12th May | The Garden Diary

FJW 1955-2007

CHW 2015-

JCW 1897-1939

CW 1940-1955

2025 – CHW

The Pterostyrax species nova from Crug Farm is finally out for the very first time here and it is stunning! What a tree this is going to be when it is covered in flowers rather than just having one?

Magnolia acuminata ‘Golden Glow’ x M. ‘Miss Honeybee’.

Magnolia ‘Sunset Swirl’ on the drive. Well worth growing.

Thinning work at Manassick Wood being undertaken by college students.

Holly, beech and rhododendrons growing on the decaying trunk of a long dead Pinus radiata on the drive.

2024 – CHW
Loading the lorries for Chelsea starts tomorrow.

The trenchwork for the new 3 phase electrical supply to the nursery has gone in well in a dry week. A neat job and we have done our bit on time. Where are National Grid with the cable?

The Show Tunnel is looking full and extremely well managed by Molly and Cressy.

Cercis ‘Eternal Flame’ just coming into leaf.

Cornus ‘Venus’ looks a show stopper yet again.

And the larger sized Viburnum ‘Kilimanjaro Sunrise’ should be perfect for Chelsea.

Smaller herbaceous plants for Chelsea in full flower outside on a bed.

Oddly coloured new growth on Bignonia capreolata.

New covering over the camellias and rhododendrons. Some rotten wood to replace.

Hydrangea ‘Yulika’ – our 2024 Plant of the Year entry for Chelsea.

2023 – CHW
An extraordinary communication from someone growing an Embothrium in Tromso, Norway. Inside the Arctic Circle! They has asked Burncoose for advice last May. Here are pictures of the plant last summer, then wrapping it in woolen socks and packing it with birch leaves, and the unpacking of the plant recently. As you can see the plants isn’t quite dead but I wouldn’t be holding my breath!

Echium pininana full out already.

Lunaria annua (Honesty) brought back from Manley Cottage in Cheshire.

This is labelled and was acquired as Pomaderris apetala. However, consulting Dawson and Lucas spectacularly good pictorial book on ‘New Zealand Native Trees’ I have my doubts. The pom-pom flower heads look much more like Pomaderris kumeraho in both shape and colour. Then I realise that P. kumeraho has no serrations on its leaves but our two plants do. P. apetala has young leaves which are folded on the midrib so that two halves of the upper surface are pressed together. Both our two plants do have this as these photographs show clearly. We do therefore have Pomaderris apetala subsp. maritima (to give it the full NZ title) correctly named.

Magnolia ‘Honey Liz’ outstanding today with huge flowers.

Rhododendron ‘Mi Amor’ with just a hint of pink as the flower trumpets open.

Our other elderly plant of Rhododendron floccigerum which is being layered.

Wisteria floribunda ‘Violacea Plena’ (syn. ‘Black Dragon’) just out above the gents loos.

2022 – CHW

Why are hen pheasants so random and inept at making nests?

Maddenia wilsonii with a full set of densely hairy new leaves and looking healthy above Crinodendron Hedge.

Attractive and dainty new growth on a young Meliosma pungens.

We missed this acer on last weekend’s Maple Society tour – Acer cappadocicum ‘Aureum’.

Another Magnolia ‘Honey Liz’.

Maddenia hypoleuca is also now in leaf. We saw the flowers earlier. Both these rare species of Maddenia appear in garden records and it is good to have both now back in the collection. The leaf forms are fairly similar.

Young Acer erianthum trees which I failed to photograph last Saturday.

Magnolia sinensis in bud, flower, and as a whole, ancient tree.

Acer sterculiaceum subsp. franchettii with its bronzy new growth and (more or less) three lobed leaves. A Cornish record tree.

Magnolia x wieseneri beautifully scented and full out today.

Crataegus jozana (NE Asia) flowering here for the first time as a newly planted small tree. No picture or proper description in the RHS guide to Hawthorns and Medlars by James Phipps. Not in Hillier’s either?

First flower on Magnolia ‘Illini Gold’.

Acer sterculiaceum subsp. sterculiaceum in Kennel Close. The same bronzy hue and more regularly three lobes to the young leaves.

Acer macrophyllum

x Sorbonaria fallax ‘Likjornaja’ – finally out in flower and developing into a small tree.

Wonderful bronzy new foliage on Betula fansipanensis as well.

Deutzia longifolia in Tin Garden – what a flower! I need to compare this with D. purpurascens and the rather smaller flowered Deutzia ‘Dark Eyes’ which Burncoose sells. I have not yet begun to sort the newer deutzia species in my own mind and as now planted here.

First flowers on Rhododendron [?].

Rhododendron klossii (T6346) planted in 2012 from Tom Hudson (not in the Pocket Guide to Rhododendron Species).

2021 – CHW
Following Elizabeth’s 95th birthday tour here in April her son, Alverne Bolitho, has sent this picture of the tree planting at Trewidden of Magnolia ‘F J Williams’ which was her birthday gift from Caerhays. My great aunt, Mary Williams, moved to Trewidden following the death of her husband, Rt Hon Charles Williams, in 1955. Elizabeth Bolitho worked at Caerhays for Mary and met her future husband, Simon Bolitho, here in the early 1950s. A little bit of Williams-Bolitho family history.

Flowers on Magnolia ‘Moonspire’ – bluish-yellow in bud opening yellow and pink. An odd combination. Again, this variety gets better each year it flowers.

Rhododendron layering today in the garden. An elderly and flopped over Rhododendron floccigerum gets the treatment at both ends. This is one of my favourite rhodos and a better colour than the three fairly recently planted new plants from Millais or Glendoick.

Paeonia delavayi just into flower outside the front door and on the lawn.

Zantedeschia aetheopica in full flower already and quite pickable if we were going to Chelsea in a week or so.

Barry Humphries (of Dame Edna and Sir Les Patterson fame) holding a branch of Quercus lamellosa during a garden tour today.

Barry Humphries and Rhododendron ‘Fragrantissimum’.

Barry Humphries meets chef Kevin Murray, but he did not stay to lunch and went on to the Tresanton! More gladioli there perhaps?

View 12th May 1897 – 2020