2025 – CHW
2024 – CHW
Still very mild and overcast.
Jaimie has got a good lot of plant labels out into the garden 2 weeks before we open to the public.
Euonymus fortunei ‘Wolong Ghost’ is finally making some progress climbing up a Copper beech tree. Not much to show for it after 4 years.
A Rhododendron ‘Countess of Haddington’ by the entrance to the garden half blown out of the ground.
Most of the magnolia buds outside the Back Yard still have their two coverings but a few have shed the outer one.
Severe frost damage on a Camellia sasanqua by the Stable Flat.
Nearby a Camellia x williamsii ‘Donation’ with nearly all its flowers frosted.
Here a Camellia japonica with leaf and bud drop from the cold spell.
2023 – CHW
First colour showing on Magnolia ‘Strybing White’ and a windblown petal on the ground.
First colour showing on Magnolia ‘Strybing White’ and a windblown petal on the ground.
Cutting back the far end of the laurel hedge below the Main Ride has revealed a lot of layering. Now cut, these encroaching layers can be dug out with a digger to give room for more planting.
An interesting set of newspaper cuttings about West Portholland together with pictures of Pengelly Farm and the farmer which lived there and still live there today.
2022 – CHW
An exciting development. Jaimie has discovered a self-sown Camellia x williamsii seedling near Crinodendron Hedge which has bicoloured flowers and is markedly different from any other x williamsii variety growing or bred at Caerhays. Is it worthy of registration and naming? We think so but judge these three pictures for yourselves. Now we need to consider an appropriate name to try to register it as. Camellia x williamsii ‘Bicolor’? Or ‘Isla Rose’ after my eldest granddaughter? It is growing reasonably near the Isla Rose Plantation. Isla Rose not a bad selling name once we get this into propagation next year at Burncoose but other suggestions welcome.
Zanthoxylum armatum (NJM 11.080) continues to surprise. Ripe and red pepper seeds still in evidence and this species is an evergreen. Some of the nastiest prickles or spines you could wish for as well. Looks to be a large upright tree eventually which other species growing here are not.
2021 – CHW
Filthy wet day but much milder.This is a graft of Magnolia campbellii subsp. mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ which was taken from one of the original wild collected Lanarths growing at the top of the lawn at Lanarth near St Keverne on the Lizard where I expect it is also out today. This small tree is a beauty with the stunted growth of its parent, smallish rather rounded leaves, and true ‘Lanarth’ coloured flowers. The five or six original Lanarths at Lanarth are all slightly different in colour but not in habit. Most are in the walled garden there. Small spreading trees in old age from the 1930s which never have that many flowers but what a colour! Jaimie spotted this, our fourth magnolia to flower this year, above Orchid House Nursery bed. A better colour than the seedling Lanarth above Crinodendron Hedge but identical to the one on the bank outside the Georgian Hall whose buds still look tight which was planted in the mid-1950s and has only flowered three or four times.
Filthy wet day but much milder.This is a graft of Magnolia campbellii subsp. mollicomata ‘Lanarth’ which was taken from one of the original wild collected Lanarths growing at the top of the lawn at Lanarth near St Keverne on the Lizard where I expect it is also out today. This small tree is a beauty with the stunted growth of its parent, smallish rather rounded leaves, and true ‘Lanarth’ coloured flowers. The five or six original Lanarths at Lanarth are all slightly different in colour but not in habit. Most are in the walled garden there. Small spreading trees in old age from the 1930s which never have that many flowers but what a colour! Jaimie spotted this, our fourth magnolia to flower this year, above Orchid House Nursery bed. A better colour than the seedling Lanarth above Crinodendron Hedge but identical to the one on the bank outside the Georgian Hall whose buds still look tight which was planted in the mid-1950s and has only flowered three or four times.
After Helen Chen’s statement that Phyllostachys nigra ‘Megurochiku’ was very rare in cultivation and, in her view, one of the very best bamboo varieties I thought I had better photograph the canes and clump again. There seems to be a bit more running and spreading from the original planted clump than one usually sees in P. nigra itself. The canes are clearly still immature but the older ones are developing darker colouring just below the node. This is brownish-black with a hint of red at present. An attractive foliage effect too and planted in a good place for visitors to see and enjoy it in the future.
