On the last day of meteorological summer we headed for two local private gardens, open for the day under the National Garden Scheme. The scheme is run by the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society), and many of Britain’s ordinary suburban gardeners are members. They charge a small fee (£4 today for both gardens), and the money raised (£3.5 million in 2024), supports health charities, community gardens and botanic gardens.
Our first call was 146 Mather Avenue, a small tree-ringed town garden run by a single lady. She has a wildlife pond, and colourful borders grown in home-made compost. She keeps a nettle patch for butterflies, then makes fertilizer when she cuts it down. There are many bird feeders and several visiting hedgehogs, which she feeds and tracks with little trail cameras. I liked it because it was very real, not fanatically neat, as some open gardens are.
The second garden, 33 Greenhill Road, was quite a contrast. It is owned by an enthusiast for tropical exotic plants. It is another small urban garden, this time walled all around, with no lawn, no ground soil, just paths lined with pots of exotics at different levels. He grows cacti, lemons, a pollarded Foxglove tree, and many weird and wonderful brightly-coloured plants. This yellow spike is a ginger, Heydichium sp.
These hanging red-and-yellow flowers are Datura, also known as Devil’s Trumpets or Jimson Weed. It is very poisonous in all parts.
We went into Calderstones Park for lunch. In the Ornamental Garden we looked at the Katsura tree, whose leaves are supposed to smell of burnt sugar or candy floss in the autumn. This one didn’t, although we have smelled one in Arrowe Park. Just through the gate in the wall is this lovely young ornamental tree, very weeping, very golden. It has been planted as a memorial to someone. There was no nursery label and we didn’t recognise it, but someone from the Fb tree group has suggested it might be a Weeping White Mulberry. That looks right to me – we saw a couple of them at Otterspool on 23 April 2023, part of an experimental “global warming” planting scheme.
On the edge of that field a young tree had fallen. It was one I was keeping an eye on because I thought it might be a Butternut. Each compound leaf is about 18 inches long with eight pairs of leaflets, plus one at tip. But there is hope. More than half of the roots are still firmly in the ground and the crown hasn’t wilted. It may survive as a series of shoots from the fallen trunk.
The Golden Rain tree by the pony field seems to have loved this hot summer, bearing very many seed pod “lanterns” all over it, especially higher up.
Around 2pm it started to rain, right as the weather forecast said, so it was time to go.
Public transport details: Bus 86A from Elliot Street at 10.02. arriving Mather Avenue / Booker Avenue at 10.35. Returned from Mather Avenue / Storrsdale Road on bus 86A at 2.30, arriving Liverpool 3.05.
Next week we plan to go to Gorse Hill. The train is at 9.55, so we meet at Central about 9.45.