GARDENING July in the flower garden

BEAUTIFUL BORDERS The Victorian Walled Garden in Kylemore Abbey boasts year-round colourful herbaceous borders. All the garden’s plants are varieties introduced to Ireland before 1901, the end of the Victorian era.

Look over the wall


Patsy O’Sullivan

Last month was a busy one for most gardeners, and the constant rain made getting the work done all the more difficult, but July is time for the gardener to ease back a bit and enjoy their garden, and hopefully there will be some days that we can relax and choose not to work but to just experience the pleasure of what we have created.

Peer learning
In the Ballinrobe Gardening Club, we have found that one of the most enjoyable ways to learn is to make field trips to established gardens. This includes visiting the gardens of fellow members as well as commercial gardens.
Visiting members gardens is a great opportunity to learn from their mistakes, to see how they have designed their garden around the soil and site constraints and to observe experiments,  successful and otherwise. Along with a few cuttings or seeds, we take away ideas and inspiration for our own gardens. You can’t buy that kind of knowledge.

Expert inspiration
Field visits to the larger gardens serve a slightly different purpose, as we’re visiting gardens designed by ‘experts’. The plantings in large sites can be more exuberant and often there are very rare and unusual varieties that have been bought back from foreign parts in the 18th and 19th centuries.
If visiting a commercial garden, it is often possible to organise a guide who can provide the history and background to the development of the site.
The Victorian garden at Kylemore Abbey includes two long herbaceous borders and are a classic example of how to plant for year-round colour. The borders are planted at three height levels using only varieties that were available up to the early 20th century. The range is fantastic and equally good or better than gardens where there is no restriction on choice of varieties. All the varieties used are easy to obtain and replicate.
Another good garden to visit is at Cashel House Hotel. Simple plantings in large drifts provide year-round colour. There is also a good display of rhododendrons and a kitchen garden supplying the restaurant.
Both these gardens are coping with the worst that the Western Seaboard can throw at them, including salt and copious amounts of rain. Although they may employ teams of gardeners, they show what is possible even in very challenging weather conditions.
Each garden visited gives ideas that we can bring back to our own gardens. Even gardeners with small patches come away enthused and inspired – and given the summer we have had so far, this can only be a good thing! 

Garden tasks for July

• With the extra rain a lot of foliage is getting very lank and flowers are drooping. All the larger flowers such as gladioli, hollyhocks, poppies, delphiniums need staking.
• Roses, lupins, wallflowers, sweet peas and other flowers need deadheading in order to extend the flowering.
• Cut back perennial poppies hard when they have stopped flowering and become lank. They will shoot again from the base.
• Take cuttings of your favourite wallflowers.
• Pinch out the main shoots of lavender, rosemary and bergamot which will encourage side shoots to develop producing bushier plants.
• Harvest lavender and other herbs for drying on a warm, dry morning. Place them upside down in a paper bag and leave in a warm dark place for several weeks to dry.

Ballinrobe Community Garden
Grand opening
The Ballinrobe Community Garden, behind St Mary’s Catholic Church in Ballinrobe, is being launched on Tuesday, July 5, by TD and presidential candidate Michael D Higgins.
All are welcome to come along and see the work of the gardening team and TACÚ Family Resource Centre staff – and to get involved with the project. The launch is at 10.30am, and tea and refreshments will be available afterwards.

Patsy O’Sullivan is a member of Ballinrobe Garden Club. The club’s monthly meetings have finished for the summer, when meetings are replaced with field trips and garden visits. Its next meeting takes place on September 6 in Gannon’s Hotel.