Our tenants have been getting acquainted with our garden, but they're novices so they sent us this picture to help them identify some of the greenery that's shooting up in Spring. The garden seems to grow about a foot a day at this time of year.
I got a bit over enthusiastic in my response (I miss our garden!), and sent the following back. Bit much?
The thing you took a picture of is a hollyhock. I attached a picture for you so you can see it's future. They get quite big and throw up big spurs of flowers which last most of summer in whole range of colours. The bees adore them. They self seed a lot, so if they come up in a really stupid place feel free to pull them out. Also - if you look at the backs of the leaves, you may notice some yellow spots on them. This is a common hollyhock ailment - it doesn't spread to other plants as far as I can tell and it doesn't stop them flowering, but it can make them look very bedraggled towards the end of their season. If you cut off any leaves that have the spots on at the base of the plant now, the hollyhocks will be healthier for it later on - but it won't matter if you don't. FYI the pale green sort of fronds in the bottom left of your picture are yellow poppies (very pretty) and the hairy frondy thing further up on the left is an oriental poppy. Very pleased to see the cowslip flowering away :) Actually - if I just send you this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/76662872@N00/sets/72157623250176870/. That's a flickR stream of the garden over the years, it might give you an idea of what to expect!
I don't think it's a bit much at all. Better than them assuming everything is a weed. After looking at your beautiful Flickr stream of the garden, I expect they'll be content to just sit back and see what grows!
ReplyDeletehope so - I cleared the veg patch for them before we left to tempt them in that direction long enough to leave most of the borders in place.
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