Pictured above are the three wheelbarrows used in the garden. The plastic one is a teenager, thirteen years old. The steel one is middle-aged, forty two years old. The wooden one is so old, we don’t know its age. It was bought second-hand almost forty years ago. All are in good health, trundling away around the garden. 🙂  Below is our operating hub (garden shed) and below that again is our Weed Wheely (patent applied for) 🙂 It’s been modified since to include a Tool Bar.

This Dudleya above appears to be enjoying its foreign surroundings. We got it last Autumn, thumbnail size. Hopefully we can continue to nurture it. Below, you can see that Phormiums seem to enjoy living in pots. It keeps them a handy size as well. They grow enormous in the open garden.

Winter-flowering heather surrounding one  of the sculptures. The heather is a great habitat for the Coolwater frogs, who must contribute to the dearth of slugs here. They don’t seem to eat snails, though. 🙁  Primrose Bee saxifrage in one of the wall pots below.

January is the month of Hellebores, two of which are featured here, Raspberry Splash above and Ice & Roses below.

Adding brightness to the January garden is Tasmanian Tiger Euphorbia.

A new stairs up to the Mirador has now been installed. Lovely views of Skule Hill to be had from this position.

Quite a few of our Alpine troughs are now being re-vamped. This is one using stone from a quarry on The Graves of the Leinstermen hill in Ballina. Plants featured are Saxifrages and Hutchinsia.

Aeonium tabuliforme ballooning in the Alpine House.

Unusually for Coolwater, there isn’t much colour in December this year so we said we’d show a few of the statues/sculptures here.

This young lady is in the Fern Dell, with Skule Hill in the background.

This is Emp (short for Emperor, but which one we don’t know). It was picked up in Northamptonshire in England last year.

And this is Beaky, an eagle carved out of a Larch tree stump.

This guy is home-made from concrete and expanding foam.

To have a break from sculptures, here is what is known as the Swedish Vase. Made by a Danish guy in Sweden between 1850 and 1855.

Yep, with the weather so cold, it has been nice, noodling around in the Alpine House, continuing on with some planting. Pic below is of Karo Kiri planted outside the door. This Cordyline australis variety was discovered in 1983 in Belfast, Christchurch, New Zealand.

This Aeonium tabuliforme from Teneriffe has doubled in size in the four weeks it’s been planted. That’s a purple Yucca to its right. (Yucca aloifolia “purpurea”)

Dudleya virens ssp hassei from Santa Catalina Island has also doubled in size in the same time.

Cotyledon tomentosa subsp. ladysmithiensis from South Africa. (Bears’ Paw).

Cheilanthes lanosa moved from a trough outside in order to avoid our Winter Wet.

The new Alpine & Succulents House is nearing completion and these are boulders, which were too large and heavy to fit inside. They’re from a nearby farm and they originate from the same Limestone bed of rock, as in the Burren, going down a hundred feet under the Shannon and re-surfacing in that farm. The farmer is delighted to get rid of them  but, of course, in the Burren you’re not allowed to take even a pebble. The bottoms of the boulders are smooth from being ground inside glaciers and the tops full of grykes from rain erosion over thousands of years.

Inside the Alpine House, this Physoplexis comosa is flowering. An unusual flower, which everyone comments on. Growing in 60% limestone grit and 40% alkaline topsoil.

In the West Garden, this Arbutus marina has a lovely shape to its limbs. The limbs are getting redder every year. (The tree is eight years old).

Near the Alpine House, this Loquat is putting on vigorous growth. We had three fruits off of it last year but none this year.

And behind the Loquat, this Dicksonia anctartica seems to be thriving now after having been almost decimated by cold frosts this Spring.

Apologies for no post in August. Had difficulties with a new computer and and we also headed off for a trip withe Mediterranean Plants & Gardens Group, which turned out to be brilliant.

Pics below show more of the yellow and green theme, which seems to be most prominent in September in the garden.

Below are two containers of plants, which strongly dislike winter wet (they die) and which will be shortly moved into a new Alpine House that we are building. The fern trough contains five species of Cheilanthes and the bottom photograph is of yellow flowered Bulbine frutescens.

And finally below is Echeveria “Black Prince” flowering and also a pic of our “Coal Scuttle” Gardening. 🙂

The weather was glorious this July, temperatures touching 29°C at times. Below is our Yucca linearis, which had two fabulous inflorescences behind the Agapanthus.

A Trachycarpus standing proudly beside the Water Garden.

Water lilies in the Water Garden. The pinks tend to predominate over the red, yellow and white lilies.

Meadowsweet, a native plant takes its place in the Water Garden.