Subtler colours for my new bog garden

 Having indulged my newts with bright yellow and myself with blues and purples, I went for paler shades towards the back of the bog garden, newly created in my leaking pond.

                                  So subtle that you can hardly see it!

Ragged Robin or Lychnis flos-cuculi, is a perennial, herbaceous plant, comparatively low-growing (why didn't I read the packet before sowing it near the back?) although it can reach 35 cms. (Phew!)  The stems are hairy, the pink flowers are 3 to 4 cm across and appear from May to August. The 5 narrow petals are deeply divided into 4 lobes which give it an unruly look. It will seed down - in not too unruly fashion I hope.

Water Avens or Geum rivale is also called cure-all and Indian chocolate. It produces nodding reddish flowers from May to September and grows to about 30 to 60 cm. This charmer has been placed at the side where it will catch the breezes and greet me as I hobble to my shed.

Apart from the bog garden, I am also transforming my grass lawn into a partial clover bed. It was a hard mat of yellow straw for most of this last torrid summer but I hope for better results from the white clover which should retain moisture better. Perhaps I can allow a couple of carefully supervised snails onto it for half an hour as a holiday from their vivarium. Berowne and Amanda would be the first. You can read about their relationship in a soap opera told in limericks under The Escargatoire thread on my Molluscs blog. Anything to advance a snail love affair, say I. The link is on the right side bar.

The lawn was raked and weeded by my lady gardener who sowed the seeds, now beginning to sprout.

For all those of you who have been wondering about the non-appearance of Doc Barbara recently, I can report that she is busy caring for Darwin, the beloved dog once belonging to Professor Ramsbottom-Crutch, who is away on a research tour. The canine seems in control of her and, since she is my alter ego, does that mean that I am ultimately in the power of a dog? Probably. 

The Professor sets off round the UK

For more on that thrilling narrative, please visit Doc Barbara's fabulous adventures. The link is on the right side bar also. 

Yellow flowers for my new bog garden

 For the section of my bog garden around the newt tank, I decided on yellow as the dominant theme, believing that the newts would relish a glowing vista on emerging from their winter hotel just across the path. Two shades of the same colour would be subtle and yet striking.

Firstly I went for marsh marigolds.

The other common name for this gem is Kingcup and it is a perennial herbaceous plant of the buttercup family, blossoming mostly between April and August. It will grow up to 31 inches high, die down in winter with buds near the surface of marshy soil in order to burst forth again in Spring. There are several stems bearing yellow wonders of about 1-2 inches in diameter.

Alongside them, I decided on Globe flowers, which will add a little variation for my discerning newts and the insects that will be allured to my back garden.

This is a herbaceous perennial with flowers that can tinge towards orange or even lilac. The name refers to the petals which curve over at the top forming a sphere. It grows up to 24" inches in height and the globes are up to 1.5 " across, enclosing a large number of stamens. I will train my visiting bees to probe these during the propitious months of June to August.

When I dream about my re-awakened back garden on these autumn nights, it is these sun replicas that float across my mind, radiant and optimistic.

Choice of flowers for my bog garden

I have promised a Great Reveal about the flowers I chose for my bog garden and asked you to kindly wait until I had practised my drawing skills.  My inner Klimt remains dormant but here goes. Almost all are to be grown from seeds because I think they are minuscule miracles but I did occasionally weaken and buy a couple of plug plants.

First I thought of blues and purples and ordered water mint. Then I read about how invasive it can be and housed it separately in the mini bog garden near the lavender hedge where it would augment the idea of a sensory area. You are thinking that I do things in the wrong order - and I agree. 

It seems to have both rhizomes and seeds and is perennial which - being translated - means that I've got them for ever. They should grow up to 90 cm tall and be in flower from July to October, attracting bees, butterflies and hoverflies. The aromatic leaves can be used for infusions.

For the main garden I next plumped for water forget-me-nots, because I love their colour and the name is so evocative. (I nearly added purple loosestrife for the same reason but it, too, is aggressive).

                                                                   

How could I forget such beauty?

This will grow up to 70 cm and blossom from mid-spring to first frost. Its leaves have the astonishing capacity to be so flexible that my newt mothers can wrap them round their glued-on eggs for safety. Here I did buy a few plug plants because the seeds were a long time producing seedlings.

                                           After 10 weeks, the seedlings are catching up.

What was my next colour choice? Another Great Reveal in my own good time. Doc Barbara is insisting on a strong cup of tea - immediately. You may be wondering why I said that I am planting no more blooms. I didn't mean that there would be no further flowers; I want to avoid those waxen, massive showpieces that look glossily unnatural and overblown. I prefer smaller insect-friendly species with nectar for bees and their friends.

A mini bog garden

 After I had heroically created (totally unassisted) a large bog garden in my leaky pond, I had some aquatic soil and seeds left over. When my elder daughter came to visit from London for the day, we first had a healthy lunch of salad which energised us to decide to go and play at mud pies with those extras.

The lavender hedge behind a clover-filled Adam and Eve trough

The idea was to make a smaller, sensory bog garden near my lavender hedge to exude delightful aromas and attract insects. As she was decently dressed for her train journey home, I changed into gardening trousers - and then settled back in my portable chair to watch her do the heavy lifting.

