Those wonderful barberries! 2. Berberis thunbergii 'Aurea'

You can see it in front of the birch in the middle, between the thuya and the rose. At us it grows on a rather shady place. On a sunny place it get much more yellow.

It was one of my best gardening catches. I bought it some years ago in the New Garden nursery as a completely developed plant. On a deeply reduced price, as nobody bought it. But I at once fell in love with it.

Here it is at the left side of the picture, in the middle of the summer. Beautiful, as throughout all the year.

Its form is so architectonic that one can put it even in a Japanese garden, as they often do it indeed. But it also fits well to our more colorful, loose mixed flower bed.

In the autumn it assumes beautiful colors. It also produces berries, but at us unfortuntely quite few. In has a spectacular form also in the winter, here behind the birch to the right.


It is quite frost-hardy (Z4). It grows about one meter hight and one to one and half meter large. People often recommend to plant it on an light soil, but at us every Berberis thunbergii feels better on adobe soil than on sand. However, it cannot stand soils with bad drainage. (This is no problem at us, as all our soils drain water better than necessary.) It loves sunny or partly shady places. It works well in dry places. That is, it is perfect of its kind.

European Spindle - Euonymus europaeus

This is so beautiful that it is almost unbelievable. These berries are its greatest attraction. In the autum you can admire them for weeks. In our region it is a frequent forest bush, but it also occurs in such elegant places like the garden of Beth Chatto.

This is how it looks like a bush. This is a young one planted in 2004, the photo was made in the autumn of 2008. Later it will grow branchy. As you can see from its location, is is amazingly hardy. I have planted it directly to the stock of a huge poplar, on dry, sandy soil which hardly receives any water.

The nursery pages usually describe it as 2-3 meters high and large, while the pages of universities and of environmental protection give a much bigger height, even 4-7-10 meters. It is spreading, but not aggressive. It is extremely frost-hardy: Z4, and some pages even categorize it in Z3. An excellent plant for dry part-shade.

Fruit-Grafting Lady Day

Under your protection we run, holy Parent of God! Don’t despise our entreaty in the time of our distress, but protect us from every danger, you always glorious and blessed Virgin;

our Lady, our Interceder, our Protector, appease your holy Son for us, recommend us to your holy Son, present us to your holy Son! Amen. (Prayer from the 3rd century)

Squirrel

At the end of the winter the squirrels often come up as far as the house.

Yesterday this same squirrel was jumping in our window, but then we could not photograph it. Tamás today managed to take some pictures of it.

This beautiful red one with white belly is my favorite one.

It keeps a Turkish hazelnut in the mouth. Interestingly they prefer it to common nut. But as one can see at its good conditions, in the winter they also eat the nuts they find in the garden.