The colour pink

... and a little bit of purple as well! ;)

In addition to the soft, blush pink colours of a couple of rose bushes, some sweet peas and trailing geraniums, there is also some stronger colour in the garden.

The new oleander shrub - very short at present, but they tend to grow quickly. In a few years I expect it to be taller than me.

The pink Zephirine Drouhin and striped Ferdinan Pichard roses next to each other, showing off the limitations of my phone camera.

Foxglove. I like the little blotches, like freckles on a fair maiden's cheek.

Two tall herbs - angelica already going to seed, seen through a mist of bronze fennel. OK, they are not actually pink, but there is a purplish quality to the tips of the fennel fronds and the stems of angelica.

Bank Holiday!

Perfect time to do some gardening...

In addition to planting a new bright pink oleander and blue hydrangea, we (well, really my SO) put up a new trellis on the patio fence. The troughs contain (amongst tobacco flowers and catanache caerulea)cream-coloured sweet peas that will, I hope, scramble up the trellis and surround us with a beautiful scent when we start having breakfast/coffee/meals on the patio.

The rose pics are just a bonus! ;)

More roses!

The old shrub is taller than me at the moment, and the blowsy flowers are bigger than my fist:

Another leftover, a small rosebush that didn't flower last year. There goes my "no yellow" rule! :D It's too beautiful to dislike...

The first stripy bloom of Ferdinand Pichard - and it's facing the garage! Still, plenty of buds on there to look forward to...

Late Spring Blooms

In addition to the roses from the previous post, there are a few other flowers currently on show.

The rhododendron, underlined by the new door paint:

Strongly scented pinks:

And a close-up of a Zephirine Drouhin rose:

Roses - First Flush

Four of our rose bushes have already burst into flowers.

The unknown large shrub, left over from the previous owners:

Heavenly-scented Gertrude Jekyll:

Thornless and sweet-smelling Zephirine Drouhin:

Another leftover shrub, from the front garden:

Those flowers are perfectly velvety:

Monet's Giverny Part 2

I needed to split this into several posts, as I can only upload 5 photos in each. And I have so many pictures from Giverny...

Still in the courtyard garden next to the house. There were also white areas, like this tall fox lily with pansies in the background:

And hot, purple and bronze smouldering schemes like these irises and pansies:

This sunny border has made me reconsider my "no yellow, no orange" rule for our garden:

There was a huge tree peony shrub, the flowers are the size of soup bowls:

And this is a bit how our garden is supposed to look like - if only it were three times the size... There are tall globes of ornamental onions, purple tulips and blue pansies, swathes of tiny forget-me-nots, pink and white stocks and verbena... Oh, and loads of sunshine! :)

Monet's Giverny

The second guest garden featured in my blog is the stunning Giverny, belonging to and immortalised by the great impressionist painter, Claude Monet.


The little town of Giverny is a stone's throw away from the Seine, roughly half way between Paris and its Atlantic coast mouth. Monet's house with the formally divided courtyard, as well as the stunningly informal water garden, are open to visitors every day of the week. We were there on a Sunday, and it was almost too busy; I would recommend a workday if you don't like crowds. However, the plants are so colourful and fragrant that I soon stopped noticing other people and got completely immersed in the beauty of nature.

There are a couple of round beds in between the house and the courtyard garden, with a formal planting of pink tulips through a sea of forget-me-nots.

Next to the house, which has quite a Provencal country cottage vibe, the planting was more random in form and colour.

The courtyard was divided into narrow rectangular beds separated by gravel paths, some of which were inaccessible. The beds were of different lengths, some running through the whole of the garden, and others only a metre or two long. Some were dedicated to a unifying colour scheme, like this one with blue iris, cornflowers and pansies.

Others were full of clashing colours, like these pink parrot tulips with yellow and purple pansies.

To be continued...

Purple

Both the door and alliums. Garden bluebells too, though they appear somewhat bluer in the picture. Some interesting textures of green - fennel, Japanese maple and rose leaves together.

