Love-in-a-mist (Nigella damascena)

 

 Summer daze.

 

 Wild Clary (Salvia vebenaca) in the wildflower meadow at the music school. This is a seeded meadow (before my time) and I imagine it must have been a mix of generalists e.g. Ox-Eye Daisy and chalk specialists like the Clary.

 Curiously I have noted the absence of S. vebenaca in past years and considered trying to introduce it. And suddenly here it is! Then again the meadow is usually a mass of Ox-Eye Daisies yet they are sparse this year. Wild flowers are tenacious but highly variable in their growth from one year to the next. Weather is key: no doubt the warm dry spring has favoured some species, others less so.

 

 As mentioned recently I transformed a neglected former veg patch at the music school into a herb/kitchen garden. [see entry dated 16th. April] 

 This included transplanting a row of Rosemary bushes running East-West into an informal hedge/screen running North-South. Robust as it is Rosemary does not like root disturbance and is prone to 'transplant shock'. Nonetheless I decided to risk it: the key is to lift a large enough root ball of soil thereby minimising damage to the root system. 

 I wouldn't attempt it with knarly old specimens but these were only planted a couple of years ago (though they are already quite tall and woody). As a precaution I took 14 stem tip cuttings the day before I lifted them to propagate more plants if replacement is required. I got them going two to a pot; now they have started to develop tiny roots I carefully teased out each one to go into single pots to grow on. 

 Time will tell if the transplants prosper, if not I will replace them with new ones. In fact I might do that anyway. I have enough for a closer spacing and can prune them to be more hedge-like from the outset.

 I recently replanted the Dahlias at the music school. I lifted them last November and stored the tubers indoors in an unheated room. What to do with Dahlias over winter is debatable. They may survive in the ground, then again they may get cold and damp and rot. Take them indoors and they may get too dry and shrivel up.

 These were on the dry side when I looked at them about a month ago so in the interim I put them in large pots of soil in the greenhouse and kept them well watered. This seemed to do the trick, they plumped up nicely and were starting to sprout.

 When lifting it's important to label which clumps are which because there's no way to tell from the tubers. Dahlias generally look best planted in groups of the same flower and foliage rather than mixing them up.

 Clumps can be divided before planting but it's vital to make sure each division has an 'eye'. A tuber without an eye will not produce a stem. I simply cut several clumps in half with a very sharp knife. I dug  the planting holes in advance and filled them with well rotted compost mixed with top soil to make a rich mix and gave the ground a good soaking after planting. 

 Probably Common Comfrey (Symphytum officinale) going by the bluish flowers. This clump is growing next to the stand of Russian Comfrey I mentioned a few days ago. As noted Russian and Common Comfrey cross pollinate freely so it's moot whether they are one or the other or a bit of both.

 Each flower of an Ox-Eye Daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) is many i.e. composite. At the centre is the multitude of yellow flowers (disc floret) and the surrounding petals are flowers too (ray floret).

 

 Happy to say a colony of Echium wildprettii is becoming established in South London- in the vicinity of my front garden. Known as the 'The Tower of Jewels' the species hails from the Canary Islands. They made their way to this spot via a seedling given to me by one of the gardeners at the South London Botanical Institute. 

 Giant Echiums are triennial and that specimen flowered in 2020 shedding copious seed; its progeny have been appearing over the past few years. Every 'jewel' is a flower and the tower pulsates with bees...

 

 Hawthorn, sometimes called The May Tree. Much planted in field hedgerows of old but will grow from a shrub to a fully fledged tree left to its own devices. I read an interesting comment that it is the only plant in the UK to be named after the month it flowers. That seems surprising but I'm struggling to think of another? Hawthorn is rich in lore and legend as befits a species that can live up to 400 years. 

 

 A stand of (probably) Russian Comfrey judging by its pinkish/port wine flowers though that ID is notional. Symphytum x uplandicum is a hybrid of S. officinale and S. asperum widely naturalised having been introduced to the UK as a crop for fodder, fertiliser etc. It cross pollinates with native S. officinale so interbreeding is infinitely mutable courtesy of bumblebees. 

