A real massacre of a day, digging a huge hole under the sun to plant my tall Hydrangea villosa subsp. sargentiana. She is in full bloom, not the best moment for planting perhaps, but she was even worse off in her pot, she has grown so tall all of a sudden. She toppled over with every wind storm, it´s a miracle she still looks so good, albeit a bit tattered. I think she will like the spot I picked for her, morning sun and the best wind shelter I could give her.

This will become the blue border over time. It is the area around the new steps, that will be flanked by lavender hedges, when I have the plants. I will move here the delphiniums, and I will sow blue columbines. There is a splendid Echinops pungens in another place of the garden, it would make a lovely feature. I will either transplant it or collect seeds. I need to plant things that will keep the colour theme consistent through the summer though.

I find, looking at other gardens, that I tend to neglect the planting of those small, fuzzy, unspectacular but faithful flowers that carry the garden through the successive blooming of various stunners. It is a flaw I need to correct.
I am consuming eyes and brain through flower catalogues jotting down seed lists for the future. It would have been nice to start this summer already, but it was impossible without knowing where and what I wanted. I have clearer ideas now. All of the rose ridden front garden will be pink-white-warm purple. The lower part of the bank will be blue and indigo, and violets, and whites of course. The west side all hot yellows, orange, lusty maroon-crimsons.

I will also move the oakleaf hydrangea. Sun and wint turned it to tatters, while the "Domotoi" by her side is thriving. The mysteries of gardening.

I have dug and spruced up the ground in the potato patch, ready for whatever come next or a good grass mulch.

A delicious dish, much of which came from the garden.

2 handfuls of small potatoes, boiled tender, peeled and crushed (not mashed, not cut, crushed)
2 onions, cut into rings
2 medium zucchini, diced
2 bell peppers, cut into small pieces
1 or 2 cloves of garlick, finely chopped
a fresh leek or a couple of spring onions, cut into rings
a red chilli, cut into fine rings
Four or five medium sized tomatoes, chopped
200 g of feta cheese, crumbled
Olive oil, balsamic vineagre, seasoning to taste

Toss the crushed tatoes in a large pan with the onion ringsand a bit of oil, until lightly brown on the corners. Set aside. Add a spoon or two of oil to the pan and lightly fry the peppers for five minutes, add the zucchini and fry for 5 more minutes. Put the potatoes back into the pan to warm them up. Mix in the garlic and chili. Take from the fire and season with good olive oil, 3 spoons of balsamic vineagre, salt and pepper to taste. Add the fresh leek, tomatoes and feta, mix and serve while still hot.

Three buckets of potatoes from my tiny potato patch!!

Now this isn´t bad at all, if I consider that I only dug that patch becuse it was full of nettles, and when I was done digging the nettles there was so much dug earth that I thought I could as well finish it and plant something. I did very little to improve the ground there, and it is a bit too shady for veggies, so all in all I think the tatties did remarkably well´. Next year they will have a nice sunny patch, and here I will plant flowers for cutting.

A day at the large garden show in Bingen.

This is not a garden show in the usual sense, but rather, a garden for show. Three km of formerly derelict and abandoned river front reclaimed to life and beauty and planted with countless colourful flower borders. The show started in spring and lasts until october, and the area will then be integrated in the new town development. It is a very fine concept, and I can´t imagine a better way to begin the restoration of the riverfront, but I still think that the 14 € tickets are outrageously expensive. Admittedly, the borders are lavishly planted, and can boast an excellent maintenance, and such high standards only come at a price, but since they are somewhat repetitive, the public could have the same show on half the ground and for half the price.