Indoor Garden

OK, it's not one of those huge planter boxes you see in large hotel lobbies.  Nor is it a hanging garden of Babylon that stands in for a real, outdoor green space.  But, two of the three tropical looking plants are in flower (though the largest and most colourful structures are actually spathes) and, IMO, lookin' good! ;)
In addition to this arrangement, which is next to my desk in the living room, we also have some plant pots on the kitchen sink, a purple zebrina in the entrance window, and a temporary scented pelargonium in the front room.  That poor plant is not doing that great indoors, but we don't have a greenhouse and it would have died outside.  Can't wait for the last frost so it can go back out!

White crocus

This is the second plant to flower this February.  A little white crocus.  I planted the bulbs in a terracotta pot which also contained a tiny evergreen foliage plant, and some winter-flowering cyclamen. This winter has been so harsh here, that the hardy cyclamen died.  Still, spring is inexorably on its way, as evidenced by other bulbs shooting up from the earth towards the sky.  Those in the pot behind the crocus are Dutch tulips.

Uplifting

This cheerful primrose in our front garden has been planted by the previous owners of the house.  I'm not much into yellow (nor orange) flowers, but even I have to admit that they help lift our spirits in this miserable post-winter/pre-spring season.

Winter Blooms

Some of the early bulbs have recently shot up out of the ground (including pots), but no buds are yet visible. There are absolutely no flowers in the garden except for my namesake, witch hazel Jelena, which is already in bloom. If that is the right word for the weird, spider-like, burnt-orange flowers covering the twiggy branches:

Entrance Plans, Please Help!

No, I haven't actually scanned my drawings of the front garden. But I can tell you all about it!

What we have in a small rectangular plot is a fairly well stocked side border: 3 red roses, a variegated shrub and some bulbs. I will be adding a rosemary shrub at the gate, and some sweet smelling white alyssum to soften the path edge.

Around the front door, we already have a hanging basket (still with the winter pansies, which are in flower again, see this post), and I want to put an attractive container on the other side. It will hold the olive tree sapling, surrounded by bee-beloved (see what I did there!;)) thyme and with orange nasturtiums tumbling over the edge. The nasturtium seeds are again from France, from my lovely Belle-Mère's Mediterranean balcony.

There is a narrow border alongside the street (low) wall fence, which only has weeds in it. I want to plant a lavender hedge, punctuated by tall globes of purple alliums. Similar to the third picture in this post, from the previous garden.

Finally, there is a small square bed near the dining room bay window, which used to have a spreading grey-leaved plant that was either senecio greyii or brachyglottis. Either way, I didn't like it, and it died last winter (no connection!). I want to plant a scented English rose there, and surround it with an evergreen herb - probably thyme again. The only problem is, I can't decide which rose to go for!

I think I want a pale pink or blush variety, like Wildeve, A Shropshire Lad or William Morris. But then, I see the brighter Strawberry Hill, which even won a Grand Prix for fragrance... Ah, I wish we had a huge garden with space for as many rose bushes as I could wish for!

So, this is where you, my faithful readers can help: which rose is the prettiest? Please let me know what you think, in comments or email!

Winter Sowing

Since Christmas (and I mean the second, Orthodox Christmas which takes place 2 weeks after the Western one (yes, we celebrate both!)) I have been trying not to think about the garden. Because, what's the point of getting excited about the new growing season when we're still in the deepest of winters? My fingers itched to do something, so I kept drawing ever more intricate plans of the front garden remodelling (a new rose and a few evergreen shrubby herbs).

Until a friend showed me this: Winter Sowing
Brilliant! I knew that hardy plants could be sown in the autumn, straight into the ground, and that the more common sowing season starts in early spring. But sowing seeds in the middle of winter, that I had never heard of! But when you think about it, it seems intuitively OK... The seeds are still dormant and will continue to be such until the weather and light conditions are optimal. And anyway, what's the worst that could happen? I lose some seeds! Well, it's not as if there's not plenty more where these came from...


Here is one of 3 seed trays that I filled with mostly hardy annual, herb and some perennial seeds. I also used several small plastic pots, and covered everything with a long plastic cloche I had bought, but not used, last year. The cloche has vents on the sides, and it's been wedged down with a couple of bricks. It can be rather blustery around here sometimes, so better safe than sorry!