Tales from Anna’s Garden

I am writing this on the day our lovely heat wave has come to an end and some welcome rain is falling outside. It has been very hot here in Edinburgh and at one point the temperature in the greenhouse was 36 degrees. We were lucky to have a couple of days of heavy rainfall in the middle of the heatwave, on 1st and 2nd July, so our lawn has remained green more or less.

It was on Saturday 7th June that we opened the garden at a new time, 4- 7pm, with refreshments instead of tea, and for one day only. It rained intermittently, sometimes quite hard, so it wasn’t an unqualified success. I was grateful to the 120 people who did brave the weather and I think they enjoyed it. I was grateful too to the helpers who had to work through all conditions. The plant sale did very well. The garden benefitted from the roses being out, most noticeable were pink New Dawn with Clematis ‘Etoile Violette’ growing through it, Felicite et Perpetue, and vigorous pink Dentelle de Malines, all on the house. The peonies were out too, but the rhododendron flowers, usually the stars of the mid May opening were nowhere to be seen.

At this time of year the garden owes a lot to self seeders and unplanned planting. This cacophony of colour in the old frames beside the greenhouse is totally random. The tall bright yellow flower is evening primrose which has seeded in the gravel path there, and in many other places round the garden; the paler yellow in front is Cestrum parkii, a semi shrub, which found a home there as I couldn’t think where else to put it. It dies right back in the winter, seems almost dead, and is slow to get going, but from now on performs well. The red Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ is certainly a popular plant round Edinburgh, and in the distance the tall Veronicastrum was parked there a while ago and now provides a nice contrast.

This rather neglected flower bed beside the garage is home to Leucojums in the Spring and last year for summer we put in plugs of Ammi majus to flower after them. Ammi majus is a lovely member of the umbelliferae family but is too tall and spindly to stand up unaided. Only a few plants of Ammi have come up this year but here, with the flowers supported by purple toadflax (Linaria purpurea), it makes an attractive group.

Lychnis also spreads itself round the garden, especially on the gravel, and is very welcome. I like this pink and white one best, seen here against Pittosporum ‘Tom Thumb’.

The bees seem to love these poppies when they first open out. They seem to compete, two or three at a time to get to the nectar. This pale purple poppy is all over the garden, perhaps because the seeds got into the compost, but I would really like to have the much darker purple one and need to find some seeds of it.

The bees also love Schizophragma hydrangeoides, a climber which hangs over the road wall. I hope people walking past notice it because it has flowered very well this year. First thing in the beautiful mornings we have had lately it has been covered in bees.

Perhaps the best show in the garden at the moment is made by these Watsonias. They are corms, like gladioli, of South African origin and are considered half hardy, so perhaps we are pushing our luck. We divided a large clump of them into about ten plants, and when we redid part of the rockery, we found a good place for them. They have been two years without any flowers but this year we have been rewarded with this exciting display.

In this terracotta pot are 5 Diascia ‘Aurora Apricot’, they are last year’s plugs and surprisingly they have come through the winter well and haven’t even been repotted. Most diascias are annuals but this one does claim to be perennial although not totally hardy.

 

Anna Buxton 14th July 2025