Since my tickets came gratis, however, I can hardly complain, and I have to say it was a nice and inspiring show. The borders are spectacular, packed with tousands of very good plants, mostly sorted in good colour schemes, and grouped in bold masses. Many themed gardens are dotted around, desert garden, topiary garden, the Hildegarten (a herb garden that should be a homage to the local celebrity, Saint Hildegard, but is unfortunately rather shabby, even for a herb garden), a beautiful rose garden, the grass collection even a small cemetery, a bit morbid if you ask me, but I am sure that the local public must appreciate it, since every second shop around here sells tombstones. There is also a very long shady border under the trees less showy and less manicured, but still rather interesting. The low point of the show, is the Blumenhalle, an inexplicable sad collection of "pretty" plants and flower arrangement swathed in satin ribbons and organza. I can only say, they had this long good shed, and they had to fill it, and that they did. What a wasted opportunity. So many better things could have been done with half the money.


It is very interesting to get to see so many good "bedding" plants at the height of their beauty in late summer, a period that is usually critical for so many gardens. It is the proof that there is colour enough and to spare to be had at this time of year.


I am slowly overcoming my pejudice against dahlias for example. They are clearly a great genus but I was shocked as a child by my Granny's dahlias, and thought I would never recover. My Granny can grow anything and bring it to bloom, but from the way she plants, prunes and especially stakes her plants you´d think they are intended for the barbecue, rather than for the garden. She is a kind lady, with a great heart, and voted for the communist party all her life, but still, being brought up during the Fascist period must have left a mark. Plants are marched around in lines, presenting arms and flowers on top of broom handle straight stems, staked with strings and sticks like olives in a cocktail, and never allowed to stray out of their allotted space with a single leaf or tendril. No Fuss is the password, and the punishment for unruly subjects is terminal. Dahlias dominated over this scenario, like blowsy, brashly coloured lollipops on top of their leafless scrawny sticks. They looked artificial, absurdly proud of themselves, offensively ignorant of their state of captivity. They had no idea of what a free flower could look like, and they didn´t care. They were big and colourful and well fed, and that was all they cared for. I always hated dahlias ever since.


I only started to relent in the recent past, when finally it was brough home to me that dahlias, like chrisantemums, come in all size and shapes, and the big blowsy fellows of my childhood should never have entered a garden, their only proper place being the show bench.

Anyway, there ARE indeed dahlias with smaller flowers in gourgeous colours, and a leafy natural habit, that would look good in any garden.

Two varieties that have impressed me today are "Bishop of York" and "Bishop of Oxford". As the names suggest they are close relatives. The first has deligtful, simple, daisy like flowers of pale yellew smudged in rose and orange, a peach of a flower. The second is a very difficult colour to describe, amber tea stirred with coral perhaps, and the flowers are double. Both colours are set off by dark foliage, tinged with deep purple, that is a treat all by itself. There is also another bishop, the "Bishop of Llandaff", but the red flower does not appeal to me as much as the muted and yet warm colours of the other two. Finally, I would mention the tiny Dahlia "Happy Single First Love", that looks like a diminutive relative of "Bishop of Oxford", but with simple flowers instead of double.


Another plant that never really caught my attention but that impressed me today is the Aster. I always found them downright uninteresting, but today I was really struck by Aster pyreneus "Lutetia", a scatter of mauve sparks over a deep green mist. Very cool, very ethereal. The flowers are larger than most asters I have ever seen, but still extremely light and slender.

Finally, I need to write about Anemone hupehensis. As strange as it may sound, I had never seen a plant before today except in pictures, and I had formed in my mind the idea of a graceful plant, ethereal to the point of swooning, but it is completely wrong. There is nothing wimpish in this plant. With their simple heraldic shape and their crown of golden stamens, the flowers are reminiscent, at a distance, of dog rose blooms, but close up the consistence is all different; like a flower imitation in pressed suede they feel firm and velvety, the texture of the veins in the petals deeply grooved, ripppling in the sun. The foliage is bold, thick, deeply serrated, and with a plush, quilted look. The stems are wiry strong. The unopen flowers are round and softly velvety, looking downwards like bells in a fool hat. It is an entirely adorable plant. "September Charm", a tall variety in the rose garden, looked especially good. I got myself a plant in the tiny shop of the show. It is not named but the mauve flowers, tinged with deep warm purple on the outside, are very good.

