Columbia Road

I went to Columbia Road Flower Market this morning. My favourite spot in East London!

Its the first time ive been since last summer- and have been looking forward to it- however my bed seemed far to comfy at the hour i intended to wake up- so didnt arrive at the market till 9:30 which meant it was already really busy. But the sun was out and it was good to be out and about so i didnt mind.

You have 2 options really with Columbia road- get there really early (ie 7:30-8am) and get the best bargains and beat the crowds, or go late ie 2pm when the traders are closing up and see if there are any bargains that the stall holders dont want to take home with them. I always opt for the early bird session i cant resist the thought of perhaps missing something 'if only id gone earlier!'

I went looking for some more plants for the different borders and wasnt dissapointed with the choice. However its quite obvious the current trend for exotic plants is still big with palms, orange trees, strelitzia, and treeferns available on most stalls. Primulas and Pansies seemed to be the plants of the moment with most stall holder shouting out deals on these- "6 for a fiver!"

As i'd hoped there would be there were a couple of stalls selling freshly dug up perennials (5 for £5) and bought 3 Echinacea purpurea and 2 Rudbeckia 'Goldsterm'- although after the guy had put them all in a bag i changed one Rudbeckia for another as it only had 2 growth points ("There all the same mate" said the stall holder- err no the're not im not buying an apple here, they may only be £1 each but im not getting a rubbish one just cos you gave it to me!). I walked past the stall later and saw he had Echinacea 'Magnus' next to his E. purpurea and hoped id bought the normal species as 'Magnus' will probably be too tall for the border- never mind though.

I also bought a small Pteris cretica albolineata fern for £1, and then from the bulb stall, hooray i found a plant i thought it was too late in the year to buy as a bulb- Allium spaerocephalon bulbs - 20 for £2 these were just shooting, i know its a little late to be buying these but they were cheap and I hope will catch up soon! these will go in the grass garden.


Then a stall id passed on the way in but decided to come back to it, the guy had a lovely range of plants for sale- i perhaps could have bought more but decided not too today. I got 2 Digitalis ferruginea for the grass garden, Cephalaria gigantea for the butterfly border this is loved by bees, an Angelica with purple leaves (the guy wasnt sure of the species) for the butterfly border, and a large Pteris(?) fern which for the life of me I cant think of its latin or common name (its got a label on the pot but its not the correct name!)- will have to get a photo up to get an id. Its in the large pot on the back left of the group.

Update just got an id for my Fern it is Dryopteris sieboldii its an evergreen Japanese fern. Thanks Steve!

Sunny day so out in the garden!

Today spent the day in the garden, and really had a major tidy up- and i have to say the garden looks 100% better than it did before if i do say so myself! I planted a purple cordyline tat had been living in a pot for about a year, into the sunny bed to replace a Phyllostachys Shangahi 3 bamboo which did not seem to do very well there- probably lack of moisture (ie me watering!).

The photo above shows just part of the view that looks out over the new grass border and onto the butterfly border in front of the palms in the bed behind. The whole bed where the butterfly border will be was dug over and manure added, and 2 yuccas were taken out that didnt deserve their prime position! The Butia palm in the bed in the centre of the photo almost was dug up today as it has never settled in even in 3 years and its new leaves always came out browned- i assumed frost damage but it should easily have coped with the winters we have had. I have given it 1 more year to prove its place as this winter it has put up 2 new leaves but both seem damaged- there is just something that the plant doesnt like about its new home.

The Acacia is in full bloom and looks and smells beautiful! Will have to cut it back after flowering as it is a huge tree already about 20ft tall! And its only been in the ground 2 summers! I wonder if Acacias reshoot from bare branches after being cut back (pollarded) or does there have to be a bud/branch already there? Will have to do some research.

We are up to 4 lots of frogspawn in the wildlife pond! :) I wonder how many more we will get?- its only a small pond! I counted roughly 200 eggs in one lump of spawn. I managed to catch the white goldfish that is in the pond as he would definately look at the tadpoles as lunch! I left the Golden Minnow in the pond as I hope his mouth is fairly small! Although may take him out and put him back once the tadpoles are out of danger in a month or so.

