Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

Yep Hibiscus syriacus is currently half price at Obi, about 1600 FT for some beautiful doubles in pink, mauve, reddish violet, white etc. Bought a few today. The doubles seem to keep their flowers for a day longer. This is a great plant to have in your garden, if you feed it & deadhead it regularly, they'll flower from end June to end September. Fertiliser - a bit picky but they love Miracle Gro, also the Genezis fertilser range (eg from Tesco with your Groceries order) is OK before & after flowering but seems to stress the plant June-August. In the UK, Hibiscus can look like dead twigs until June but in Hungary they'll come into leaf soon after Easter in a warm year.


I also would highly recommend Roses & Buddleia for all-summer continual flowering. with roses you'll need to buy the floribunda, hybrid tea or modern varieties (eg David Austin roses) to keep them flowering all summer - most of the other varieties have 1 flush of flowers, maybe 2, which can be great but is soon over. We just brought over free/ wild Buddleia from Cornwall years ago & they love it in Hungary, attracting butterflies all summer, but you can of course buy them in a nursery. Deadheading & feeding both necessary.

Otherwise there's not that much in the way of perennials that will flower all summer, though please do put me right on that! The locals like Trompeta (trumpet vine) & we've got loads of those, but find that if we're away and they go dry, they also stop flowering quite early. Still got 1 going full swing right now end August but most of the others have dwindled to nothing much. Dead heading the 'beans' is very important but watering more so.

rainee

I have been taking over seeds with me scattering and seeing what happens, Borage and marigolds have come up, I planted tulips and peonies bulbs in October

rainee

Borage and manifold seeds did really well, I planted them in August and returned in October to find beautiful edible flowers, have planted Tulip and Peonies for next year.

Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

Peonies love it in our garden - the hotter the better or so it seems. Some have got pretty enormous. They get fed. We're trying some tree peonies as well but they haven't started flowering yet. Don't believe that stuff about peonies hating to get moved, I've moved loads of them and there were never any problems, easy as. Just plant them only 1cm or so under the soil surface so that they can get baked in the sun. But they do need watering.

Being absent 3/4 of the year doesn't make gardening any easier, except I'm now very relaxed about only mowing the lawns 3 times a year, Easter, June, start of summer hols. It definitely looked better when we lived out there, but not too bad with the 3 times a year cut. I'm not allowed to get rid of the dandelions, daisies & violets in any case, she who must be obeyed loves them. I'm now actively planting & sowing primroses and cowslips into the lawn, plus random patches of daffodils, tulips, crocus, lilies. Adds a lot of interest. Especially at Easter.

Dickyb

Great stuff. Really enjoying the gardening tips. Thank you.

rainee

Your garden sounds lovely, I agree with your wife especially for the daisies. I have never successfully grown peonies from tuber or plant, so fingers crossed for my Hungarian garden. Do you buy your plants in Hungary or take them over? I have been taking over seeds and bulbs, only bought the place in Feb so lots to do. I am going organic the idea is to create a permaculture homestead for when I retire, have quite a few years yet to go. Do you buy David Austin roses in Hungary?

Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

You can get DA roses in Hungary, bit expensive though, I saw them at Hermes (which is an expensive garden centre anyway but good choice) in the summer and they were HUF 9-10000 each. Whereas I put in mostly named variety Floribunda roses & about 4 climbing roses this summer @ about HUF 2000 each (3 litre pots) and then a couple of weeks ago my son & I put in another 9 bare-root roses and they were only HUF 399 each. In the past I bought loads of plants/ trees in Hungary, it used to be extremely cheap for all nursery plants & trees & very good quality. Prices gone up a lot in the last 15 years or so but I was looking round a UK garden centre today and I'd say Hungary is still a helluva lot cheaper than UK. Trying to grow stuff (annuals/ biannuals/ perennials) from seed now to save money & more satisfying, eg this year I sowed a packet of lupin seeds (150 seeds for 99p Ebay, Russel series) and about 120 came up, so grew them on in plugs in UK and most survived the trip to Hungary.Next year I'll be doing the same with something different but will be trying my luck by sowing in Hungary as well. Got some Rudbeckia (Black eyed Susan) seeds as they grow extremely well in our H garden but I want about 10 or 20 times as many - you can give them the Chelsea chop in May/ June half term then they flower all summer hols.

But a lot of our established plants were salvaged from existing garden plants & propagated/ moved when we put the garden together (it used to be 3 telek side by side), we've had a couple of other plots over the years so robbed them for plants as well. That's where a lot of the peonies came from.

Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

Here's a link to Hermes garden centres, there might be one near you? New Garden kertészet Budapest, a kertek kertje - New Garden Kertészet Óbuda
We use the Szentendrei Ut one (New Garden Óbuda: 2011 Budakalász, Luppa-szigeti elágazás) but in the past have also used this one (very good and a bit cheaper, we go past it on the way back from visiting Velence To friends or you'd go past it on your way back to BP from Balaton) New Garden M7: M7 autópálya 33-as Km, Váli-Völgyi pihenőhely

And these other guys are extremely cheap for small plants and will post them at reasonable cost, they seem to have a good selection & I wanted named varieties of Lilacs - plus the weeping willow tree I bought was extremely cheap compared to Budapest prices (and they grow like stink anyway, a year later & it's nearly 2.5m high) Profi Faiskola Pécs

Dickyb

Any ideas on quick growing trees to provide shade? We have plenty of hibiscus, roses, buddleia and peonies along with cherry, plum and peach trees. We have a large open area that could do with a couple of leafy trees to provide additional shade for our dogs and also act as screen to hide the neighbours tumble down outbuildings.

Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

Not exactly big trees but hazel/ cobnut/ mogyoro grows really fast after the first couple of years & the more you coppice it or just prune it, the better the thickness to hide views or eyesores / loads of new limbs coming up. If you keep it at a pruned 2 metres in spring = 3 metres in summer, it is a great screen. Dead cheap as well. Not so good for shade for the dogs though there would be some shade of course, depends a bit on direction of sun but canopy shade would not be huge, more like directional shade vs sun position. Makes a very effective hedge.

If you want a different bigger leafy tree that gives canopy shade, you could do worse than Hungarian horse chestnut or walnut - both grow pretty fast if watered/ fed.

Jack_Russells4ever

Pilis, do you know if that nursery shop in Pecs sells shrubbery plants and some sort of dwarf cherry trees that don't get very tall? I want to plant some shrubbery along the street for a hedgerow for privacy and need some Cherry trees for screening of a neighbours house once we take down an old animal stable that will collapse if not removed. I suspect the neighbours will NOT be thrilled once we take down what gave them some privacy. Cherry trees that do not get too tall should fit the bill.

Dickyb

Thank you very much for the tips Pilis fella.

wolfi

Thanks,Pilis, for those tipps!

An alternative (but you need some wooden construction for stability) are grapes. We put them on the side of our roofed terrace instead of the "lila akác" that was growing too fast and annoyed my wife with its beans.
They also grow really fast and are a joy to eat in autumn ...

Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

You'd have to trawl through the Termékkereső box (then press Keres) - try keywords Prunus or törpe.

But if it was me, I'd be buying regular cherry trees (put cseresznye in that box) and keeping them pruned to the height you want. They don't grow that vigorously if on the common rootstocks so it wouldn't be too much work, just a bit of shaping every 3 years or so if needed - though I rarely if ever prune ours (once you have the branch shape you want), just weigh the lower branches down in the early years so that they grow lower to make picking the cherries easier. I've also seen apple trees in the Balaton area pruned to be a screen, ie like espaliers but higher & more formalised into a wall effect. That looked good, so it was only basically a tree trunk thick on one dimension (depth) but good as a screen on height & length. It would be this sort of shape:



We've got quite a few cherry trees and they are very trouble free, no need IMV for the manic spraying that some Hungarians go in for. We don't spray anything (apart from our box bushes! against those devastating caterpillars) and they all give good fruit, the pears usually get a few diseased leaves but the apples, cherries, apricot just look healthy without it, I do feed them all though. A very good year for cherries, 2018.

But cherry trees should be readily available, several different varieties, all over Hungary, no particular need to order online.

Pilis Nemzeti Park Fella

I've got wisteria/ lila akác growing over the car shade (metal frame like a big car port to shade the cars in summer) and it gives almost total shade now, completely gone wild - I just get the kids to chop off the beans as much as they can otherwise they drop off anyway in due course.

Yep I'm fighting a battle with my wife over grapes (she prefers flowers) but managed to get her to agree to me planting 3x Nero variety black grapevines this summer. Idea being they are early/ ready to eat in August. I tasted some at my mate's house about 20th August and they were very sweet & delicious. Growing those up some steel frames/ oszlop that I had kicking about in a shed, just needed painting black then concreting in.