5th October | The Garden Diary

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CONTRIBUTORS:

FJW 1955-2007

CHW 2015-

JCW 1897-1939

CW 1940-1955

2023 – CHW

Crataegus combyi with a superb show as usual.

Crataegus pontica also with fruits for the first time here.

Sorbus wardii with small clusters of 2-5 yellow/ orange fruits.

The first ever flower here on Schefflera rhododendrifolia. The small tree is now almost about 15 feet tall and the flower is within the new growth at the tip of the highest shoot.

Nothaphoebe cavaleriei with good secondary new growth.

Seed heads forming on Microtropis petelotii but still green.

2022 – CHW
Heptacodium miconioides has been rather battered by the recent heavy rain. More to come tomorrow.

The saga of the Planning Permission for the graveyard extension at St Michaels and all Angels Church at Caerhays has taken another nasty twist. The planners demanded on expensive geophysical survey. This showed nothing in the proposed new graveyard area. The planners then consulted their own archaeologists who disagreed with the initial report and demanded further trench digging. This started on the first whole day of real rain after the drought. The trench reveals what the archaeologists says is a culvert and, separately, what is claimed to be two sides of a 15-17th century building. It looks more like the base of an old hedge to me situated as it is. Neither feature is very deep into the ground and the culvert is only 9-12 inches below ground level as you can see. How did the archaeology team with their geographical kit miss these features? One can only speculate but the digging/ excavations will now take 5 days (not 1-2) and more people. Our tiny church cannot afford all this on top of all the legal costs (from the church lawyers) in transferring the land to the church for £1.00. Meanwhile the planners also object to our post and wire fence and demand a much more expensive Cornish stone faced earth bank. Fortunately we have found three other fairly recent churchyard extensions which have approved with identical fencing. The nearest is at Ladock church. The planners, whose torpor and delay in determining most covid planning applications is a well-known joke, are insisting here that they will bin the application and make us start again unless we get all the skittles in a row by January. In view of the latest ‘finds’ it looks as though the parish has wasted thousands of pounds for a bureaucratic “nothing”. I suppose I can be buried on the castle lawn if the graveyard is full. Another clever way of closing churches against parishioners express wishes.

Our excellent semi-retired vicar has been allowed to stay on until May rather than being terminated in November. Thereafter one vicar for four parishes rather than just us and St Gorran. Mevagissey and St Ewe parishes to join the new parish ‘cluster’ to save the deanery money to spend on new more ‘socially inclusive’ projects.

The first flowers on Camellia sasanqua to flower this year (out in September) have been destroyed by wind and heavy rain but a nice clutch of the next flowers show colour today.

2021 – CHW
A colchicum in flower outside the anteroom. A brief moment before it gets eaten by the pheasant poults.

The fence has been moved at the bottom of White Stiles field to give us room for the planting of a cherry avenue.

Just look at the size of this leaf on Paulownia kawakamii.

A flowering pot-full of Liriope muscari.

2020 – CHW
A good long trip around the garden with the new head gardener and his wife from Antony Woodland Garden.Viburnum cylindricum has been exposed in the clearing for our new planting. Interesting bark and a decent plant now that you can actually see it in some light.

Still a few flowers left on Rhododendron decorum in October! This tree has been out in flower for at least eight weeks.

We are amazed that the berries on Crataegus schraderiana are now the size of cherries.

Malus ‘Jelly King’ with its first four crab apples a year on from being planted out. This is a New Zealand introduction with wonderfully coloured fruits. We need to get this in the Burncoose catalogue.

Photinio villosa var. coreana now has massed ripe fruits. We saw the other two forms of P. villosa with berries a week or two ago.

Liquidambar orientalis is newly planted but good autumn colours already beginning.

Likewise Juglans cinarea is quite a show.

Seeds on Tilia tomentosa ‘Petiolaris’ for the first time I think. Planted in 2009.

Then a surprise. Flower buds all over Eucalyptus simmonosii and seeds from last year. However the tree has bleeding cancers at the base so may be on the way out? Planted only in 2014 and 20ft tall at least.

Loads of seeds on what may or may not be Photinia macrophylla. Looks more microphylla to me!

Blue seedpods on Decaisnea fargesii at the very top of the plant.

A huge windblown leaf from Liriodendron chinense. An article in ‘The Garden’ this month says you only get enormous leaves like this if you pollard your trees!

