With a dry summer, I deliberately avoided doing too much to the garden and let the lawn grow to avoid stressing the plants too much. Watering every few days, occasionally once a week, in the evenings and making sure anything newly planted this year and trying to establish itself was well watered.
Although there has been quite a bit of rain over the recent weeks. I’ll wait a bit to let the plants recover before deciding what needs doing. There’s at least three areas of the garden that need developing or would appreciate redevelopment. One of those is what I call “the mound.”
Renovating The Mound
The mound came about after trying to decide what to do with the soil we were digging out for the in-ground trampoline. After looking through some old images of the garden, I’ve realised the mound had not developed the way I expected, with all the rocks overgrown and hidden. The original vision was have a small grassy knoll with convenient rocks to sit on. Needless to say it did not grow that way. The path through it worked, while children used the knoll to play and access the castle, but once they stopped, it became wilder.
So a bit of a rethink and possibly a lot of topsoil needs to be added to it as most of the mound is made up of underlying clay soil that was dug out. One possibility I considered is extending the pond’s stream, and to use the mound as its starting point. Except that would take quite a bit more work and money (rocks, pond liner, etc). It’s got serious potential, though.
Clereodendrum
My parents gifted me a rooted sapling of their Clereodendrum trichotomum during the summer. Their tree is well over 50 years old now, and both my sister and I have fond memories of it from when we were growing up and living at home.
They gave it to me soiless, so it’s been potted up and the older leaves were trimmed to reduce the transpiration stress they could cause – When potting up plants where you disturb the root growth (in this case, being removed from sitting in water to being planted into soil), it’s always worth considering either removing some of the more mature leaves or trimming them to reduce the amount of stress transpiration can have on the plant.
Anyhow, fingers crossed, it’s been about a month, and it looks like it’s survived. At least the growth point looks okay. Lost a lot of its original foliage. However, there are lots of buds/potential growth points in the leaf axils, so will wait to see what develops.
The pot is a special design for trees, the holes in the side allow better aeration and encourage better root growth. You remove the plant when ready by unscrewing the clips, letting the pot open out. Fasten back together for the next plant 🙂
Barrel Pond
The barrel pond also looks like it’s recovered and flourishing now. Always interesting to see how different plants behave. All the bog plants in the bog filter look happy enough and are growing. Interestingly, the Marsilea quadrifolia or Water clover as its leaf looks so much a four leaf clover, was struggling, but since the addition of the bog filter and also the iris’s in a netted container. It’s been a lot happier. However, that could be for a number of reasons. More nutrients (leached from the soil around the new plants), slightly cooler water or less competition from the water lettuces, as I removed some. Oh well… that’s part of the fun of gardening. Observation and working out what factors are affecting the plants. Of course it could just have taken it’s time to get established.