest is slowly ripening as well. The first pumpkins are showing and the chillies are already deep red and dangerous. We have tiny potatoes too.

Hydrangea arborescens "Hayes´Starburst" is the most spectacular arborescens I have seen so far. It is a flimsier plant than "Annabelle", with narrow leaves and an ever more pronounced adversion to hot dry afternoons. But the flowers are a wonder. They open like light weight lacecaps, but the florets in the center after a period of apparent indecision begin to frot and mount and suddenly one day the whole flower heads is indeed an explosion of multiple starry florets shading from pale green to the purest white. It is very beautiful, impressive without being heavy. This plant was a selfsown seedling discovered by Mr Hayes Jackson in his own garden of Anniston, Alabama. He shared the plant with friends, which was lucky because his own died.

Alas my canna "Wyoming" of which I had bought some roots in spring turned out to be diseased by the all-world common canna virus, and after some days of indecision, with much heart ache and some sniffeling I decided to throw them away. It is very sad to rip them off now that they were finally starting to grow, but the leaves were already striped and mottled rather visibly. Will have to get some fully grown cannas, or seeds. Canna glauca, C. paniculata and C. speciosa are all very desirable, and available from Chiltern. Canna musifolia would be a lovely addition too, and could very well replace bananas in my tiny exotic corner, but I haveno idea where to get one, or seeds. Seeds are supposedly immune from the virus, and if the garden is clean from it to start with, I should be safe. I had hoped that by now the canna tubers for sale would be reasonably clean. Wishful thinking, apparently.

Colocasia tubers arrived in mass from two different sources now, India and Portugal. If half of them sprout I have more colocasias than I will ever need. No "Black Magic" though.

Still no signs of life from Musa and Tetrapanax. I wonder if they have chilled and shiveredtoo long before getting into the propagator. Poor cold hotties.

"Annabelle" is an extremely popular hydrangea and deservedly so. Her mophead look is deceiving. She is not a macrophilla but a much tougher, bone hardy and reliable subject. Hydrangea arborescens "Annabelle", like all of her kindred, blooms on new wood and no late frosts worry her. Under a thinck mulch her roots can come through any winter. For all her hardiness she is still a luxuriant, flamboyant subject. Her flowerheads are large (too large, say some) and held high over the foliage (except in rainy weather, when the all plant splays outward, weeping). The colour changes from the initial pale green to pure white to a wonderful shade of chartreuse, that lasts trough the winter in dried flowers arrangements. For this purpose "Annabelle" provides some of the loveliest flowerheads, domed and regular, made up of tiny florets, individaully designed like the most iconic of origami flowers. H. arborescens is not a japanese flower hower. Like H. quercifolia it was discovered in the damp shady woodlands of the (future) United States. John Bartram found and described this plant in its wild form in the thirties of the 18th century, making H. arborescens the first known hydrangea. The original "Annabelle" was discovered in 1910 near Anna, Illinois. Attempts are being made to breed a pink flowered version.

All the "Moulin Rouge" sunflowers are now blooming: they come in several different shades. Some a sombre chocolate maroon, some orange.brown flamed with yellow, some, the best, in a very dark very rich crimson, shading to real black at the centre of the flower. They make no real show in the garden, their dark colour fading in the background, but what a wondrous surprise they provide when one comes close to them and their subtle presence suddenly resolves in front of one´s nose. It is the first time in my life I call a sunflower subtle. It is indeed a rare creature.

Over the last two days cuttings of 14 different hydrangeas were taken, potted and labeled. It is unfortunately too late for the paniculatas, and probably also for arborescens, heteromalla and aspera. All of these will have to be propagated next spring by hardwood cuttings, or next summer, early.

A beautiful Sambucus "Black Beauty" has been purchased recently, and cuttings taken from that too. The cuttings of the common elder I took from the fields seem to be doing well, as those of honeysuckle. No signs of headway from the yew yet. But yew is slow. There is a number of box seedlings in the garden tha I must collect and put to good use. More peonies were dug up and potted. I think I am the first known gardener to struggle with peony as a weed.

A lucky exchange brought me a packet of seeds of Meconopsis cambrica. This is definitely considered a weed by british gardenens and yet it is an unknown rarity to me. "One person´s favourite garden plant is another´s bane; life is great." M. Dirr

It is funny (or not at all) how one becomes defensive when talking about hydrangeas. The truth is that most of the gardening world is still stuck with the picture of the old (and, alas, new) big mopheads and is utterly unable to perceive the vast difference that exhists among the various different species, subspecies and especially, among the breeding styles, european and japanese, of hydrangeas nowadays. This bottomless reservoir of abysmal ignorance creates an hostility towards hydrangeas that may have been understandable twenty years ago, but has no justification nowadays. Of course the vast majority of commercial hydrangeas IS boring, the vast majority of commercial ANYTHING is boring, but there is a whole world of magnificient, sophisticated varieties, even of macrophylla, out there, whose apparently fragile beauty is made to capture the heart of fairy queens. Will the western world ever see that? Never. So I rant, and simmer, and get utterly disgusted.

