Review of Hillside Nurseries

Hillside Nurseries

"Great for trees and shrubs"

I had such a pleasant experience at the weekend buying a tree in Hillside Nurseries, Glounthaune. In a previous post I mentioned a number of small trees I was considering buying, but by the time I reached the nursery I'd pretty much narrowed it down to getting an Amelanchier (aka snowy mespilus; serviceberry; juneberry).

The nursery is, surprise, on an exposed hillside overlooking the Cork to Midleton road. It couldn't be mistaken for one of the more recent garden centre incarnations; the office/customer area is simply a large green corrugated shed. Thankfully the focus here is primarily on the plants, there's a huge selection of trees (of all sizes) and shrubs. I'd a good browse around without spotting any Amelanchiers and finally gave in and asked the owner, who just couldn't have been more helpful. While we strolled down to a section with some Amelanchier, he spoke enthusiastically about having recently got (they hadn't even labelled it yet) a few of the variety 'Robin Hill'*, which has even more stunning autumn colour than the norm, and a slightly more upright growth habit. He then picked out a good specimen for me and knocked a fiver off the price to 35 euro. A great morning all round!

*On the web the tree is variously called Amelanchier lamarckii 'Robin Hill' and
Amelanchier arborea 'Robin Hill'.

Rated 5/5 on Feb 25 2008
Vote on famron's Reviews at LouderVoice

Review Tags: garden centres, plants

Great West Cork Seed Swap

It's that time of year, the gardeners are getting up n out and planning their seed sowing and planting. Growing Awareness have a seed swap tomorrow Sunday 24th in Glebe Gardens, Baltimore. Heading down with T & S.

Bandon Sustainability Project meeting

Hadn’t heard about the Bandon Sustainability Project until yesterday, when Shive told me about it.

Today there's a public information meeting on the community gardens at 3pm in Bandon Library.

And the Bandon Sustainability Project are hosting a talk at 8pm, Monday 25th Feb, in the Munster Arms Hotel.

Madeline McKeever of Brown Envelope Seeds will be talking about growing your own vegetables. I’m definitely heading in, sounds promising.

There are two projects being launched in Feb, the Bandon Apple Tree Project and the Community Gardens Initiative, further details here.

Glengarrif Lodge - spread the word

Here’s a chance to win a luxury self-catering weekend in the Glengarrif Lodge in West Cork. Looking forward to my stay there already, anyone gonna cosy up to share in the prize?
Marky mark might want to enter too, what with the new job n all.

Paean to Peacebone

Hadn't listened to Peacebone for months, and here I am grinning while it's on, it has a lot that I love: an insistent beat, dissonance, wordy lyrics, backing vocals (sort of), weirdy left-of-centre.

Looking for a small tree

In the autumn I moved an Azara microphylla 'Variegata' evergreen tree from the old garden to the new one, see previous post. I took up a sizeable rootball, but for a 10 ft tree it may not have been enough. Over the last few months it’s been gradually dying. First, all the leaves turned black and fell off. I didn’t lose hope thinking they might come back in the spring, nope! And I periodically checked the trunk and branches for life (a gentle scrape with the thumbnail to see if the cambium was still green), but slowly, over the winter the branches, and now the trunk, have been giving up the ghost. Sad, but now it’s time to look for a new tree for the garden!

Out in Hosford’s garden centre on Sunday, I spotted Ginkgo biloba ‘Tremonia’. I love ginkgos, but the species is too big for my tiny space. This tree was described on the label as fastigiate. Looking into it today, the picture I saw online didn’t inspire, far too columnar to provide much interest.

Prunus serrula ‘Tibetica’ is often recommended for small gardens. I had one in the old garden, but wouldn’t try it again in the new one. Ok, its bark is attractive but it has quite a stiff upright growth habit and its leaves are unremarkable.


I’m considering the following trees (oh, I’m torn!)

Birch
Either the ubiquitous Betula utilis var jacquemontii or Betula ermanii. The white bark is stunning in winter and in leaf it has a graceful light habit.

Snowy mespilus - Amelanchier lamarckii
Has been on my ‘mental’ list for years. Has attractive white flowers in spring and also very good autumn colour.

Acacia baileyana ‘Purpurea’
Again, have admired this tree for a long while; love its purple ferny leaves.

