July 7th  2002

Rain, rain and more rain, are we actually going to get a summer this year.
With only a week to go before the judging of gardens that have entered for the Ferndown in Bloom competition, and less than two weeks before the opening of our garden on 21st July, we need some sun.
Canna "Lucifer" and "Rosamund Coles" have put up their first flower, they are now back in the greenhouse, out of the wet, and the clematis are still doing well. We have lost three this year to clematis wilt, but have hopes they will revive as they were planted deep.

Canna Lucifer

July 24th 2002

Our garden opening on Sunday 21st was a great success, we had 222 visitors in three hours, many more than we could have imagined.
Also on the same afternoon we were told we had won Best front garden and Best back garden in the Ferndown in Bloom Competition.
We were also featured in Ideal Home Magazine (August Edition) with pictures and text by Nicola Stocken Tomkins, who visited us last year, we remember her well, when she was balancing on the shed roof, with tripod and camera, to take what was to become the centrefold picture of the article.
Our clematis have been flowering well this year, there are about 20 different plants in bloom today, our great disappointment, is that "Fujimusume" has gone down with the wilt, after producing seven flowers this year, we can only hope it recovers ?.

   Clematis "Huldine" and "Abundance"

The stars of our open day were again the Brugmansias, in full bloom at the right time !. We had a few for sale this year, the tallest being about 2mtrs, just about possible to get into a car.