May 2018 / Chronicles / START

Pictures May

Juni 2018

Greetings to all gardening friends. The date is 3 June and summer has finally arrived. I’ve been working in the garden half of the day and am ready to drop. Here in Sweden, we’re having the hottest summer for hundred years. There’s a clear blue sky and we’ve not had a drop of rain for more than six weeks.

It takes it out of you. We’ve been experiencing temperatures hotter than Mediterranean countries, and the garden has been drying out even though the garden hoses have been working non-stop. And since our garden occupies a southern location, it’s really being grilled.

I just brought home a number of plants – two-year Silver Ghost thistles, which should spread nicely once they are established in the garden, rudbeckia Goldsturm (yellow with a black eye, which reputedly blooms long into the autumn), campunala alba, Aconogonon x fennicum (finnslide), which has a wonderful autumn colour – which need to go down on the ground. And then they’ll need to be watered and looked after.

Don’t forget that the garden will be open to the public on first of July when we are participating in the Tusen Trädgårdar (Thousand Gardens) scheme between 10.-17.00. At 12.00 and 15.00 there will be musical entertainment with Klarinett Con Brio.

The garden will also be open on 15 July between 12-18.00. We’ll see whether there be anything blooming then or whether everything will already have finished in the garden.

Crocuses and the tulips are long behind us, but we will have to wait and see how the roses perform. It’s a question of what happens with the heat. Last week the climbing hydrangea began to bloom in the rear garden. It was planted some 15-16 years ago by a tall pine tree and since then has climbed up and has certainly reached a height in metres which rivals its number of years.
                     
The rhododendron season is almost over, and the alliums too have bloomed far too quickly. Just now, the red poppies (which we have never planted) are in full bloom, particularly in the fruit garden at the front.

Talking of the fruit garden, many years ago my father planted several blackberry bushes which over the course of the years were badly treated, quite simply neglected. Last week we decided to get rid of them since they had grown enormously, with neither shape nor form, and covered quite a large area with large thorny (and mainly dead) branches. It was a major project which took almost an entire day, but is now completed. Now it’s just a question of transporting everything away…

Take care

Stefan, A Gentleman Gardener