Katsura tree - Cercidyphyllum japonicum ‘Rotfuchs’ or ‘Heronswood Globe’. Recommended by Carol Klein for a small garden. Unusual heart-shaped leaves, brilliant autumn colour. ‘Rotfuchs’ has an upright habit, like the species, but the young growth is a deep plum purple which is retained well through the summer if in good light

‘Heronswood Globe’ forms a rounded dumpy shrub rather than a large tree.


Hillside Nursery and Garden Centre in Glounthaune have an excellent selection of shrubs and trees, so I’ll be heading there for a look at the weekend.

Review of Dawn Landes 'Fireproof'

Dawn Landes 'Fireproof'

"Utterly divine"

Rated 5/5 on Feb 15 2008
Vote on famron's Reviews at LouderVoice

Review Tags: music

Finding it difficult to express how much Dawn Landes’ music has got under my skin these last couple of weeks. Presumably it’s tied in with where I am right now, emotions being nearer the surface than usual.
Listening to Fireproof the first few times it’s the poppier tracks that you get at the beginning, such as Picture Show, and Private Little Hell. Then, I fell headlong for ‘Dig Me A Hole’, so gorgeous it lifted my heart, the simple guitar melody and harmonies. Currently, it’s ‘Kids In A Play’ that’s making me smile: ‘…next to kids just like us who couldn’t help but think we were weird.’ Another grower is ‘Tired Of This Life’, which has a traditional country sound, and more wonderfully charming harmonies. With thanks to The Sigla Blog and UnaRocks.

Fake smile test

A link from UnaRocks led me to the BBC Science website. There are different tests you can take; I was grabbed by the fake smile one. Can you score 20 out of 20?

Who can call it?

Even stevens between Hillary and Obama, and the Salon article linked to in this post gives the reasons why. If you like the intricacies of elections, you'll love this.

Quote:
"One reason that different news organizations give us different delegate numbers [for the Democratic nominees] is that counting delegates is not like counting dollars. It involves a lot of math, a great deal of granular election-results data, and the spreadsheeting skills of a ninja."
Source: Salon.com

Guantanamo injustice

Will this be allowed to continue under a new U.S. President?

Election stalkers

For U.S. election stalkers you can check out the daily schedule for each candidate via The Washington Post. Christ, how do they keep it up?

Super Tuesday results

The breakdown state by state is in a handy table format in The New York Times.

Here are the Super Tuesday results:

Clinton: 497 delegates (8 states)
Obama: 489 delegates (13 states)

McCain: 468 delegates (9 states)
Romney: 158 delegates (7 states)
Huckabee: 132 delegates (5 states)


Total results so far:

Clinton: 760 delegates (12 states)
Obama: 692 delegates (15 states)

McCain: 570 delegates (12 states)
Romney: 251 delegates (11 states)
Huckabee: 175 delegates (5 states)

NOTE: The total number of a state's delegates may not be allocated at the time that state's winner is declared. Additionally, a state's "superdelegates" may commit to a candidate at any time until the party convention.

Source: Numbers from The Washington Post

Old garden, new seedlings

Went back to the old garden at the weekend to get some seedlings, and also do a favour for S. (off on a jaunt) by feeding the two cats and one Harris Hawk. S. doesn't want the two compost bins, so spent a pleasant couple of hours emptying them and spreading wheelbarrows of the lovely crumbly stuff around the garden. It's getting quite overgrown but you know, not my problem anymore!

Took up a few seedlings:

Acanthus spinosus (Bear's breeches)
Digitalis purpurea (Foxglove)
Dipsacus fullonum (Teasal)
Thalictrum delavayi
Dwarf Narcissi (don't know variety)

UPDATE 17th Feb: Back in the old garden at the weekend, and with a new shed going in some of the plants will just be dumped, so I rescued a couple more:

Rhubarb
Euphorbia mellifera (which I originally grew from seed) took up a small rooted offshoot.
Fascicularia bicolor - shallow rooted, so easy to dig up, but toothed spiny leaves reefed my arms.
Rosa gallica 'Versicolor' - a striped rose that's not to everyone's taste!

Fragile web

Who could believe it? Approx 75 million users have been left with only limited internet access as underwater fibre optic wires were damaged by a ship off the coast of Egypt. Affected countries include India, Egypt, and Dubai. In The Guardian.