"Izu no Hana" is an extremely elegant japanese macrophylla whose name means the flower of Izu.
Izu is the place where the plant was discovered some 30 years ago. She is not a showy "offensively sumptuous" plant but a charming creature with all the sophisticated simplicity of many Japanese hydrangeas.

"Shinonome" is a true serrata, a dainty plant, with small flower heads and leaves, completely different from hydrangea macrophylla. I think it may easily be the most sophisticated looking hydrangea that I ever saw. My original plant died on me, one of the few hydrangeas I ever lost, but I had taken several cuttings, two of which are now respectable little plants. Propagate propagate propagate!

Which brings me to a long time dream that came true today: I have a propagator! It was immediately put to use for my Musa nagensium and Tetrapanax papyrifera, new shinonome cuttings, and for some seeds of hibiscus that a friend sent from England. I hope the heat wakes the Musa and Tetrapanax. So far nothing is showing.

The brugmansias whose seeds I had from the same source are doing very well on the other hand. Four seedling are 5 cm tall, and more seeds are germinating.

"Otaksa" is a very old mophead variety introduced to Europe by Philip Franz Von Siebold in the early half of the 19th century. I am not, as a rule, fond of the traditional mopheads, but Otaksa is a darling. She turns blue very readily, and has a romantic story. Von Siebold named her after a woman he had known in Japan (some say she was his lover), O Taki San. All of Von Siebold´s adventurous realation with japan has a touch (and more) of drama to it, and I am happy to have a plant that he brought to the gardens of the western world. She is supposedly a rather tender variety, but mine was one of the few macrophyllas to come unscathed trough this spring´s frosts. The dryed flowers are a beautiful shade of pale green.


"Preziosa" is definitely hardy, on the other hand. She has serrata sap in her parentage, and it shows. Hydrangea serrata is called "mountain hydrangea" in Japan, and that´s what she is, a comparatively small woodland plant, which flushes later than the coastal macrophyllas. Preziosa is definitely daintier than most garden hydrangeas, but not as much as a true serrata. She has beautiful red stems and a dusky foliage. The flowers are really spectaculare, they are small mopheads, opening green and then turning white and pink, and finally deep red, almost regardless of the soil acidity. Sometimes the colours all mix in a very curious variegated pattern.The mature florets turn downwards, like in lacecap hydrangeas.

"Moulin Rouge" may easily be my 2008 great discovery. I have two groups in the garden, one is in a sunny spot with rather poor soil, and the other in the slightly shadier but much richer ground of the kitchen garden. The first are not very big, "only" reaching to my shoulder or so, but they are more wind resistant than the giants in the kitchen garden. The ones more in the sun are blooming first, even if they were planted quite a while later. I wonder how they would look coupled with "Italian White"?

Hydrangea quercifolia is a monster of a plant which grew from a tiny potted specimen to a 1,50 m plant in two years. It is stunning in a garden, but seen up close it does not hold a candle to its cultivar "Snowflake":



It's not only that the single florets are double, and more than double, suffused with lime green and maturing to rosy purple. These florets last a long time, as do the autumn colouring of the leaves, while the species quercifolia tends to drop its fiery autumn plumage rather fast. They are both worth growing though, and more than worth, as is "Snow Queen", that has single florets but very elongated and upright panicles.

The sunflowers "Moulin Rouge" are blooming What a glorious colour! The richest shade of dark red, bordering on maroon and even black, but with a warmth and a depth to it such I have rarely seen. It is incredible to find such a dark, deep, gory sahde in a sunflower, which is generally associated with the most solar shades of yellow and orange. A black sun burst... what a subject for a gothic garden.

Finally the days of hydrangeas have come. Even some of the most frost damaged are trying to contribute a few blooms to the show, it is really a great relief.

I wonder if they can be "trained" to flush a bit later in future years, or if like M. Dirr says after a given number of chilly days they will get into vegetative frenzy whatever the weather. We shall see.

A great show is definitely coming from Ayesha, which is curious, since it is in theory one of the less hardy macrophyllas. But she clearly did not read the books because she is covered with blooms.

"Ayesha" is an almost unique hydrangea, with spoon shaped sepals remembering lilac flowers. It is of Japanese origin, and it is not sure when exactly it was imported to Europe. For a great long while it was one of the very few unmistakable macrophillas around. Recently a somewhat similar cultivar was introduced, the Hovaria Hopcorn, but this is smaller and has much deeper colours. Ayesha is beautifully pale, shell pink or soft blue, or everythingin between. Like "Otaksa", "Joseph Banks" and "Sea Foam", all of them close relatives, it is supposedly not very frost hardy, but extremely resistant to wind and sea spray.

This beautiful macrophylla came without a label, but it is very probably "Selma". The foliage is a dark dark wonder, flushed with the deepest crimson. The inflorescece will alas develope in a rather boring deep pink mophead, but at this early stage it is wonderfully 'different'.

"Romance" is a surprise. It opens like the daintiest lacecap, similar to "Hanabi" (but smaller and more compact, and obviously not white) but in the course of the season the froth of small green flowers in the middle keep opening and developing, and it ends up in a truly majestic mop head. The pointy double flowers keep it from becoming boring though. It is a real beauty. It belongs to a recent series together with "Emotion", of which I had a cutting, that I have lost.