It is a pity that this horribly expensive shop at the show should sell mostly utterly useless commercial house plants instead of offering some of the really good garden varieties shown in the garden, and an assortment of somewhat less than ordinary seeds. A missed opportunity, for both the show and the public, I think.

I have seldom seen such a viciously strong willed, rambunctious, heedless plant as the ornamental gourd that is invading my front border in these days. It was never supposed to be there of course. It just decided, all by itself, to take residence.
I had sown 12 seeds in jiffy pots in april, hoping to ger something colourful and fast growing to populate some shabby corners of the garden with a temporary splash of subtropical luxuriance. Not one ever germinated, and after more than two months of fruitless waiting, both peat and soil were tipped under the roses at the back of the border. I always throw used compost in the borders to improve the structure of the ground. This seed must have decided that he liked it there and popped up one day in exactly the right place. I desperatly needed something to hide the bare woody legs of the hideous tea roses, and there he was. I had no heart to pull it. Gardenenrs can be weak, or merciful, or inspired, like this. If I had tried to plant something there, an annual of the right size from the GC, it would have shrivelled in the heat and died. It would have never worked. But the volunteer gourd has rapidly grown into a beautiful plant that really completes the picture. Of course it is also trying to smother everything else in his path. It is a hard task to referee the border this days, trying to keep the gourd out of things without curbing its tumbling splendour. I weave it here and there, where the recent planting has left bare patches, where other plants have already gone off, or where the roses are most leggy. I prune where it´s too much, and pull the leaves that try to cover shrubs and delfiniums and petunias.

Next year I will concentrate all yellows and orange and red-maroons on the west side of the house, if the works there are finished (which is not sure). The "Moulin Rouge" will be a lot more visible on the background of the pale walls, and the large shrubs will isolate this "hot" coloured border from the pink and purple of the front. This is also the sunniest place in the garden, and the hottest. I think sunflowers, marigolds, californian poppies, gourds and nasturtiums will provide a wonderful low maitanance, long blooming corner here, despite the rather poor ground.

Transplanted the first seedling of variegated hybiscus (the foliage is variegated, the flower should be triple and purple... an exotic creature indeed). My exotic seedlings are doing well, the mango especially, and the Rhodochiton also. My one surviving papaya is slowly slowly recovering from what I thought was a fatal crisis. Whatever hit my little papayas is a mystery, but one by one they all petered out and died except this one. Still no news with Musa nagensium, but the seeds look clean and healthy, no fungal growth or anything. They say they can take up to six months to germinate, so I will wait patiently. I seem to have found a plant of tetrapanax, on the other hand, I will have it delivered in september or so, when it will not risk cooking in the back of the postman van. The brugmansias are doing very well, growing by the minute. The picture above is a few days old, but they have tripled in size since.

We are drowning in zucchini, zucchini, zucchini. I give away bags but there are still too many. I did not realize four plants would produce such an avalanche. May be one or two plants will suffice in the future.

A very good recipe we tried for them is a soup.

2 onions, chopped

2 potatoes, diced

3 medium-large zucchini roughly diced

1 medium zucchini, finely diced

2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 teaspoons of fresh, chopped rosemary

3-4 spoons of finely chopped chives

1 lemon (juice)

salt, pepper, a pinch of chili

4 - 5 cups of chicken stock

oil, a piece of butter (or a bit of fresh cream)

Lightly fry the onions and garlic until transparent, add rosemary, potatoes and stock and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the three roughly chopped zucchini and simmer for 20 more minutes, add the lemon juice. Blend smooth. Season to taste, and melt in the butter or cream. Boil the remaining zucchini dice for just a moment (30 seconds, a minute no more) in salt water. Ladle the soup in bowls and scatter with zucchini dices and chives. Serve with croutons and white wine.

Serve 4 or 6 depending if polite or hungry.

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.