Styrax hookeri has not got many flowers this year.
Styrax obassia also hides its panicles of flowers under the canopy of foliage.
Calycanthus ‘Aphrodite’ flowering well in Tin Garden.
Deutzia monbeigii now producing a good show. More flowers than leaves on this smallish shrub and the leaves are tiny and inverted.
Philadelphus pekinensii is another species swift to form a good clump. Here perhaps in too much shade for best flowering but the three four year old plants are already almost grown together.
Catalpa duclouxii in full flower at 20ft. Our old plant is dead but these root suckers have battled to the light.
Chionanthus virginicus just coming out. It needs more sun to flower better as the one at Burncoose does. Slow growing and only about 10ft tall after 30 years here.
Swelling flower buds (and some just out high up) on Hydrangea seemanii.
2021 – CHW
Boris has decided to extend what is left of the lockdown regulations to 19th July. We were to have been ‘free’ on 21st June. I cannot see major consequences for the businesses here as the holiday season is upon us. The gardens shut for the year on Sunday with £1,956 raised from gardens entry and car parking for Cornwall Hospice Care.
A pot full of Salvia ‘Love and Wishes’ outside the front door which replaced the now planted out Daphne bholua ‘Mary Rose’. Only eight weeks to get this show.
Good flowers on Magnolia grandiflora ‘Main Street’.
2019 – CHW
The St Michaels Caerhays flower festival themed as “Poldark’s Cornwall” has involved and brought together many people in the community who might otherwise not be churchgoers. A wonderful theme, superb standard and a delight to enjoy over three days culminating in the Caerhays charity fete tomorrow. The explanation of each arrangement was written by Gillian Fraser and is attached for anyone wanting to read more.
2018 – CHW
Karpinus kawakamii restored to life and new growth after The Beast had, we thought, rendered it dead. The light pruning from six weeks ago has helped.
2017 – CHW
Garden visitors keep muttering that there is ‘nothing to see’. Although an early flowering year they simply do not take the trouble to look around even with a 2For1 entry offer.
Rhododendron viscosum on the drive. I have never taken in this elderly late flowering species here before. The one at Burncoose is paler and a bit later to flower. Nice scent.
Here are the latest leaf pictures, studio taken by Karol, of Michelia floribunda and Michelia doltsopa from Tregrehan. These show that the former species has a leaf petiole or leaf ‘scar’ of circa 50mm in length while the latter has a ‘scar’ of only circa 20mm in length. Apparently this is the only way to separate these two pretty obviously identical species in terms of habit, leaf size/shape and flowers. My paper disputing this conclusion is nearly finished and I hope to promote some argument.
Another wander up the top part of the drive. Just by the start of Hovel Cart Road is yet another rather good deciduous azalea with no name. There are several still out but you have to hunt them down amid the greenery.
We have just missed Sorbus folgneri ‘Emiel’ in flower at Red Linney. This was a selection by Pavia nurseries and has attractive drooping new growth. Good autumn colour apparently but I have not noticed as yet.
After all the phytophthera ramorum scares I thought we had removed every larch on the place but I now discover, up from Red Linney, three cracking plants of Larix kaempferi which are looking good. This Japanese species has exceptional yellow autumn colour so we hope for the best.
One forgets just how large and attractive the flowers on young Quercus ilex can be. The avenue on the top drive do not all flower at the same time nor do all the trees yet seem to be old enough to do so.
