Flora-ble Histories

Three Pigeons Plot and Arcade Rockery Anytime Sessions w/e 22 August 2021

Boughton House, Northamptonshire. Living History. Monday 16 August

Anita collected donations for GoodGym’s riverside ‘Arcade Rockery’ from Boughton House, Northamptonshire. Dave Cullum, manager of Estates and Parks at Boughton, helped load up a a fantastic selection of plants put together by the Walled Garden team who had been hunting through their stocks to find a Buccleuch associated collection.

This will provide a wonderful living link between the new planting at The Arcade and the old Buccleuch House ( home to the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury) that once stood on the site:

1 Rose ‘Duchess of Buccleuch’

2 Verbena ‘Boughton House’

2 Penstemon ‘Countess of Dalkeith’

Silver point hebe ‘Boughton Silver’

2 fuchsia Marlies de Keijzer

These plants are now in the Arcade and we will plant them in the new bed (which I think should henceforth be known as ‘The Buccleuch Bed’ ) as soon as the nicotiana have finished flowering.

Boughton House is part of the Buccleuch Estates which also include: the Queensberry Estate in Dumfries and Galloway; Dalkeith Country Park near Edinburgh; and border estates including Bowhill. https://www.buccleuch.com/about/

Bargains from Homebase Richmond Friday 20 August

Picked up some heavily discounted plants from Homebase:

12 geranium Roxanne (£1 each, a ‘stupendous plant’ according to the RHS)

2 trays of Mesembryanthemum (45p per tray)

15 miniature purple Asters for a bit of late summer colour at the Three Pigeons (15p each)

At the Arcade and Three Pigeons Friday 20 August

A long early evening session.

Harry planting all the geraniums out, watered the new planting and trimmed the lawn at The Arcade. Anita planted the Mesembryanthemum. These fleshy, succulent-like plants have very pretty daisy shaped flowers and those grown from seed earlier in the year have fared well. As they are half hardy, they should provide ground cover and colour until the first frosts.

At The 🐦🐦🐦 Three Pigeons, as well as weeding, Anita finally got around to dead-heading the wallflowers which looked so much better after their trim. The miniature, purple 15p asters were also dead-headed before being planted to fill a gap next to the wallflowers. They still have lots of buds so hopefully they will provide a few more weeks of colour.