JEARRARD'S HERBAL
12th June 2022
Rhododendron 'Loderi King George' .
Summer has slumped across the garden as listless as a teenager in the school holidays. The grass is growing with rash and unreasonable vigour.
I mowed it a fortnight ago, it can't possibly need doing again, but it does. There has been enough warmth to motivate it and enough rain
to realise the intention. Growth has been remarkable and inevitable.
The kaleidoscope of colour that scintillated through spring has mixed into a monochrome green. There are hints and flashes of other things,
a few tints that haven't yet blended and still streak through the garden like a poorly stirred tin of paint, a few moments of iridescence
as the oily weight of summer starts to settle. The first Hemerocallis are in flower, not quite blazing in the burning colours of summer
but far too august and solid to be mistaken for the frippery of spring.
Rhododendron 'Loderi King George' is part of the unstirred paint, the pink flowers fading to white over a couple of days and then tumbling to the ground
two or three days later from the heat. It isn't really spring, it is as though the fruits of spring have been pickled in a clear jar
to enjoy later.
12th June 2022
Magnolia tripetala .
There are Magnolia flowers dotted around the garden but they have a mournful aura. They remind me of the occasional swallow that gets left behind in autumn
and spends the winter hawking for insects over the sewage works. M. 'Pinkie' has a few scattered flowers lost among the new leaves
and the last blooms on M. wilsonii are still hanging from the branches like bunting left over from last weeks party.
I only have one summer flowering magnolia. M. grandiflora 'Edith Bogue' has been growing lustily since 2008 but I am still waiting for flowers.
If I don't see any in the next decade or so I might have to give it a good talking to.
Magnolia tripetala has been far more enthusiastic. Planted at about the same time, it was in flower five or six years later. The flowers
are strange narrow petalled things, more interesting than actually beautiful, but it produces them reliably every year well after all risk of frost has passed.
It seems to resist the wind with astonishing fortitude. I wish I had planted a lot more of them when the garden was young.
12th June 2022
Aesculus indica .
Back in the days when I was a wild and reckless grafter of things I grew a crop of Horse Chestnut seedlings to use as rootstocks
for the golden leaved form. I can't remember what happened to the golden chestnuts but I don't have one in the garden. They were probably ready
for planting at about the same time the garden was going through its thorny-thicket stage. One of the rootstocks wasn't grafted, or the graft failed.
I didn't have a horse chestnut in the garden so it was planted. That early plantings in the garden were fairly random. Some things survived the wind and
the rabbits, others didn't.
Aesculus indica ended up in the garden in a similar way. I cleared a forgotten corner of a poly-tunnel one day and found two of them
growing a little too large for the pots that were failing to contain them. They went into the garden, one on either side of a path at the
top where the wind blows and the wild things live. They have resisted the leaf miner and bleeding cankers that have marred the common conkers
and produce beautiful spring leaves. One of them colours in shades of blushing apricot, the other a surly beige. On either side of the path
they clearly belong together and yet, like Laurel and Hardy, seem to have nothing in common. The flowers are an afterthought though the species can be as magnificent
as the common Horse Chestnut at its best. These two need a couple more decades to develop. I have just seen them flowering as a wonderful avenue at Kew,
planted about 50 metres apart. Mine have three or four metres between them. It seemed like a generous space when they were planted.
12th June 2022
Stewartia pseudocamellia Koreana Group .
I planted a row of blue hydrangeas to create a restless ocean of tones through the summer. It is true that as the main flush ends
the flowers develop muddy colours like the shimmering sea near a sewage outfall but when they are good they are very good.
I had a plan, I planted carefully and the result has been very pleasing. I don't really understand why I planted a Stewartia
seedling in the middle of it. It was very small when it went in and was clearly too precious to abandon in a pot. For some time I have been able to overlook
its presence. At the start of June I thought it might even have died, sadly lamented but quite convenient. I went to look for it this week
and found it in awkwardly wonderful flower. It's growing well, there is plenty of bloom to come. I can always rethink the hydrangeas.
Trees take a long time. This Stewartia is still a baby but it is starting to make its presence felt. I wish I had planted a dozen of them.