75 - Taking stock: let go of some garden dreams?

 Hunky Dory has survived her first official heatwave.

Next to the frog pond

The greenhouse got watered, the garden did not, although I cheated myself just a bit and did water the ferns and roses.

Inevitably some plants gave up. My Japanese anemones wilted, my willow and verbena in the white pot died, and some of the salvias are feeling very sorry for themselves (but others thrive, now isn't that weird?).

Food for thought! Because all the signs and experts point to these extreme temperatures happening more and more often. So is it viable and realistic to want to have a cottage style garden? To be honest, I think not. Should I change it to a prairy style one? One of my gardening heroes (Instagram@jelle_grintjes sighed that he had to cut back many of his plants because they suffered in the heat this week, although he also seemed to have an iron problem. So perhaps not. Gardener's World Magazine suggested in July we should change over to Mediterranean plants, but how then, with my heavy clay? Work lots of grit through it, when I can hardly get a fork in to dig up my potatoes?

Very nice potatoes though

The best thing for the short term, I think, is take a good look at my plants now, and only plant those that did well so far. Forget any 'style', simply use what survives and work with that. So prepare for a garden full of gauras, echinacea, buddleia, artichokes and veronicastrum. The begonias in my balcony garden are doing very well despite being in full blistering sun, and I remember seeing them, huge, on Madeira, so I could give them a try. Agapanthus??

Gauras at the back

And perhaps lots of cannas after all. I have 6 of them ready to come to Hunky Dory after summer, they thrive on the balcony. 

I dug up the tired strawberry patch yesterday and got rid of that black plastic eyesore I called my Lily pond. The reason for that was that the ivy I put around the tub to camouflage it simply did not grow. At all. It gives you an idea of how poor and depleted my soil is. Sigh. Anyway, it is gone. I moved the nice waterlily to the frog pond and heaved the water in there as well, and now there is a mystery for you (and me!): there was so much water in there then that it slopped over the edges (making the plants there almost do a dance). To my amazement, and frankly horror, when I came to Hunky Dory this morning the water level was more than 10 cm below the edge already. How is that possible?? That much evaporation, at night, no way! A leak? In double-thick best quality pondliner? Fiddlesticks, I hope not!

 

Before the changes

So you see, hardly have you solved one problem, or the next is waving at you from behind the milk thistles: yoohoo, thought you could take it easy, did you?

The next project is assembling my Blumfeldt plantbed though, which came in a flatpack. Never a dull moment. Luckily I have neighbours who perk me up with coffee and tall tales.

Read more, and lots more photos at Instagram@songsmith2962 and Pixelfed@DutchDeltaWoman.  Have a great gardening weekend!