Styrax japonicus ‘Pink Chimes’ and Fagus sylvatica ‘Asplenifolia Purpurea’.

Ross has completed the new clearing at the very top of the Giddle Orchard ready for replanting in the autumn. I will enjoy thinking about what would grow well there over the summer. Perhaps some rare oaks or something with copper leaves that will show up from the drive as you look across. Ross is now moving on to do the same more clearing of elderly trees and camellias at the other end of the kitchen garden.

Liriodendron tulipifera has put on enormous amounts of new growth as a result of all the rain up to now but there are very few flowers to be seen this year and that goes for the other 2 large trees in the garden as well.

2023 – CHW

A 4 hour Burncoose Management meeting but still time to photograph a few new things.
Rose ‘Hampshire’.

Rhododendron viridescens hiding its yellow flowers in its bluish new growth.

I had not seen Erodium macradenum in flower before.

Oenothera ‘Summer Sun’ particularly good.

A group of Agapanthus ‘Streamline’ flowering their hearts out.

2022 – CHW
Styrax japonicus ‘Fargesii’ on full show in Kennel Close while our original plant has hardly a flower this year.

Stewartia pseudocamellia with its first flower showing. Stewartia seem to be late into flower this year and well behind the styrax.

The simply gigantic leaves on Tilia caroliniana subsp. heterophylla (syn. monticola).

Compare to Tilia chenmoui (a Keith Rushford collection). Planted 2016.

Abies homolepis (planted 2009) with even more of its spectacular cones this year than ever before.

Tilia chingiana with rather smaller leaves.

Quercus mongolica developing huge leaves and getting going.

No casualties so far in the 30 or so newly planted species of Crataegus.

A touch of pink at the tips of the tepals on this flower of Magnolia globosa as you can see. Maurice Foster I believe has a much pinker flowered form.

2021 – CHW
A good show of bronzy new growth on the ancient Camellia sasanquas.

Stewartia rostrata just coming out on the drive.

In Roy & Ann Key’s garden at the Pound grows a tall biennial echium with reddish flowers. Is this a species or a hybrid? Very different in colour to our blue and pink Echium pininana. On looking it up it is Echium wildpretii which Burncoose stocks. Must grab a few seed from Roy later. From the Canary Isles. Its other name is Echium bourgaeanum.

Deutzia paniculata (BSWJ 8592) above the drive on from the Four in Hand. The (different) species next to it is over so I hope I have deduced this correctly. Very fine today anyway. When you google D. paniculata most of the pictures are so laughably muddled and wrong that one wonders quite why they bother. Disinformation rather than knowledge!

2020 – CHW
William Hague is the first of the really senior former politicians to dare to write openly this week about the economic disaster that the government’s response to the pandemic has caused. As I reread what I wrote in this diary earlier in April and May I am startled at how shell shocked we were as a country by lockdown in late March and how little thought was given then to the economic consequences of preserving our health at all and every cost.As the post mortems begin and blame is apportioned from an impoverished electorate and those now in poverty and on unemployment benefits there is little point repeating the obvious. Panic, overreaction, lack of a plan, consistent negativism and entitlement pleading from most of the media.Self-publicising and media encouragement has given oxygen to minority views which are now portrayed as popular and overwhelmingly necessary impositions on us all. They are not! When will common sense be allowed to prevail over street marches, strikes and thuggery.Much has changed and improved in our estate businesses during lockdown. Only a few staff will remain on furlough until the end of August and all will be working part time (we hope) by 4th July when tourism is to restart.There have been very few winners in the pandemic but, almost by accident, Burncoose Nurseries found itself in a growth situation which, with a supreme staff effort, it was able to sustain. Luck came into it and the bad luck of a secondary outbreak of infection could yet undo the good work. However you can fight for your own luck too.I have not written like this for a few weeks as time has been shorter now that the wheels are gently moving again. Finishing the first draft of the Burncoose catalogue introduction was completed this week. However, I hope that future generations enquiring into the pandemic and wondering about what happened and why will derive one perspective from these diary entries. The full accounts of my heroes and villains of all this are locked away privately for posterity.It has been fun to write while it lasted but now back to plants only. The number of diary readers has grown during lockdown despite (or perhaps because?) my perspective having, very occasionally, offended particular sensitivities as regards reality.Jaimie was tidying up in Penvergate and, while removing a fallen dead tree, discovered a young slowworm.

