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Dicentra formosa Aurora — 65 Comments

  1. I am a lover of nature and I kept scrolling up and down this page like I couldn’t get enough of seeing those plants. The magpies are awesome!!!

  2. Hi Alistair, I am also excited to see your very healthy-looking vegies, as we are used to see your ornamentals. I am sure you will be reaping lots of fruits from your labor there. They look so healthy. Of course raising vegies is not much different from ornamentals, so we can easily produce them all.

  3. Hi Alistair, Last year was my first attempt at growing veggies. As you probably know, it was not a great success, with the bunnies being to only creatures well-fed, but what little produce I was able to harvest was a pure delight! I have a feeling you will find growing food is just as addictive.
    The Dicentra Formosa white and pink are very pretty. I added one last year and another this spring. I love the ferny foliage even more than the flowers.

  4. Hi Alastair, i love your magpie, I would have thought they would feel like cannibals eating eggs. (but what do i know too?) And I am very impressed at your food growing. I feel us ornamental gardeners are getting thin on the ground – I grow herbs, but can’t boast the range of veggies you can. Not to mention apples! cheers, cm

  5. I have nominated you for the Versatile Blogger award. Check it out in my latest post. You have a great day!

  6. Hi Frances, will see how I get on with the edibles, cucumber almost ready. I suppose I should set aside an area especially for veg, not so sure as the garden is now so very mature. Thanks for telling me about the loading of my site, there was a couple of issues but I think it may have been to do with the host.

  7. OMG! You have a greenhouse (s) to die for. Are you growing all those plants for your garden or the whole of Aberdeen (or Scotland!)….sigh…

  8. Alistair that’s a beautiful plant,
    it’s difficult when there are birds that prey on other smaller birds though your garden has plenty of cover for the small birds to hide in, here it is the gulls and hoodie crow not as attractive as your magpie,
    I love all your food plants the apples look lovely in bloom, I like the idea of different leaves in pots hopefully keeps them further away from the slugs,
    I like the new layout too, it loaded fine for me no noticeable problem, green fingers and green blog, Frances

  9. What a beautiful looking plant that is so similar to the bleeding heart plant. I got another bleeding heart vine – a different version from what you shared here.

    Must be lovely to see all the immaculate white blooms arching downwards.

  10. Hi Alistair, I just love to pop up to your web site and see what’s new. The garden is beautiful. I love Dicentra; have the pink and white ones in my garden. I have been looking for D. formosa for a long time but still cannot be bought in Croatia. Stay well in your Bonnie Scotland.

  11. I wish dicentra formosa would settle in my garden. I’ve tried the pink and it never appeared again.

    I don’t think I’ve seen a Magpie here for over 10 years – we’ve got plenty of hawks instead.

  12. As you know from my post… magpies are villains and heart-breakers. But yes, they are God’s creatures. What to do to keep them in balance with nature is the lingering question that I don;t have an answer to. But I am excited for you and your venture into growing veggies… keep us updated on their progress!

  13. Hi Alistair! I told you already how much I like that dicentra of yours, I prefer the white one too and will certainly look for it around. I bet I should keep it almost in full shade in my climate though.
    I kind of like magpies too, they are cheeky!
    You grow a lot of begonias, don’t you? Salads in pots is clever and quite funny too but it should be a kind of a sadness when you’ll have to harvest!

  14. The bird is so pretty! And I like the white flowers better than the pink ones, too. I love your use of these as a ground cover. How wonderful to be growing some things to eat. I, too, grow just a few veggies – and feel like I really don’t know what I’m doing. But it’s fun learning! 🙂

  15. You have been busy Alistair! What a productive greenhouse. Will you keep the cucumbers etc inside for the summer? Sometimes they do get those flowers stuck on the end. I see Kininvie read your word “exotic” as “erotic” which I did at first as well –it was funny to think of an eggplant that way. The Dicentra formosa endures all summer here too, so pretty.

  16. The quantities of bedding plants you grow are reaching the realms of retail. Amazing. Planted like that, Dicentra are the perfect groundcover and how happy they look in your rich, damp soil. p.s. did the egg treats keep the magpies off the tadpoles?

  17. Alistair, our temperatures have been rather cool and rainy as well — in fact, we are dealing with slugs. (Fortunately, it’s not so hard!) We should already have some ripe ones, if only the sun would come out and it would stop raining!

  18. Cathy and Steve, I will keep updating how the tomatoes are coming on, very low temperatures here at the moment, about 52f this past ten days.

  19. Alistair, the dicentra is lovely, reminiscent of the dicentra eximia we have here in pink, which also comes as an alba. That little bird is adorable, and what a fabukous, crisp, photograph!

