Early Summer Blog Kylemore Abbey Garden

Gardener's Blog

Friday, 04 July 2025

By Anja Gohlke

Welcome back to our early summer garden blog from the Victorian Walled Garden in Kylemore Abbey.

Time seems to fly, as usual, and the Victorian Walled Garden is nearly at its peak season already.

The last few weeks brought many hours of sunshine and warm conditions which were in favour for our garden plants and vegetables.

The growths is immense this year, one of the best I have ever seen. The hot spell in May in combination with the showersin between worked wonders. The only worry I have is how long the plants will last for the season. We started to resow few of our main annual summer bedding plants like Salvias, Calendulas or Petunias in case we have to replant later during the summer months.

Several early summer flowering bulbs like Gladiolus’, Allium, Camassia or Nectaroscordum, the Sicilian Honey Garlic, just finished flowering and the blossom of the summer bedding is taking over. These bulb varieties are essential in our garden for the continuous flower display.They are also playing a significant role for our natural inhabitants. Food for bees, wasps and other insects can be rare during the early summer months.

Pic1 The Head Gardeners Border with early summer flowering bulbs

Pic2 Allium roseum, the rosy garlic, in combination with red leaved Canna. The Allium flowered for nearly a full month.

Another plant which grew huge in size this year, especially in our natural Fernery, is Digitalis, the foxglove. It seems that the foxgloves around here have a particular good season every four to five years. Being an biannual, they only flower the second season after resowing itself, so it is important to let them reseed naturally if you want more plants. The only downfall is that the plant is poisonous, especially the leaves and flowers.

Pic3 Huge flower stem on the Foxglove in our Fernery

The ferns also benefited from the recent warm and moist conditions. They thrive well and our Australian treefern recovered from the last winter when we had to wrap it up.

Pic4 Dicksonia australis, the Australian Treefern. Camassia leichtlinii Semiplena to the left, the white flowering semi-douple flowering quamash is brightening up the darker shades of greens in the Fernery.

The Cutflower section got a makeover during the past winter months and the division, the transplanting and the new compost helped along to establish them nicely. Cutflowers were an important part in each Victorian Garden for the supply of fresh flowers and bouquets for table arrangements and decorating the many rooms. It is very satisfying to create bouquets with our own Cutflowers, especially in combination with the greenery of shrubs, trees or even ferns. It also means a bit of experimenting with the most suitable flowers for the warmer and dryer indoors, not all flowers are lasting. This fact should be kept in mind when sowing and planting them in the first place.

Pic5 Different combinations of our early flowering Cutflowers made by our students on placement.

The Vegetable Garden is also doing well. We had slight problems with the Cabbage Rootfly and lost a good few cabbages, kales and broccolies. The gaps got replanted with either companion plants like Calendulas and Tagetes or catch crops like Lettuces, Spinach or Leafbeets. We will have to treat the plots with nematodes again to prevent further infestation in the coming season.

The french beans, peas and broad beans are flowering and are slowly developing the beans and pods. Nothing is nicer then the young shoots of mangetouts, I think.

Pic6 The Crown Pea, a very old heritage variety, with an underplanting of Tagetes as companion planting. We used cardboard as a weed suppressor.

The fruit development is going well in comparison to last year, which was shockingly bad due to the cold and late spring. We can proudly say that we grew about 15 peaches this year, a new record! I would not classify our variety ‘Amsden June’, which is another old heritage variety, as the best tasting one but it is producing peaches at least!

Pic7 Our proud peach production, outside, in Connemara!!

The pears haven early too many fruits developed and we need to thin a good few out. The pears will develop better this way. The protection from the red brick wall is helping with the ripening process since it gives protection and releasing the retained heat.

Pic8 Pears on mass growing along the original red brick wall.

We just planted around 12 different heritage varieties of tomatoes into its final position in the Vinery glasshouse. The plants were already well established and potted on a couple of times in the propagation glasshouse. The heat and the sun from the south facing curvilinear glasshouse will help the tomatoes to ripe. I am looking forward to see how our new heritage variety ‘White Beauty’, dating back to 1860, will perform. The fruits look a bit unusual I would say, white, as the name is indicating.

The passion flower, growing against the east facing wall inside the vinery, is in bloom at the moment. The flowers look very exotic, complex and have a unique structure. This plant is always a show stopper and very easy to grow.

Pic9 The passion flower, always a showstopper.

That’s all the news from our Victorian Walled Garden for now. The coming few weeks will be busy with garden maintenance, the first harvest of vegetables for our sale, the feeding of roses, tomatoes, lawns and young hedges and of course looking after our visitors from across the world.