The war on squirrels continues as the first crops of this year’s youngsters start to roam. Seventy-five so far this year since January in the main gardens (and the same again from the keepers). Sadly more than last year at this stage. Out of today’s seven all but one were young males seeking out new territories to fill the voids which we have created in drays and old hollow trees from the spring clear out. The older females will soon be producing their second batch of youngsters to plague us come the autumn. Much less evidence of bark damage on 20 to 30 year old trees so far so we may be making inroads in what I fear is an unwinnable battle without contraception.

First flowering here of Syringa pekinensis ‘Yellow Fragrance’. Not very yellow when full out but superbly scented.

We missed a few Tilia species when recording their leaf shapes a month or so ago:Tilia japonica ‘Ernest Wilson’ – regrowth after the rain from earlier roe deer nibbling.

Tilia chingiana has leaves which droop one-sidedly.

Tilia mongolica ‘Harvest Gold’

Quercus maurii is trying to recover from the drought.

2019 – CHW
The casualties from the April/May dry weather in the Isla Rose Plantation are far worse than after last summer’s drought. At least a dozen deads show up today with several more borderline cases which further dry weather will finish off.

Nonetheless Styrax japonicus ‘Farges Belle’ is making good headway and flowering properly for the first time. Largish flowers but near enough to Styrax fargesii so as not to be worth a name?

This is easily the best Rhododendron maddenii which we have here with the largest flowers. One for Asia to propagate from seed and cuttings. Did any root last year?

Ross has started to fell a few beech and sycamore trees above the greenhouse. One split in half a year ago and four others threaten the new plantings here of Styrax and Stewartia.

Rhododendron decorum – the pink form is always later than the similarly ancient and more common pure white ones. Asia must try this from seed to preserve what is such an exceptional late flowering rhododendron. This huge clump of three is very near the end of its life.

2018 – CHW
What a fantastic plant Stewartia rostrata is. Despite what all the reference books say far and away the largest flower of any stewartia species. The buds are clothed in a reddish calyx and then emerge as pink buds. The open flower has pink blotches which remain pink even when the flowers are over and fall to the ground. The blotches are irregular and most pronounced in full sun. The blotching is on both sides of the petals. Not all the flowers come out at once so, even in hot periods, there is something to see for three to four weeks or more. One of our plants is in full shade and not out yet. Even last year’s seed pods which remain on the tree look interesting. Some flowers, when fully open flat, are 2.5in or 6-7cm across. What about that for a flowering tree in a woodland garden in mid/late June. AND the gorgeous purple/black autumn colour to come. It is a no brainer to add this to your collection!

2017 – CHW
The Wollemia nobilis or Wollemi pine has struggled at Burncoose for the last 10 years. It is now 7-8ft tall and I discover today male and female flowers for the first time. Presumably the females are the darker cone-like flowers lower down and the two male flowers are green. Perhaps I have this the wrong way around?

I could not resist more pictures of the Lonicera crassifolia this time in shade. We must try for this in our 2018 catalogue.

The sycamores are setting a plentiful crop of seed very early in this 10 day long heatwave. Insufferably hot again today.

Another mature Styrax japonicus on Bond Street which we all forget. Here is its top peeping above a cornus.

The bracts on the splendid Cornus kousa ‘Doubloon’ are now turning pink in the sun.

Plenty of flower heads on Viburnum betulifolium. A bumper crop of red berries to follow.

Acanthus mollis is a thug. Here it has taken root in the compost heap outside the arch. We have dug it out and got rid of it in the beds but it was a mistake to leave the roots on the dump. Quite pretty and unusual as it comes into flower though.