This little plant above is an Orchid. Dendrobium kingianum. Now its only a small plant about 4" tall but has beautiful sprays of pink flowers in spring. This little plant has proved to be prefectly happy outside over winter on my window ledge. I was surprised how well it has coped. It prefers growing in shade and fingers crossed for some flowers soon!

Lastly a photo of Susie having a drink from the wildlife pond. Am getting increasingly twitchy about whether the chooks are going to have free range in the garden for much longer- i guess there is going to be a period in the spring when all the new shoots are emerging that will be particularly prone to chicken attack so will just have to keep a close eye on them when they are out.

I got my plant buying fix for the month!!

Shopping Expedition!

Went to Crews Hill in Enfield today looking for plants for 3 different parts of the garden.

Crews Hill is a great place to visit as on one road (Cattlegate Road) there must be about 15 garden centres and pet stores one after the other- you can spend hours there if you felt like it (and quite often we do!).

So apart from being a great way to spend a sunday (in my opinion! not the other halfs!) we were looking for plants for:

The Shade Bed
The Butterfly Bed
and the Grass/Prairie Bed

Now I have to say even I was surprised at how many plants I bought today- but in my defence most were in the reduced section for £1 or £2- and all the plant I bought were ones I had pre-written down on my list. Well apart from the Eremurus and the Maidenhair Spleenwort(Asplenium trichomanes) but they were just cool plants!

We first stopped at Woldens where I picked up a couple of Achillea 'Credo's which are a pale lemon yellow colour and some Sea thistles (Eryngium planum) for the Grass garden, and a yellow Eremurus and and 3 small pots of Ox-Eye daisies for the Butterfly border. For the shade border I got 4 Athyrium otophorum 'Okanum' ferns, and Maidenhair Spleenwort. And also a double purple Hellebore for my mum for mothers day.

Onto the 2nd nursery Oz Ferns- here we picked up an Oregano and Chives for the butterfly border, and 2 Dryopteris alata and 1 D. affinis ferns. The best buys were some great Stipa tenuissima grasses for £3.50- i bought 6 pots of this. Also some over flowing pots of Bugle for ground cover the shade border (and its flowers are great for insects).

Last visit was to the Gardening Club next door, you have to be a member to go in here- but its well worth the £5 yearly entry. I made a beeline for the reduced plants trolley by the tills and to my delight found a whole trolley full of grasses and ferns reduced to £1 or £2 a pot. Excellent!

So here I decided to splash out and bought loads of them- they were practically giving them away i told myself! The ferns were £2 each- i got 9 more Athyrium otophorum 'Okanum' (i know this is now 12 in total- as id bought 4 earlier! but they are great plants and i want to go for the block planting look), 2 Lady ferns (Athyrium felix-feminia), 3 Athyrium felix-feminia 'Friselliae' (i dont actually really like this fern but didnt realise what it was until i got it home), and 3 Polystichum setiferum (i love this fern!).

The grasses were £1 each and so I got 3 Carex 'Bowles Gold' for the shade border, 3 Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Hameln', and 3 Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' for the grass border.

I also picked up 2 Sedum 'Herbstrude' aka Autumn Joy, and a Yellow Lupin for the butterfly border too.

Most people were looking in our trolley very curiously- to them it probably looked like we had a load of dead plants in our trolley!

Oh plus 3 bags of manure, 2 bunches of tulips, and a big 20kg bag of Chicken Food.

So it hadnt even got to 11:45 yet so I had done very well I reckoned! So we went home (i doubt anything else would have fitted in the car!

Back at home and unpacked we had about 20 mins before it started to rain so we fixed the last 2 pieces of trellis on the fences and let the chickens out for a run around. Herminone got spooked by something and started squawking alot but couldnt see what she was moaning about- i got everyone back inside though when it started pelting down as didnt fancy staying out in the rain to supervise them!

Planning on a relaxing evening in front of the tv and the Natures Greatest Events program- think its the sardines tonight! :)