Back in the Garden

I feel so good this evening, after my first proper day back in the garden - sore muscles and a happy head! Fresh air and exercise have left me on a high...I'm going to write my first "to do" list of the year - I need to set dates for all of my workshops and open days, draw a map of the garden, order seeds and some more perennial plugs and make a huge list of garden tasks.

No.1 New Year's Resolution - Keep the polytunnel tidy! (I wish) In fact, just be more tidy in general - I spend more time looking for lost tools, gloves, seeds etc - I need a better system...mañana.

Back to today, I cleared the raised bed in the polytunnel except for the ranunculus which are coming on nicely, cleaned out my water barrel and then headed out to the garden.

The shady garden is the oldest part of the garden - the rest was simply fields full of horses and livestock. The shady garden was planted with basic shrubs - berberis, laurel, bay, fuschia, holly, potentilla and, to the west, a row of the dreaded Castlewellan Golds, all approx 22 years ago. Bit by bit, we have added a fern and hellebore "stumpery" at the south end (facing north)

This is the door to the faerie house in the stumpery....I would love to be able to go through the door!

  ..............and two small beds in front of the C Golds - we tried grasses but they just looked awful so they were replaced with more hellebores, spiraea, hydrangea and golden choisya.

Just last year, we splashed out on a mature multi stemmed white birch tree to plant in a circular "white" bed in the middle of the garden, underplanted with variegated honesty, white toadflax, white aquilegia and white bulbs - anemones, alliums, crocus, snowdrops.

Today, we cleared the fallen leaves from the beds, weeded, cut back the old hellebore leaves (to prevent blackspot) and lopped some of the overgrown shrubs. We also lifted the old stone edgers as the shrubs had grown over them and they were covered in years of leafmould. We are going to extend this border and plant in front of the potentillas - we need more colour - it's all too green - I'll keep you posted!

(This was taken in 2010 with Poppy in the way as usual- all too green!)

And promise to take better photos tomorrow - I've discovered that, when the light is poor, my iphone takes terrible pictures.