Hello September, the beginning of my favourite seaon, I love Autumn

Into September and the great weather continues with occasional showers to freshen everything up. The gardens continue to bloom and despite all the crazy weather we have had this year the plants have done amazingly, I am so happy with it all. The insect population has been incredible compared to previous years with so many butterflies, bees and pollinators, its been great to see.

This week plants that love wet ground and flower in August

Silphium laciniatum is a species of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae known commonly as compass plant. It is native to North America, Ontario in Canada and the eastern and central United States as far west as New Mexico. Other common names include prairie compass Plant, pilotweed, polarplant, gum weed, cut-leaf silphium, and turpentine plant.

It is worth growing for its leaves alone which have a very striking architectural shape. Once it flowers it produces sunflower – like yellow blooms in August. It likes well drained soil and full sun. This is the first time ours have flowered having been grown from seed and planted for five years. We don’t have it for sale…. Yet but I am hoping to collect seed now it has flowered and fingers crossed we will have some of this fantastic plant available for sale in the future, for now enjoy it in the railway garden.

First time I've been given the boot ....... to plant up

A great evening at the Peebles in Bloom award ceremony in Peebles town hall. Although I wasn't judging this year it was lovely to be asked along and to plant up the prize for the best floral shirt Awards, laughs, tears, fun, tea and cakes, raffle prizes and taking part in the community we now live in. This year I took Isabel as my plus one and she only went and won the gardening hamper lol. Great to catch up with folk I know too

My friend Sarah Fiona came for the day to get some
 experience doing propagation

A great day with David, Ben, Jamie, Dan, Betty, Maisie, Isabel and Fiona and every one who joined us xx

What a fabulous day at Whitmuir and I’m not just talking about the great weather We had a great day raising money for charity with Scotland’s garden scheme for Breast cancer now. We sold lots of second hand garden books, preserves and second hand tools very kindly donated by Jane and Ranald of Thermomix and we were buy in the nursery too selling lots of plants, chatting to customers and it was lovely to see everyone enjoying the nursery gardens.

The Garden railway was very popular today and with a full turn out of both Dan and David’s running stock it was busy on the line and with visitors coming to see it running. Thank you Dan and David for all your efforts with the garden railway.

It was fabulous to see Whitmuir have a buzz about it again and absolutely rocking to the live music all day, we very much enjoyed it up in the nursery too. It was great to see so many people sitting out in the sun, enjoying the music, beer and great food. So a huge thanks to everyone at Whitmuir who made it all happen.

We also had Reuse hub Whitmuir, Thermomix, Pentland aromatics, Jane Gray and Circa 72 jewellery adding to the great mix.

Lastly and most importantly a huge thanks to Fiona and Isabel who did their dynamic duo stint on the book table, helped out with nursery sales, whos good humour, friendship and banter make every day a great day to be working at Quercus and to Betty who was a great help at the counter and made sure Maisie was well looked after, walked and spoiled, after all no one does dog spoiling like Granny biscuits.

Finaly (I promise) on a personal note, it was a joy to see so many people visiting Quercus, some for the first time and enjoying their visit. Running a business is not easy these days, but days like this make it worth while so thank thank you thank you. And very finally all three of my boys came to visit, trains are a great attraction even in the 20’s and 30’s and it was lovely to spend time with them and when they came back home for pizza, the best days are days spent with my fab wee family and friends xx

Me and my boys

A day out on our day off. While I indulged in my love of art with two exibitions, David and Maisie went off to do some research and soak up the Edinburgh atmosphere in pursuit of inspiration for David’s upcoming second novel. I very much enjoyed The World of JamesVI and I on the 400^th anniversary of his death, depicting his life and reign through objects from the era and art. This was n the portrait gallery on Queen Street, a beautiful building in its own right. I then had a quick wander around the current portrait exhibition before walking up to Princes Street gardens to meet David and Maisie. A lovely lunch in the Contini gallery resteraunt, outside in the sun, great food and cocktails, thank you David, feeling spoiled. We then parted ways as they headed to the Royal mile and I went to immerse my self in the fabulous exhibition of Andy Goldsworthy’s work. I have long admired his creations, the combination of art in the landscape using nature is just fabulous and well so natural, love it. We met up on the High Street for some festival street theatre before more cocktails! Then heading home, a lovely day in some very warm weather and a very busy city, but loved the art, the food, cocktails and our fav city, will be back in winter when its quieter.

The Portrait Gallery exhibitions

Lunch and cocktails in the capital

Andy Goldsworthy Exhibition in the gallery on the Mound

All the gardeners in the rain this afternoon

We are going to need a lot more rain before the ground is back to anywhere near its usual moisture content

Its all yellow...................

Snippits from my garden at home. How is this for a fuchsia, something a wee bit different.....

Fuchsia procumbens is a prostrate plant which makes it ideal for a pot or hanging basket, or in a pot on a stand like I have done at home. Growing no more than 10cm tall it will spread by about a metre or downwards if you are growing as a hanging plant. Like most fuchsias in our colder Scottish areas it will need winter protection so mine will go into the heated greenhouse in winter.

Originally hailing from New Zealand it has neat, tiny cute heart-shaped leaves on trailing semi-woody stems. But its the flowers that really stand out despite being tiny. Standing upright on the stems rather than the usual pendulous flowers of a fuchsia. The petals are yellow and orange and reflexed back on themselves with purple anthers, no bigger than my thumb nail.

Grow in semi-shade, another unusual feature of this Fuchsia species and in well drained soil or compost.

Thanks to Fiona for giving us a plant to grow, which is currently at home and hopefully we will have it for sale next year as Isabel did cuttings of it today.

Autumn colour plants in the sales area

As we come to the end of August it is with much relief for us and the plants to have rain, sometimes showers which refreshes and sometimes constant heavy rain which replenishes, but, it will take time to fully re-soak the soil

This week has mainly been about propagation with all of us gathering seeds, doing cuttings, divisions and bare root. The field stock beds are filling up and we really need the next new tunnel up…… which David is hoping to start next week, exciting

The butterflies have been incredible this year, I can’t remember the last time I saw so many, to walk through a cloud of fluttering butterflies is such a joy. I also saw another ladybird this week, which is 4 this year, how crazy when as a child I remember seeing so many all the time. We have something making very neat holes in the logs of the log pile, bees or beetles, not sure

I’ve been gathering yellow rattle seed from the wildflower banks and scattering it in the orchard. We hope to introduce more wildflowers into the grass there and the parasitic yellow rattle will help keep the grass in check and allow more wildflowers to establish, that’s the plan anyway….

Sunflower ‘Claret’ is coming into flower in the herb garden, I love this dark variety and it grows well in our wet soil.

We’ve had an amazing amount of gardening tools donated, so please do come and have a browse, its great recycling and the money goes to our charity

So that’s another week and another month gone already, so I will see you in September, its autumn, woo hooo, my favourite season. I’m off to get all my woolie jumpers organised, make sure I’ve got hot chocolate and marshmallows in the cupboard and look forward to walking through autumn leaves

#rural #countrylife #countryliving #cottagelife #antiquecottagescenes #interiors #scottishborders #independantretailer #smallbusiness #localbusiness #independantplantnursery #uniqueplantnursery #hardyscottishplants #scottishgarden #gardeningontheedge #scottishborders #lifestyleblog #gardenblog

 If you to see what's new and looking good at the nursery like our Facebook

  Quercus Garden Plants

Find out more about the nursery here - our web site: www.quercusgardenplants.co.uk