I missed an English spring this year as we went to France in March and only came back last week. The wild flowers were wonderful, including many different orchids, but I did miss walking in my favourite bluebell wood. But you can’t be in two places at the same time. A fact that is obvious to everyone, but has just really come home to me.
Roses have been in bloom in south west France for weeks and I have bought four for my French garden. I also got to see Annette’s beautiful garden and enjoy her fabulous rose collection as she lives nearby. I was amazed to come home and find roses blooming in May here. My lovely Rosa ‘Drinkstone Apricot’ which was born in a previous garden has already finished.
I am going to feature just one rose today. I adore single roses and the bright red Rosa ‘Scharlachglut’ looks wonderful against the black shed. This rose is a shrub rose but it seems to want to climb if it has support. Mine has already reached the shed roof in just one year. Later, it has the most beautiful large, urn-shape, red hips which look good into winter.
I am tempted to feature just roses here as I love them so much, but there are other beauties to croon over. I bought the early summer- blooming Magnolia sieboldii because I thought it would be hardier than the glorious Magnolia wilsonii that I have loved and lost. I thought it would have similar pure white flowers with a wonderful fragrance. It is lovely, but the large cup- shaped flowers are cream rather than white. The buds are tinged with pink. It is fragrant, but I don’t much like the scent. It has rather untidy stamens which are not as attractive as the lovely deep red ones you find on Magnolia wilsonii. This is very ungrateful of me as it is a lovely tree, I’m not quite sure how long I will keep it though, as in a small garden, I have to really love everything and not wish plants were more like something else.
By the pond I have a beautiful variety of the native flag Iris pseudocorus ‘Berlin Tiger’. It has yellow flowers striped with brown. This is a plant that I first saw several years ago and I have been looking for it since. I love brown flowers and the intricate veining of this is very pretty. It has grown rapidly and will probably end up too invasive for the margins of my little pond.
I have never had any success with candelabra primulas but this year, two have come back in a dampish spot and increased in size. The orange one is, I think, Primula bulleyana and the pink is perhaps Primula beesiana. Please tell me if I am wrong. Because I have never been able to grow them I have never sorted out their names.
Still on the primula theme, I might have missed spring in my garden, but I have a late-flowering primrose to enjoy. Primula ‘Francesca’ always blooms in late spring and early summer and I think she is a show stopper. I love the umbels of frilly apple- green flowers with yellow eyes.
June is peony time but one of my favourites starts blooming in May and carries on for ages. Paeonia ‘Coral Charm’ has lots of fully double deep coral flowers which become pale peach and finally cream, as they mature. It lights up the border.
I’m going to count all the primulas as one item for this post so that I can have my epis as number six. Epiphyllums are a nuisance to grow as they are not hardy and they grow longer and longer legs and arms and so they get in the way, fall over and take up a lot of room. I bought a coat and hat stand and hang mine on it. This works well.
I have a yellow and a red one in bloom at the moment. The red one looks as if it has been sprinkled with star dust. I gave an epiphyllum to a friend years ago and she says it has just grown bigger and bigger and never bloomed. The secret is to keep them dry in winter and to start watering and feeding them in March. The flowers don’t last for long but they are very exotic.
So there we are, the most magical time of the whole year and such an abundance of delights to choose from. Do pop over to Jim at Garden Ruminations who hosts this theme, Six on Saturday. He and all the other SoS enthusiasts have lots of beauties for us to enjoy.
Chloris
The Blooming Garden 
I have the same epiphyllum for the first year (a gift sent from the UK) and it hasn’t flowered yet. Dry in winter yes, I did it …but how to feed it? What fertilizer?
otherwise very beautiful ‘Berlin Tiger’!
I used a succulent and cactus fertilizer, Fred.
Welcome back! ‘Berlin Tiger’ is a stunner – a great colour and name.
Thank you. Yes, Berlin Tiger is lovely and as it is a variety of the wild flag it is very vigorous.
Your varieties of primulas are envied! I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to start P. pulverulenta from seed and would love to establish it along our stream. So far zero luck.
It looks so beautiful growing along streams, I always envy people who have swathes of it seeding around.
Beautiful Liz! great to see you back in blog land. The epiphyllum grow up palms here and are quite something early in the morning. I have one creeping around the garden but it has never flowered, or I haven’t seen it!
