On 30/09/2013 09:57, Sacha wrote:
On 2013-09-30 09:25:17 +0100, Jeff Layman said:

Finally got Clematis rehderiana in flower! Pity the lowest flowers are
over 2 metres off the ground, and as it's twining up the middle of a
climbing rose, there is really no chance of smelling the scent.

In the end it was easy to get it in flower - I just had to move house! :-)))

Lol! Amazing what a house move can achieve, though more usually in
terms of weeding something like ground elder!! Ours has flowered but
very little. Another, further down the garden, growing up a tree, has
done rather better. Ours on the house wall is also going up a rose and
when it does flower well, it reaches our bedroom window. Not this year,
however. I just love that Clematis and it's not easy to find but well
worth the effort, imo. Another thing that is flowering really well at
the moment is Heptacodium miconioides. I can't remember now where we
bought ours from but it's right at the bottom of the garden so got the
full blast of winter winds etc. and hasn't been deterred one bit. I
think we put it in the wrong place because we can't see it at all from
the house or top of the garden and being an autmn flowerer, it should
be much more clearly visible. That's another worth looking for and so
is Dicentra scandens, which is currently flowering its little socks off
while clambering up and through a Pittosporum and anything else it can
lay hands on! It's a hardy plant that is another that's seen very
little, goodness knows why as, while it dies away in winter, it has
never failed to come back each spring. Firmly touching wood as I write
that! Did you move far, Jeff, or has your Clematis done a version of
that garden classic "move it a few yards and it romps away"?!

Can't say I know of Heptacodium miconioides. The flowers look a bit like
Trachelospermum asiaticum (ours still has a few flowers). Is the smell
honeysuckle-like, or something else? Still, any late-flowering shrub is
welcome, particularly a scented one.

I tried to grow dicentra scandens many years ago from seed. I got one
plant up to a couple of metres high, but it never flowered.

We've moved about 60 miles to south-central Hampshire. Sure is dry here
- we've had only 4 mm of rain in the last two months! Can't get
anything in as the ground is so dry, so will have to wait. A couple of
days ago I had to dig out an old fencepost from the edge of the lawn. I
got 50 cm down without finding any damp soil (and I still couldn't get
the post out! Had to cut it off in the end).

I'm just hoping we won't be swinging between extremes of rain for
weeks on end and waterlogged soil, to drought and dry soil for weeks on
end. Whatever happened to the British weather where you could get all
four seasons in a day?


--

Jeff