Up to see the Ladies.

There was a mixture of emotions when visiting the Meadow Saffron - Naked Ladies is another common name, hence the title - at one of its two sites on the banks of the River Nore in Co. Kilkenny. It seems that these are the only two sites in the country where this plant is still …

Knee-Ryan; Nay-Reen; Ner-Eeny!

It is peculiar where the mind rambles while one is pushing a lawnmower up and down a lawn. Or, more accurately perhaps, a peculiar mind is inclined to ramble in odd ways while one is engaged in routine gardening tasks. This particular ramble was along the lines of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong's tomato/tomahto; potato/potahto …

Shredding for Aroma.

As I was shredding material for the compost heap, the passage of a little Lemon Verbena through the machine and the subsequent beautiful aroma brought to mind the many plants in the garden which appeal to me for the aroma of their fragrance. Lemon Verbena which has a beautiful aroma of citrus. Shredding is generally …

Follow me up to Carlow!

It's a long time since that Planxty song came into my mind but it was what popped up when I came to write of our visit to Altamont Gardens yesterday. Follow the link for a blast from the past! Yes, it was a bright and warm day and we thought Monday would be a quiet …

Fast and Slow.

The weekend brings a barrowful of gardening blogs and there has been several mentions of the season moving along; that we are leaving the brighter and hotter days of summer behind and that the change to autumnal weather is clearly perceptible. It is a milder, gentler season I feel and more appealing to me than …

A Week of Three Gardens

We seem to have entered a lull period in the home garden and took ourselves off for two garden visits during this past week. The garden was set back by the period of extremely hot weather we had earlier in the summer and has been slow to recover. Most of the earlier herbaceous plants were …

Hydrangea Heaven!

Oh, it wasn't a great start to the day and I'm not really the better of it yet. Performance piddling - Flow and Scan - is not especially demanding but neither is it my favourite first thing in the morning activity. The necessity of taking on extra liquid to ensure a release at the appointment …

Lismore Castle Gardens – with lots of Photographs!

Our season ticket to Lismore Castle Gardens has been well used this year and we certainly have had excellent value for money from it. It's an hour's drive, 70Km, gate to gate but because of road works and a diversion today's journey took an hour and a half but it brought us to parts of …

More than Expected!

We imagined that not much had been done in the garden in the past week. It was a week when we seemed to be away from the garden quite a lot but we still did an amount of work in the little time we spent there. There were two days with the two families of …