Hello Amy. It’s nice to be back. Epiphyllums must look great growing up palm trees. They are a bit too leggy for pots. I also have the Queen of the Night, Selinicereus grandiflorus which is not just ridiculousy leggy, but prickly too. I keep threatening to thow her away but the flowers are spectacular and smell divine. But she doesn’t bloom very often and the flowers last just one night. You could have her tucked in a tree out of the way and not get attacked every time you go near it. Obviously, it’s not hardy here.
Right, there are some crazy things going on in trees here!
that rose is stunning! I find candelabra primulas very reluctant to hang around in my garden. They seem to last a couple of years then disappear, same with the drumstick ones. A shame as I really love them, yours look great.
I think my garden generally is not damp enough for candelabra primulas but the Biblical amount of rain this year has suited them
Look forward to hearing about your visit to Annette’s garden sometime, Chloris. Are you ging to vary the times of your French sojourns, to try and see both gardens in all seasons? As a gardener, it must always be hard to be leaving one of them behind, whatever the season. I had to smile when you started talking about the magnolia and found myself wondering if you might end up taking it out – which you then confirmed you might, in due course! As my borders fill out and favourites buk up, I can see myself having a cull in a year or two, removing the stop gaps. Love the epihyllums – I imagine I will become guardian’s of my Mum’s in due course, but I took a couple of offsets a year or two back and they have not exactly thrived… Love that green primula too
Annette’s garden is beautiful with stunning views. She has many roses which are familiar to us here, but also many that are not. I am using just French roses in my French garden, but it is quite small so I don’t have room for many. We are trying to fit different seasons in with our French house visits, but because of Brexit we are quite constrained.I don’t particularly want to go in the depths of winter, as it is cold there and I don t want to miss my winter garden here. Yes, I am already coming up against the constraints of a small garden. I only planted it 16 months ago and it is already bursting its seams. Regular culling is the only way forward as I can’t imagine a time when I simply stop acquiring plants.
Yes, it is a shame about the time restrictions now – our neighbours have had to try and work round that too. I know how strange it felt when I visited other bloggers’ gardens, having seen them online for so long, but perhaps even stranger still you now being near neighbours. I am sure you will find good homes for any plants you eject – I took a number of mine (none of my David Austin ones, just some polyanthus patio roses) that I was ousting to a local walled garden that was being restores
It is hard to garden in two locations. I have gardens in two very different climates. Your flags are really interesting and I never had much luck with Epiphyllums, so I’ll enjoy yours.
It is a challenge having two gardens, but a lovely one. In France my problems are the difficulty in sourcing interesting plants, man-eating sized slugs and snails and making planting holes in rock.
Those slugs and snails sound scary.
Your Epiphyllums are magnificent! They’re doing much better than mine, which I still haven’t gotten around to fertilizing, possibly costing me this year’s blooms. Your peony is fabulous as well. Candelabra primroses are something I can only admire from afar as, even though we’ve had heavier-than-usual rain 2 years in a row, we’re still much too dry to make them happy.
Best wishes for a pleasant summer, Chloris!
Hello Kris, lovely to hear from you. For years I have had these enormous epis flopping around my greenhouse and getting in the way, I only had the odd bloom so I really don’t know why I kept them. But this year, I remebered to feed them before I went to France; they have been watered but not fed since. They are doing really well now, the blooms don’t last long but I keep getting more and more.
Iris pseudacorus is such an aggressively invasive exotic species within riparian ecosystems here that I never bothered to consider that there could be cultivars of it. I secretly grow a bit of it in a can here, away from Zayante Creek (although, because it is so naturalized here, the little bit of it in my garden is of no concern to the collective ecosystem beyond).
Oh my, there is also a very pale cultivar that is almost white!
Yes, Iris pseudocorus can be quite invasive here. I haven’t come across a white one, that sounds lovely. I do have a very pale lemon one called Iris pseudocorus ‘Bastardii’ which is pretty.
Yes, that is what I meant. Some are very pale (although not quite white). I am very pleased with what I got, but must be careful where I plant them, if I ever release them from their can.
Well, hello! Happy you’re enjoying yourself in both gardens. I really like your Primula ‘Francesca’.
Hello Susie. Yes, Francesca is very special and unusual in being so late flowering.
Oh, I love the roses this time of year! And your other blooms and plants are healthy and happy and beautiful, too. 🙂
Yes, rose time is the most exciting season of all.
What a beautiful rose! It looks stunning against the dark shed. 🙂