A boon to sedentary, arthritic gardeners

We used a round plastic tub, some pots and two window boxes, all of which I had already. Back we went to her toddler days and sloshed mud around with infantile glee, before planting the minuscule seeds in neat geometric designs. Water mint predominated because it is so aggressive that I did not allow it in the main garden. Plus it is highly odiferous. The rest was largely pot-luck (pun intended) as I hadn't labelled the half-empty seed packets properly - but who needs to know the future exactly?  Rhetorical question.

Yes, I did have a couple of plug plants, ordered in error.

Yesterday, I looked into the green tub, after weeks of anxious nights, and saw two tiny seedlings. My joy was unconfined. It's as bad as having a baby - well, not quite, perhaps.

Multiple huzzahs!

The lesson is that you can have a small bog garden in a container on your patio and attract insects. All the plants have wonderful old names which will be revealed soon on this bug and bog blog. 

A winter hotel for insects

Since this is my bug and bog blog, it seems fitting to describe how I plan to help insect life in my back garden. The flowers I chose for the ex-pond (still awaiting the Great Reveal when I have learned to draw) are all attractive to insects and so I wanted to ensure that those I already had would survive to enjoy them.

Scary from the front!

At first I bought one of those ready made box devices from a different bargain shop (never accuse me of being set in my ways) but Doc Barbara (my alter-ego) insisted that I make 2 of my own. Off we went to the local park (scene of so many of her extravaganzas) and collected twigs and thin sticks which I soaked for several days to wash out any toxins and then dried in the hot sun. I covered them in a layer of moss for insulation and wrapped tarpaulin around the bundles, tying them tightly with twine at each stage. They must be positioned facing south (you cannot expect modern insects to fly round to find the entrance).

I bet they prefer the prefab!

I think that have now done all I can for insect life and hope to see a return of the humming bird moth which hovered, flapping its wings nearly 5000 beats per minute, over my hot lips salvia. Phew to that last word.

Sorry that it is blurred but the moth declined to keep still for the photo.

Newts

 I will leave you in suspense about which seeds I chose, as I plan to draw the flowers and need to hone my non-existent artistic skills for your delectation. Because you deserve it.

The rose stays but a different emphasis will now emerge.

When my pond was a pond, my gardener cut back the water lily pad to give the fish more space and found underneath it 3 newts. I had no idea they were there but was determined to channel my inner Gussie Fink-Nottle and nurture them. When the pond drained itself, I made sure they had a bathing pool in the new bog garden that I was creating in the space.

From my trusty local bargain shop I bought a black storage box which I filled with water and placed near the water lily pad. They needed a way in, which I provided with stepped bricks, and an exit mode. This was ensured by a slate kitchen chopping board, angled inside the tank for stability. Its slightly rough surface would offer claw holds for easy climbing. Thus they have all they need for their life cycle of eggs to hatchlings to juveniles to adults and can spend their time as they choose on land or water as amphibians. The females will lay their eggs under a leaf, glue them on and then use her back legs to fold the leaf around them.

How to help them hibernate was my next endeavour. They must have been managing for years by burrowing into soft soil but I wanted to build a 5* hotel for them. It has to be watertight, south facing and in a prime location near the pond and a garden with large leaves for cover. Mine is on a pedestrian route across a path from the pond with access to a patch of heucheras. I only hope the newts can pronounce that when they agree together to emerge - because I can't. 

A Premier Inn for newts

The main architectural structure of the hibernaculum is a frame made out of one of those lawn-edging, wooden coils held together by cunning wires - guess where from! This I bent into an S shape and tied it round firmly with string. The holes do not have to be large since a newt is happy in a narrow bed. A thin layer of coco coir substrate and moss made a roof (soil would do) and the whole thing was wrapped in a tarpaulin (slightly overlapping the doors and weighted down with stones). A final touch was a comforting mattress of dried hardwood leaves which would not go soggy and mouldy if rain were to permeate. There is nothing worse in life than a soggy, mouldy newt. Gussie Fink-Nottle would confirm that view.

Oh for that leafy bed!

Footnote. G F-N is a splendidly comic character created by P.G. Wodehouse. His inebriated speech at the Prize Giving of Market Snodsbury Grammar School makes me chortle just to think of it. (Right-Ho, Jeeves).

Seeds or plug plants?

Whilst the term plug plants has that delightfully alliterative quality beloved of Anglo-Saxon poets, I decided to grow my bog flowers from seeds. Doc Barbara and I had our annual moment of agreement on this topic because we both find seeds miraculous. That the whole substance of a plant is stored in such a minute container fills us with silent wonder. That, too, is an annual event. 

I duly chose my flowers and sent off for the amazingly cheap packets of seeds which duly arrived. By a stroke of luck, it was a windless day for planting because the packets contained microscopic amounts of what seemed like dust. No chance of counting them carefully and placing 6 in geometrical arrangements in the pots: I was fortunate that any landed in there at all. 

 I constantly had my colour diagram in mind.

I am a bog gardener, not an artist.

This was before putting the thin layer of gravel on top, still allowing the light through to help germination. Anxious nights, days, even weeks, passed before I spotted tiny baby seedlings and wept copiously with joy over them. The salt does not seem to have harmed them: my bog garden is no Carthage (although that is a historical myth).  I admit that I had weakened after a fortnight of nothing happening (Doc Barbara also weeps copiously when disappointed and it is not a pleasant sight) and so I did send off for reliable plug plants of water forget-me-nots which you can see thriving on this photo.

In the next few thrilling instalments I will reveal what seeds I had chosen and hope to accompany them with drawings which will confirm your suspicion that I won't be retiring on my artistic income any time soon.