The forward planning challenge

This time last year we were preparing for a big family gathering to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. We were willing the rhododendrons to bloom as they were just about only colour in the garden, thanks to the deer. In the end, it was at least two weeks after the party that they flowered. These have been out for a couple of weeks already - making them about a month ahead of last year. Planning for a blossom-filled July next year is a tad tricky.

I'm not stuck ...

... I'm just thinking very hard about how to get down from this rather splendid oak tree.

Little Woodlands Garden Waste Recycling Facility

Opening hours:

All day, Monday to Sunday.

Strictly residents only.

Blooming irises

Was it last night's rain (yeah!!!) that brought these irises out? Whatever - they seem to like their new shady boggy home.

Irises from Crocus or was it crocuses from Iris?

I was a bit anxious about buying plants online, but I'm delighted to report that the Siberian irses, foxgloves and gunnera arrived very well packaged and healthier looking than some from the local garden centre. Well done Crocus!

Here are the irises and gunnera in the shady, boggy corner of the wall bed. Hope that's enough space for the gunnera - they don't call it man-eating rhubarb for nothing!

Grow plants, grow!

Still a lot of space to fill - but here is the start of the planting in the parterre beds - delphiniums, lupins, hollyhocks, roses and poppies.

P.S. Griff is exonerated - there was a fresh hole in the beds before he was let out this morning. Sorry, Griff!

Who's been digging in my flowerbed?

 

Overnight some big holes
appeared in the flowerbed.



Showering the new plants with earth.



Suspect number one is a fox.

But Griff, the temporarily resident cat, is also in the frame. He certainly enjoyed playing in the holes this morning.

Let the planting commence!

This is the bed by the fence in the front garden. We're working on the assumption that if the deer didn't eat the azaleas last Spring then they won't eat them now.

Looks a little sparce at the moment but hopefully will fill out over the years.

The plant labels instruct us to water with rainwater. Pah! Chance would be a fine thing. We've had no rain for weeks.

Yeah! Finished planting the boxes.

Two hundred and twenty four of them! Anyone who is concentrating will have spotted that that is more plants than we originally calculated we would need. There was a slight change of plan on the size of the beds ... each bed is now 3m x 3m.

For future reference ... planting box plants takes longer than you can possibly imagine!

We have spent ALL day planting box plants! Started this morning thinking we might be finished by lunchtime, but pretty soon it became apparent that that was not going to happen. Two down, two to go. Looking good though!

Bootiful plants

Went shopping for plants today armed with a carefully researched wish list. Thank you to brother-in-law Carl for sharing his knowledge and experience of what works well together.

Tomorrow we start planting!

Royal Wedding Day!

Best wishes to Wills and Kate!


Day off from gardening today - just some gentle planting planning.


There's a Royal Wedding rose and a Royal Wedding poppy. Should we include those?

Compost heap to parking

Remember this from March?

Well after much blood, sweat and tears it now looks like this and will be used for parking cars so we can make better use of the area in front of the house.

Taking shape

Getting there! The parterre bed is just about ready for planting now.

Can you picture the bride and groom standing in the middle, surrounded by delphiniums and poppies, making their vows?

Add large amounts of well-rotted compost and work to a fine tilthe

The soil in the parterre bed is beginning to resemble a fine tilthe. Digging in barrow-load after barrow-load of compost from the compost heap is a back-breaking task, but has the dual benefit of clearing that space while enriching the new bed. It will be worth the pain!

Wall bed ready to receive plants

One more bed ready! It's 2m deep by 15m wide. That's a lot of space to fill with plants!

The gunnera will be going in the permanently wet area in the far corner, with irises, agapanthus and echinops in the drier areas. Any other suggestions?

Hanging basket graveyard

Our predecessor in this house was the queen of hanging baskets. And at the end of every year she (or her gardener) up-ended them into the compost heap, where the roots continued to grow into a solid mass. We estimate that today we removed the contents of at least 50 baskets - some with the liner still attached and some complete with rusty wire basket. One even had this little chap attached. Wonder how long he'd  been buried there.

... go!

The first flowerbed has been dug! We rotivated, shovelled compost, rotivated, shovelled compost and rotivated again. Haven't quite achieved a fine tilth yet - but there's always tomorrow.

Thank you to our enthusiastic helpers! As you sip champagne here in 446 days time, remember this day!

Ready, steady ...

Tomorrow sees the start of Operation Flowerbeds. Today we marked out the beds with spray paint. Getting everything perpendicular was no mean feat. Pythagoras tells us that the diagonal of a right-angled triangle with sides 7 m is about 9.9 m, which should have helped. But trying to measure accurately with a tape measure that stretches, twists and gets caught on dandelions is not easy. But got there in the end.

We labelled the area that will be patio so that no-one digs that up tomorrow by mistake.

Griff's little adventure

Griff, the temporarily resident cat, got himself in a bit of bother yesterday and came home with a scratch on his nose. Must have ventured into someone else's territory. Or maybe he picked a fight with a deer! Go Griff!

Doesn't seem to be causing him any concern - he still rolls ecstatically in the dustiest patch of earth he can find.