Well it was a rather pleasant month in the garden and luckily we didn’t get any damage from our only October storm, Ashley. Featured pic above is a Haemanthus albiflorus from South Africa.

This Hesperantha is growing happily in the water in our Water Garden, flowering for a long period in the Autumn.

A surprise came in October when this Notrotriche from Chile produced two flowers.

Aeoniums provide a lovely display outside in the garden and also in the Alpine House.

This Dykia will have to moved shortly for the Winter from the garden into our Alpine House.

Mutisia oligodon, from high up in the Andes in Chile, has a really long, long flowering period. The plant, itself, is scraggy but the flowers are lovely.

Flavour of the month in the garden! This Petrocosmea from south east Yunnan. Small but beautiful with silky leaves.

J. and K. McCarthy had their wedding photographs taken in Coolwater Garden this summer. We wish them a full life full of happiness together. Here are some of the shots that were taken.

Main pic above is of a Hollyhock standing straight and proud beside the pond in the Water Garden.

And here is Penny in the pond keeping an eye on the flowers.

Agapanthus “Charlotte” with a good display this year in the Alpine Plants House. I know it’s not an alpine plant but Hey! Ho!

Sedum “José Aubergine” is a herbaceous perennial that is a mega attraction for bees. Today, although not seen in the pic, it was being jostled by enormous bumble bees. A long time since I’ve seen bumble bees so large.

Cheerful as ever, Bunny Ears Opuntia in the Arid Bed.

A prostrate Gaultheria, which delivers late summer every year.

One of three Mangaves, which we now have.

New top of the wall pots being placed. There’ll be eighteen of these eventually, all with succulents sheltered under a polycarbonate roof.

May was a little warmer than normal and the flowers in the garden eventually responded despite the not nice Spring holding them back originally.  All except the water lilies, which flowered three weeks later than usual. We couldn’t blame the wet Spring for their lateness, though, could we? 🙂 Above pic is one of the Oxalis.

Above is Edrianthus pumilio from the Balkans, a lime lover.

View down the drive with Sedums growing on top of staddle stones. In the round black pot is the smallest Elm tree in the world. I believe, that when it reaches its maximum height, it’ll be a towering eight inches! 🙂

Japanese painted ferns ensconced in a round trough. These need acidic soil.

Another round trough with alpine plants growing in tufa, no soil. Erinus alpinus is the purple flower.

One of our water features in the West Garden. Unfortunately the water had been turned off when the pic was taken.

An Irish cultivar discovered in 1905, Berberis “Corallina compacta”.

A lovely Dodecatheon in the Alpine House near the Water Garden.

Rhododendron “Graffitti” in the cabana.

Foxgloves seed around the garden and are very welcome. The apricot ones always seem to revert, though.

His royal highness, Emp, keeping an eye on things and making sure we don’t step out of line. 🙂

Above is one of the rhodanthemums, outside the Copper Pagoda.

Finally the persistent rainfall stopped towards the end of April. It has in fact been raining almost every day in the garden from July last year to the end of the third week this month. Probably some sort of record. Anyway, the plants, apart from the succulents, didn’t mind. 🙂

April was tulip month in the garden, whilst Clematis marmoria, an inch high plant, excelled in the Alpine House.

Above is a Ramonda from the Pyrenees in a cleft in one of the troughs, while another trough contains this Sanguinaria canadensis.

Newly emerging fronds of Dryopteris affinis are always a delight to see in the Spring with Bergenia cordifolia joining the party too. And, below, Viburnum plicatum, in the West Garden, spreading its wings.

And last but not least, a Nectaroscordem tripedale flower from Armenia starting to open.

A little bit about “hardware” additions to Coolwater Garden this month. We’ve painted some of our wooden chairs a bright red: maybe some would say, “an eyeball scorching red”. 🙂  You can’t fail to miss them walking around the garden.

Then, we’ve also acquired a tree stump from a neighbouring farm and have inserted it into the end of an old heating oil tank. We’ll be planting up on top of the stump next month.

A new pergola has been erected over the coombe in the West Garden. A slightly difficult job as it is on a slope and also curves in the shape of a C.

We’re thinking of not painting it as, “Once you paint, you always have to keep painting from thereon”.

A selection of climbers are waiting to go in. The junipers will be removed and replaced with mostly Mossy Saxifrage, as it is quite shaded there.

We’ll still call this area “The Coombe”, even though the bottom of it has been concreted now and water flow stopped.

Two different oxalis. The one above is Oxalis versicolour, the petals, when folded, resembling somewhat like a barber’s pole and Oxalis massoniana below, only found in the wild in one place in South Africa. Both are in the Alpine House in the Water Garden, as I don’t want to lose them to the winter wet in Ireland.

Still in the Alpine House, these succulents are happily ensconced in one corner.

Lewisia cotyledons just keep flowering and flowering all year around.

And it appears that the Aloes are starting to follow the Lewisias’ lead, as they now don’t seem to stop flowering and they don’t mind the poor stoney soil, that they’re in.

Outside, we’ve revamped one of the troughs, as eventually the growing plants overwhelm and hide the rocks. So, we now build the rocks much higher when we update a trough. This rock is decaying acidic mudstone sourced from the Ballyhoura Mountains and we’ve planted Mutisia moligodon from Chile, which hopefully will grow to a metre wide. It will have large pink flowers.

And here is our one and only Dicksonia antartica, pictured before we wrapped it up for the winter on the first of December.

Trimming brown Cordyline leaves.

One of the Japanese Maples in its Autumn glory.

Namurian rock pathway in the West Garden.

Some of the circular concrete troughs under a Flowering Cherry tree in the West Garden.

Steps up to the Mirador in the Water Garden, to look at a view of Skule Hill.