2019 – CHW
Acer x conspicuum ‘Red Flamingo’ looking especially fine with its young new growth in the sun on Sinogrande Walk. Even better than the Acer x conspicuum ‘Phoenix’ at Burncoose opposite the mist houses on the main drive.

Also on Sinogrande Walk is Viburnum erubescens from the Himalayas with red fruits which will eventually go black according to the reference books. This is one of the few Viburnum species with paniculate flower clusters which I have yet to see. The fruits look stunning and Asia should grab some quickly before the pheasants find them. A Wilson introduction in 1910.

2018 – CHW
On Monday a visit to Tregrehan to exchange Schima, Torreya and rhododendron cuttings for cuttings of 15 new camellia species for Caerhays. Most were either wild collected by Tom himself or by others also in the wild.Here are the highlights and rest are detailed here if you are interested.Lapageria rosea var. albiflora climbing through camellias and up a high wall. To die for! If only we could produce even 50 and sell them for shitloads. Sadly the cuttings and layers take two years and are impossible to bulk up. You can see one unripe seed pod has formed.

Look at the seed pod on Camellia tuberculosa. Extraordinary and aptly named.

This is Tom’s Schima argentea which is massively different to ours. Smallish flowers are yellowish not pure white. You could be forgiven for thinking that the leaves were those of a Lithocarpus. Ours is clearly wrongly named.

What extraordinary seeds Melliodendron xylocarpum has. Huge and not rounded as one might have expected from the Styracaceae family. Despite its size the one which we cut open contained no seed at all. Most were however still on the tree and might be fertile.

The 15 species of camellia cuttings collected today were:

Camellia tuberculosa

Camellia sinensis (the tea tree)

Camellia brevistyla

Camellia fluviolatus

Camellia brevistyla var. robida

Camellia lepidea

Camellia yunnanensis

Camellia kissii

Camellia trichocarpa

Camellia poliodonta

Camellia ushiensis

Camellia costeri

Camellia edithae

Camellia xylocarpa

Camellia handelii

There are a good 20 more species to collect cuttings from another year. We ignored the Vietnamese species which are struggling at Tregrehan after The Beast and even before. Nearly all the above are Chinese species.

2017 – CHW
Here is the elderly Camellia sasanqua in its full glory – four days after it first came out.

Camellia sasanqua ‘Hugh Evans’ has just opened a couple of flowers too in a pot beside the front door.

2016 – CHW
To Burncoose to photograph the gift wrapping of the five plants on special offer from our website for Christmas.

Mary Ashworth has sent photographs of ‘Cornish loderi’ at Werrington. There are no plants here but we took pictures of the Burncoose plant on the drive to compare trunk formation and leaf size etc.
Mary’s trunk photographs and ours are very different. Werrington has Rhododendron loderi ‘King George’ and Burncoose has Rhododendron ‘Cornish loderi’. The flowers prove it even more!

Mary Ashworth’s Rhododendron ‘Cornish loderi’

I mentioned how squirrels have recently killed a mature nothofagus and nearly also a mature aesculus. Here is the proof!The old monkey puzzle above the Tennis Court has been felled and cleared up. Very little damage to any nearby plants. If the trunk was worth anything it appears to have vanished!

The new multispan tunnel for growing on herbaceous plants is now built and potting is commencing. Cost £10k which is about double what I was originally told.

2015 – CHW
The newish bamboo plantings in Kennel Close have grown so well and look so superb I thought it might merit a whole day trip to record them properly. They all came from Stams Nursery in Ireland and were planted as groups of three or five in 2011. They were deliberately allowed room to spread and were intended to cut out underdraft and wind from the main garden. Although fully exposed to the westerly gales and some frequently nearly leafless after a ‘salty’ winter they are now firmly established, spreading out and doing their job. These were all species and varieties entirely new to Caerhays acquired as a result of a visit to Picton Castle (thankfully not National Trust) in Wales. There they have a series of ponds with well manicured clumps of bamboo reflecting in the water. The clumps are established and the culms (stems) trimmed up each year to show their colour, texture and nodes. Bamboo classification and (re) naming has been an even bigger and more moving and variable game for the ‘bottom spankers’ than the ‘tree creepers’ so do not worry too much if you are a ‘spanker’ and think these are wrongly named by the Irish. Just enjoy the differences and how well they look. Come to think of it few of the culms are big enough for any serious ‘spanking’ but when I come to see any being cut off and pinched I will naturally assume they are being used for growing runner beans and not by elderly Tory MPs in need of stimulation.

Fargesia robusta (good spanking name)