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.

Phew - What a Scorcher! - for April

The forecast was for 25°C today (that's 77 in old money, Bob). Amazing for April. Hope this isn't the only summer we get though.

Is there any sight more glorious than fresh green birch leaves against a bright blue sky?

Look no shed!

Isn't that a more attractive area in the front garden - even before the debris is cleared? One day there will be a gate in the hedge to give us pedestrain access to the road at the front of the house. And there will be a path to the front door lined by cottage garden plants that deer don't like to eat (are there any?).

Here today, gone tomorrow - thank you Freecycle!

Put this shed (18 ft by 7ft) on Freecycle this morning and had loads of enquiries within minutes, It will be going to a good home in the neighbouring village tomorrow. Isn't Freecycle wonderful - someone gets a large shed for free and we get an unwanted shed taken away.

We've made our bed ...

... and would quite like to have laid in it by the time we'd finished! We dug umpteen barrow-loads of compost out of the compost heap and into the clay and sand. It was hard work. But now we've got somewhere safe from deer to grow roses. We hope!

New flowerbed opportunity

Stage 2 of the deer fencing is nearly complete. It looks a bit stark at the moment, but some planting in front of it should help. Had a nasty moment when I realised I hadn't considered whether the gate was wide enough for the lawnmower and the wheelbarrow - but that seems to be OK.

How we get the marquee in is a challenge for another day!

Viola with added greenfly

What an exquisite flower the viola is. Unfortunately this one seems to have arrived with a greenfly in residence. It wasn't visible to the naked eye (well, not my naked eye anyway) but when I uploaded the photo, there it was. Is there a moral there?

Oh so tempting!

My mother and I visited a garden centre today and I was very tempted by the wonderful displays of flowers. Unfortunately there is just nowhere to plant anything yet so settled for some pansies for the pots.

Crumble, pie or snow?

Probably a bit early to looking out recipes for apples, but the blossom is looking wonderful and I have high hopes of a bumper crop. I am an eternal optimist!

Operation Construct Flowerbeds

Preparations for the construction of the flowerbeds over the Easter weekend continue. Muscle is lined up and the hydraulic rotivator is booked. The spray paint and measuring wheel have arrived so we can start marking out the beds.

(I ought to be negotiating a discount for all this product placement.)

Anyone for tennis?

The family who lived in this house for 39 years, until 1995, levelled part of the back garden and installed a tennis court. The court is long gone, but we are still finding ancient tennis balls around the garden. This one was buried deep inside a massive clump of couch grass which I dug up today.