The Mitcheldean Garden 2023
The Last Roses of Summer

This page is part of a series of garden blogs from 2023. Click here for the index.

Since the July update, August has been wet and we had what was, in effect, a heat wave in September. Everything in the garden has rocketed upwards, for the first time in years the grass has looked healthy; it isn't, it's full of pernicious weeds. The runner beans delivered us the best season ever although by mid-September they had exhausted themselves. It seems that day after day I was out there cutting back excessive growth especially that all the way along both our boundaries from the road to the top which abuts the large sheep field. I maintain both sides of our boundary with #31 and I have felt sorry for the green waste collectors who have had to get a very full and heavy green bin down their steps every fortnight all summer long. The rest, for the most part has been added to the natural green waste in the abandoned sheep field to the north...

Click on a picture for a larger version and click on that to return to this page.

The new 'mini deer fence' is complete and in the absence of any evidence to the contrary it seems to have discouraged the muntjak. The remaining roses are showing some signs of regrowth, Yuehong's lovely Iceberg Rose flowered although it might have been better advised to replace the leaves which had been eaten. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next spring. Since the first photograph was taken, I've had the platform out and reduced the top of the leylandii hedge for an unprecedented second time in one growing session.

The line of roses in front of the house is no more, there's a concrete raft underneath which means that the roots wouldn't have been very strong. We tried to restart them in large pots but without any sign of success. The tall roses against the bungalow are mainly out of reach of their predators and while we do water the clematis they much prefer natural rainwater.

In the upper area I donned my lumberjack's coat and hat and went up our ladder to reduce both our silver birch and oak trees. If I had let them grow any more then we would have needed to pay a tree surgeon. One effect will be to increase the amount of light to a range of shrubs beneath them. It took almost as long to cut up and remove the bits as it did to make the essential main cuts. Currently, I am waiting for the copper beech to drop its leaves so that it too can have a serious haircut.

There's no room for a washing line now except in the small area next to #35 at the top. The former bonfire heap is now home to some of our excess purple and white dahlias. The magnolias and camellias in the section above the summer house have had an enforced 'slimming' so we can again walk through them and hopefully that will improve next year's flowering. The tall naturally 'skinny' tree is some kind of 'gum tree', it has no strong branches so I dare not cut back the top... These pictures were taken at either end of our line of three rhododendrons and behind me is a beech hedge which I have to try to cut to keep it to the height of the deer fence which I erected in the sheep field. The top of the garden falls away very steeply which means I again have to use our longest ladder to get to the bits that point into our garden...

The effect of the loss of rose flowers is very clear in the left hand picture. It's taken from #35's garage roof after I cut back the honeysuckle which had covered about a third of our own one. That on the right shows how our neighbours see us looking out across the newest of our dahlia beds. Like every previous occupant since we arrived, they have struggled to do much more than keep their grass cut.

One plant I haven't featured for a long time is our cone flower (Rudbekia Little Goldstar) next to the summer house which will benefit from the cut back of the silver birch. Bees beat their wings about 200 times a second which says it all.

Meanwhile, let's hear it for Lidl, whose good value plants are still going well. On the left are petunias and viburnum, in the box below are the best Busy Lizzies ever (they don't like too much sun). At the bottom are three surviving baby begonias which brushed off the winter unlike most of their siblings. Also here are some ultra economy African marigolds, grown from our own seed.

The snapdragons from Castrees at Bromsash always stay the distance, the baby begonias and lobelia are from Lidl again. In recent years we have scavenged late season bargains from the Three Shires Garden Centre, their regular plants are beyond our budget, but 'not this time' so it's just as well that the survival rate for our regular begonias was quite good this year. 

Finally, let's hear it for our roadside long term resident fuchsias. The red one on the left came from cuttings from the mother plant at the north-east corner of the bungalow. The picture on the right features some excellent white and purple ones which have proved to be surprisingly hardy. They grow well and have to be kept cut low to avoid obstructing the similarly coloured larger dahlias behind them. As part of our economy drive, there have been no hanging baskets or tubs on the steps this year, that also frees up the time it takes to keep them watered. 

In any case Baynham Road has been a madhouse this summer. First we had the gasmen upgrading all the gas pipes and latterly we have had diverted heavy traffic including buses and commuters because they moved on to the road to Drybrook from the middle of the village and that was closed for several weeks. Safely up our 33 steps, with our Blue Baby off the road, we escaped just about all the chaos.

Of course, most of the flowering plants seen here are just supporting actors for the stars of the show, the dahlias occupying centre stage in the back garden.

Click here for the next part.

Click here for the 2023 index.