    But I LOVE your “yummies” best of all. We planted four tomatoes all in pots and they are full of fruit, none yet ripe. This year’s plants are doing much better than years past. We also planted four eggplant (aubergine). It’s one of our favorite vegetables. We had good luck with it last year as well. We also have good luck with yellow squash and planted more of that as well.

    New to us this year are tomatillos. I hope they do well. Our red leaf lettuce has been spectacular – we had salad with grilled chicken for dinner tonight!

  20. I wish you much joy with your new veggie plants! I have a feeling that as with all gardening related things your veggies will flourish and soon I will be turning to your blog for veggie growing tips & ideas!

  21. Hello Alistair
    I had never seen the Dicentra formosa ‘Aurora” – I really like it and will keep my eye out for it here. Your greenhouse is amazing!!! My little cold frame contained ornamental kale, Scabiosa, Sweet William and sweet peas. After being planted, they are coming along just fine now since we’ve been getting adequate rain. As far as all those veggies go – Yum!! Set an extra place at the table! I’m headed right over!!
    Astrid

  22. Hi Bernieh. to be quite honest feeding magpies is just silly. I’ll have you know, I get very easily excited, just you ask—-well on second thoughts, don’t bother.

  23. Yes Kininvie I know about the magpies, even she who knows better than everyone is aware, but apparently all living creatures have their place in the world. Never again in (my) our garden. Feed the squirrels, yes darling, in a moment. Oh, I see what you mean about the Aubergine, it does have a very smoooth skin. Thanks for the report on my website, I think it was a temporary problem yesterday.

  24. Not from seed Debs, I bought young plants from the garden centre. I know, feeding the magpies is just wrong, try telling someone else in this household.

  25. Those white Dicentras are simply lovely. What a fabulous groundcover they make. I would never have thought Magpies would enjoy an egg for lunch! You learn something new every day. Your vegies are doing so well. Excited about lettuce, hum???

  26. I am so impressed with all that you have growing in your greenhouse! Did you plant all of those from seed? I also think it is so funny that you fed the magpie an egg! Does this tell me that magpies steal eggs from other birds’ nests? Nevertheless, the magpie is a lovely bird.

  27. Upon gallivanting around my favorite bloggers recent posts I was chuffed by the class of the information and images.

  28. Magpies are vermin and need to be shot. Cunning and clever birds, they wait until songbird fledglings are big enough to make a tasty snack and then raid nest after nest. You really don’t want to encourage them….
    Also, Alistair, I think you must be the first to find an aubergine flower erotic? Each to their own though! PS New design much improved, and no trouble loading with me…

  29. Hi Alistair, another great post, your begonias look amazing, what a labour of love! And I’m jealous of your tomato plants, which are so much further on than mine!

  30. Hi b-a-g, yes I know, yet I still expect people to take me seriously. I will let you know how I get on with the Aubergines.

  31. I grow Dicentra formosa too, but I’ve only had it for a few years, so it hasn’t spread out much yet.
    You’ve got one more tomato plant than me. I started with six, but the snails were hungry. I’m growing Gardeners Delight too.
    My summer bedding is still in the greenhouse, good job really, with today’s autumnal weather.

  32. Alastair – So much for the guy who said he’d never grow vegetables …
    Growing Aubergines in Aberdeen does sound ambitious – they make a delicious snack, just sliced thickly and fried in olive oil with a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

  33. I love this wild-bleeding heart but cannot get it to grow well here despite numerous tries–I had a good laugh when you talked about having to control it. All your vegetables look beautiful—as pretty as any perennial. I wish we had magpies here. Do they have a musical call like other magpie species?

  34. Thanks Donna, all my experimenting with new look has ended up being a nuisance. At the moment it is so very slow to open and not opening at all for some of my visitors.

  35. Another experimental new look? I like it. As for this plant I have not had much luck…I think I either have it in too dry or too wet conditions. I love how wonderful this plant is growing and will have to give it a try again…special siting will have to be found.

    We have a similar bird that others don’t like having around because they raid nests for eggs. It is the Grackle. Your Magpie is pretty.

    I love your food growing…fabulous and so lush and healthy in the greenhouse. What a green house….you have so much growing….veg gardening is a bit addictive I have found, but what a wonderful addiction..you eat the fruit of you labors!

  36. Alistair, I did check on your load times. It is quite slow at 54.83 seconds. I have an app on my computer for this. It loaded a bit faster with my cable, than without, but was still a bit slow. The drawback was images took 88 percent of the total page load time. I am not sure why it is slow though as your images are only 2.1 MB of the page load. Another generator listed it at 32.29 seconds. Maybe you should contact WP and see what they have to say. It maybe just their server where your blog is stored. They could be doing maintenance at this time too. I have had that happen and they told me my blog was moved to another server, which speeded up the load time.

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