Greater Stichwort

Red Campion

Star of Bethlehem

 

 The wildwood is gone -the primeval forest that covered much of this island- but some species of the forest floor remain. In a damp tree-lined dell near Hitchin there are thousands of Ramsons aka Wild Garlic (Allium ursinum). 

 This colony would have flourished under the canopy of the wildwood. And persisted as our ancient ancestors created a landscape of woodlands and clearings. The dell is now surrounded by large arable fields where no Ramson could grow. Nonetheless the pungent smell of garlic fills the air of the dell as it would have done in the wildwood. 

 

 The presence of Yellow Archangel (Lamium galeobdolon) is an indicator of ancient woodland. I made my annual pilgrimage to look for tiny Toothworts on the edge of Wain Wood. Not one did I find but there was more Archangel than usual.

 

A particularly handsome stand of Solomon's Seal.

The heat today is more like summer and the bees are buzzing.

 White Deadnettle (Lamium album) flowers early in spring and keeps on flowering through summer, autumn into winter. A prolific weed/wildflower much visited by bumblebees. 

 Made a start in planting the herb garden at the music school. The  tallest plants (Fennel) in the middle, low growing herbs for picking round the edges (Mint, Lemon Balm, Thyme, Chives and Garlic Chives), interspersed with various annuals (Borage, Nasturtium, Calendula). More to come.

 The circles are crushed eggshells to keep slugs and snails at bay; they don't like dragging their slimy bellies across the jagged edges. Actually I've seen hardly any this spring. The days have been too sunny and dry, the nights have been too cold and dry. However there may be another problem in this setting: deer. Muntjacs regularly come into the grounds to forage, they may or may not like culinary herbs. 

 

Apple blossom.

 

 Pasque Flower (Pulsatilla vulgaris) in its natural habitat which botanically speaking is sloping calcareous grassland. From the perspective of folklore Pasque Flowers grow where Danes' blood was spilled in battle. Seen here at Knocking Hoe, one of the few remaining sites in the country where they grow in abundance. Chalky for sure, blood-soaked I don't know.

 

 One of my favourite flowers in my back garden: Smyrnium perfoliatum. A busily self-seeding biennial or perhaps triennial. I bought one in a pot, let it self-seed and now it pops up here and there every year. Does well in dryish soil in half sun/half shade corresponding to a woodland edge habitat. 

 

 Wood Anemones (Anemone nemorosa) emerge from the leaf litter in deciduous woodlands, generally before the Bluebells though sometimes overlapping when Bluebells are early. Having said that A. nemorosa is less widespread than H. non-scripta despite the similar habitat.  

 

 Speaking of wildflower walks what is more glorious than walking through a Bluebell wood in spring? My home town of Hitchin is blessed with several in the surrounding countryside notably Hitch Wood (above), Wain Wood and West Wood. The Bluebells are early this year, mid-April and they are in full flower.

 With spring well and truly underway wildflower walks will be bountiful. Cowslips proliferate in the churchyard of St. Paul's Walden so that was a good place to start...

 

 Making a kitchen garden. A couple of days hard graft earlier in the week reviving a neglected veg patch at the music school. It will indeed provide some produce for their catering but I designed it be pleasing on the eye as much as edible.

 First step was to hard prune some shaggy Rosemary bushes and open up the space by transplanting them to run north-south rather than east-west. Then construct a raised bed using four chunky 'sleepers' that have been lying around for years. The bed was filled with compost (made on site) to be planted with herbs. I planted a line of Munstead Lavender alongside the paving and retained part of the grass by the hedge and the flowery margin opposite. An 'A' frame for growing runner beans was the final touch.

 A satisfying project, I'll post a few more entries about it but here is the end result:

 Native and non-native. The felling of a dead tree has let in more light resulting in an eruption of Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) and Green Alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens). The former is native, the latter not. 

 There is a certain amount of angst about 'foreign' invasive species but many of our natives are equally opportunistic. And don't they look good together?

 

 Two kinds of Honesty...

 In the foreground is the perennial species Lunaria rediviva which has the merest blush of pink in the flowers.

 In the background is the biennial Lunaria annua var. albiflora with flowers of pure white. To this we may add the third kind: the purple flowered biennial Honest which is the most common.

Busy bee on a Judas Tree.

 

 The remnants of hedgerows are vital for pollinators in an expanse of arable monoculture.