Tag Archives: pieris

Pieris in my garden

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pieris and azalea

I have quite a few pieris plants growing in my garden but this is the only one which is growing in a container, rather than directly in the ground. It shares its space with an azalea, as you can see and they have been growing happily together for quite a few years now, with just the odd scattering of plant food into their container to keep them healthy.

I love pieris, later in the year it will have beautiful flowers on it, similar to lily of the valley, but I have to admit that I’m not too keen on the azalea. This was a lesson to me not to believe the descriptions which go with the labels on plants when you buy them. I now wait until I see the plants actually in flower before parting with my cash because so many times I’ve been disappointed when the descriptions don’t match the reality.

It doesn’t look too bad in this photo because the colour looks lighter than it actually is, but this azalea reminds me so much of dried blood and it has a sort of waxy shine to the flowers too, which I find a bit off-putting.

My garden isn’t looking too bad at the moment, considering the awful winter we had, I hope to get a lot more photos sorted out soon.

Scottish Spring Garden

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These are just a few photographs which I took in my garden last week and although things have moved on quite a bit since then, apart from the weeds and grass growing like crazy because of all the rain we’ve had, I thought I’d show them anyway.

Heuchera and a lily growing up through it.

Heuchera

As you can see I’ve got a good crop of moss here, apart from the fritillaries. These ones self-seed but the white version seems to have disappeared.

Fritillary

This is a right fankle (tangle) of shrubs and trees, I always overplant areas because I want to squeeze in as many as I can. I was actually trying to photograph the vinca (periwinkle) because it’s a gorgeous shade of blue but you can hardly see it at all.

Holly, flowering currant and cedrus glauca Atlantica

This is actually a tub containing a pieris forest flame and an azalea along with some things which have invited themselves to the party via self-seeding.

Pieris

The weather forecasters are promising us ground frost overnight and I won’t be surprised if we get it because the wind at the moment is positively Baltic. So much for it being May!

Spring Garden Again

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Today the weather has been horrible as the east coast of Scotland has been enveloped in sea mist or as they call it here ‘haar’. So while the rest of Britain has been enjoying lovely warm sunshine I’ve been shivering the whole day and watching the mist tumble past the window.

Yesterday it was beautiful, almost like summer and thankfully I took some photographs of my garden whilst the sun was shining. This one is of one of my pieris shrubs, I think this one is called Forest Flame. The tall white flower is Honesty but most people only know of the lovely silvery seed heads which this flower will turn into in a few weeks time. It always seems magical to me and the great thing is that the flowers seed themselves around the garden. Sadly the purple ones don’t seem to be so prolific so there are always fewer of them.

honesty + pieris

I love Acers and I’m really lucky that they thrive easily in my garden, despite being so close to the North Sea. The high wall protects them from the wind which burns the delicate leaves in more exposed situations. As you can see I took this photo before getting around to snipping off last year’s old lily stems. It’s looking tidier now.

acer

Another acer which is looking a bit floppy at the moment because the leaves are still unfurling. Primulas, forget-me-nots and aquilegia are planted underneath it. All plants which happily come back year after year.

acer + primula

And this is the same acer from another angle. To the left is a clump of cranesbill geraniums and the small silvery standard tree is a willow. I’m not sure about that one because the rest of the garden looks so natural and standards are so unnatural and contrived looking, but I love the velvety foliage and catkins.

acer + honesty

That’s just a few of the photos which I took yesterday so I’ll be doing another garden post in a few days time.