- NEWS
10% tax on junk food to tackle obesityA 10% tax on fizzy drinks, sweets, biscuits, crisps, and chocolate is to be recommended to the health minister as a way of tackling the country's soaring obesity problem.
Prayer vigil for fine weather as farmers queue for fodderA 24-hour prayer vigil for fine weather has been held on the Kerry-Cork border.
- WORLD
It’s technology, Jim, but not as we know it WHEN Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry first dreamed up the concept of a television show based in the unexplored universe of Outer Space in 1964, the world was a very different place.
Berlusconi’s party girls dressed as nuns, Obama Silvio Berlusconi's private disco featured women dressed not just as sexy nuns and nurses, but also as President Barack Obama and a prominent Milan prosecutor that the former Italian premier has accused of persecuting him.
- BUSINESS
IBRC delays loan valuations, saleThe valuation and sale of IBRC loans has been pushed out by six months to November and December of this year.
The smart money is always on SeánFounded four decades ago, its annual turnover is now €2bn.
- SPORT
The Terry Reilly Interview: The Godfather of GalwayOver the course of almost half a century, Liam Sammon has been in service to Galway football. Now he hopes a new generation can restore county pride.
Super Blues keep double in sightsJoe Schmidt's side won their third European trophy in successive years and gave Connacht reason to celebrate also as the Westerners gained entry to next season's Heineken Cup courtesy of their neighbours to the east.
- LIFESTYLE
Let in the seasonal lightYOUR wardrobe isn't the only thing that needs updating once the barometer starts to rise.
It’s a guy thingDid you cry with your buddy while watching Fergie say farewell at Old Trafford?
10-13C
Live Blogs
- We have no upcoming events at the moment. Please check 'Recent Events' tab for past events
Latest ShowBiz
Still hope for the summer
MIDSUMMER’S day is hardly a memory and already the mood of the garden has changed.
By Charlie Wilkins
The garden is uncertain now, layered with ambivalence and suggestion, carrying something of both summer and early autumn in its strange chemistry. Plants are growing heavy due no doubt to the incessant ran and the luminous quality of delicate blooms and foliage is taking on a faded grandeur and harder tone.
In particular I notice the deterioration on a large planting of cosmos, their diaphanous petals prematurely bleaching and fading like a butterfly’s wings in late September.
However, while many plants in the treasure-chest of ornamental gardens may be objecting to the poor conditions we must remain hopeful. Remember there are still three months (and more) of potential colour and scent.
So let me introduce you to a beautiful thing in bloom as I write the blue and white campanula known and sold as ‘persicifolia’, or peach-leaved bellflower. Rain suits them admirably.
These are of the thin-leaved variety whose slender stems are set with open cup-shaped flowers in shades of blue and white to knee height. Totally hardy, these reliable perennials can be sourced as mature plants this month at garden centres.
Their roots will fit in anywhere, even among crazy paving stones, beside a path, in the border with phlox and veronica, or mixed through white watsonias and bridal gladioli.
In a wet year like this, the peach-leafed bellflower will perform positively for it dislikes intensely ground which dries prematurely.
Among the named varieties you should look for and choose are plain ‘alba’ a magnificent and lovely white, worth having in any situation or ‘telham beauty’ with its larger blooms in a pretty milky blue colouring. When this latter form opens to warm sunshine the plant’s flared ends look as if they had been dipped into watery blue ink. Being single-flowered, ‘alba’ and ‘telham beauty’ will stand handsomely upright without the need for staking.
I must admit to a little staking for the garden is high and exposed to winds.
The double-flowered forms boast big blue waxy bells along their stems.
Like many doubles in the plant world these are sterile and lacking in the wherewithal to make seed last longer than the singles. Still, it is to the singles that I look for sheer perfection in colour and texture. Campanula persicifolia will be found good mixers, not only among themselves but with their neighbours in the border, in or out of direct sunlight. In fact, they can sometimes welcome partially shaded positions where their glowing hues will be found at their most intense, particularly telling at dusk.