I can't beelieve it!

Got an email to say we've reached the final of Britain's most bee friendly garden! I'm chuffed to bits! I must say, on a sunny day with just me and the dog, the bees can be deafening sometimes. I love it... I love that you can work alongside them and watch them right up close...they're so busy working, they haven't time to even notice you. When I'm cutting the flowers, they follow my bucket and even today when I had a stall in the middle of a large, sterile football pitch, they managed to find my cut flowers and help themselves...especially to the toadflax which they love. It just shows you...plant it and they will come.

Garden Update

I've been so busy in the garden since back from hols but yesterday was the first day that it felt productive so I thought I'd keep you up to date. I'm actually just procrastinating from making a new flowerbed that I started a while ago and then left - it's now totally overgrown with weeds and I don't know where to start. More about that later - I promise I'll post before and after pics!

Have spent all week weeding my 12 main flowerbeds, cleared self sown feverfew from the dahlia bed which had taken over and was swamping the dahlias - deslugged and fed the dahlias with fish, blood and bone. Hopefully they will recover and we will get a nice late summer to let them flourish.

Also direct sowed some more nigella and xeranthemums - maybe too late but I thought I'd give it a go. My biennials should have been sown earlier but I delayed because of the holiday. I had left my mum enough chores what with watering the tomatoes and pots so I have now sown, in the tunnel, sweet williams, honesty, wallflowers and foxgloves. I have sown some ornamental perennial grasses that need heat to germinate - pennisetum villosum, eragrostis spectabilis & deschampsia flexuosa (try saying that after a few glasses of wine!) I will keep you posted on their progress. Also eupatorium purpureum and lysimachia purpurea "Beaujolais" because I found the seed and thought I'd give them a go.

With all the terrible wet weather I've decided to sow more veg, ever the optimist, I firmly believe we are in for an Indian Summer! I've sown more broad beans, mange tout, climbing french beans and beetroot (and purple broccoli & cabbage for next year - I hate that brassicas are so slow). I need to sow more lettuce and mizuna direct into the veg garden asap to keep a continuing supply.

If you are interested in growing veg or already do so and would like good growing advice (organically of course) you should check out Nicky Kyle. Nicky's website gives the most excellent, informative advice on growing your own and is so easy to read - I love it!

Happy Gardening!

Home Sweet Home

Where to start. I can't believe where the time has gone! Our holiday seemed to fly by in no time but we had a blast - great craic with the family and the sangria!  I would highly recommend the resort Playa Bara near Taragona - really beautiful and not at all "touristy". The best bit is that the lovely beach with safe, warm waves is on your doorstep and the beach cafes are buzzing. There are  mostly Spanish and Dutch people throughout the resort and beach. We normally holiday at Duinrell in Holland which is another wonderful family resort so we were happy to see all the freaky deaky Dutch although they're all so tanned and skinny and tall and gorgeous :(.

I know that our weather at home has been miserable but there is something so good about looking out the Easyjet window just as you turn towards Aldergrove and realising that Ireland really is an emerald isle - a green like no other - it takes the soft weather with our almost daily rain to produce the intensity of colour. I love it. I love the dull, mild, mizzly weather, I'm sorry but I do, maybe it's my celtic bones or maybe it's the laser eye surgery I had 8 years ago which has left me incapable of tolerating even the slightest hint of bright weather without a peak cap and blue bottle sunglasses. Obviously I didn't wear a chavvy cap on holiday, I wore a lovely pink, straw, wide brimmed sunhat from Primark - priced at a fiver but went through the till at a pound - I do love a bargain. I thought I looked quite classy, even with the addition of the blue bottle sunglasses but I was a bit miffed to see quite a few Dutch people point and laugh. All very well for them with their sun loving genes but at least the lovely Spanish people were good enough not to stare, even though my hat bumped into quite a few of them on the way to the pool.

Anyway, here are a few photos of the beautiful scenery.

Will this rain ever cease? Hard not to talk about it when gardening....I've had more soakings this last month than the whole winter. The flowers are trying their best but the weeds are trying harder. We're heading on hols tomorrow for ten days....dread to think what state the beds will be in when I get back.

The stress of getting the garden in shape before we leave was almost as bad as the stress of packing....forgot we had taken our ancient suitcases to the dump......two options available to scrounge from mum and dad. The first is a brute that weighs 9 kilos empty and our limit is 20 kilos, the second is an antique without wheels like something you'd see in Fawlty Towers. So much for pulling off the polished Boden look at the airport....am losing the will to try...nails not painted, can't get the ground in dirt out, legs only half defuzzed. Oh well...there's always next year.

Flowers from the weekend. Hasta la vista...(in ten days). x

Ups and Downs

Ups..... have finally got the better of the veg garden...restaked the peas and beans blown over from the gales, and planted out some yellow mangetout that were started in the tunnel. Cleared all weeds, have never known the like.........the high rainfall and muggy weather...you can almost watch them grow..literally. Sowed more carrots (Autumn King & Nantes), beetroot (Bolivar), spinach (Matador) and some "cut and come again" lettuce - they will all hopefully grow as fast as the weeds.

The brassicas are loving the cool, wet weather  - they're romping away...(would have shown pic but can't find my phone lead - typical). I just need to stake the brussel sprouts..am also trying the purple "Rubine" ones this year...can't believe I'm getting excited about brussel sprouts! When I tell the kids that some day they'll love them too they just look at me with disgust but I really do love my veg these days and yet as a child I ate nothing but a few carrots. Luckily the kids like almost all veg except sprouts and turnips.

Downs....the flower garden is still in chaos - the beds are still bedraggled from the woeful weather and the weeds worse than ever. Manana manana.

Flowers leftover from the weekend.

Top of the Picks

I've decided to post my top 5 flowers for picking each month and include a little bit about why I love them.

5. Centranthus Ruber (Valerian)

Tough as old boots...will grow anywhere, is easy to start from seed, sturdy stems and lots of them per plant - it's perennial and may be short loved with me cutting it so much but it's so easy to grow new plants so I don't mind.

4. Nepeta Six Hills Giant (Catmint)

(Sorry no pic - not photogenic...looks washed out)

I think I've already mentioned catmint but I do love it - the smell is so uplifting yet never overpowering, the stems are the perfect length for taller arrangements and yet it's dainty enough to be used in a handtie and the bees love it!

3. Linaria Pink Birds (Toadflax)

 

I wasn't too sure about this one when I first grew it last year but it has grown on me (terrible pun). It's not at all like the native toadflax. Very sturdy stems that don't need staking. It's unusual and therefore popular at the flower arranging workshops. The bees love it, it's perennial and is starting to look like a bit of a thug which is a good thing at the minute but may outgrow it's space. Unfortunately it doesn't smell but you can't have everything from every plant.

 

2. Allium roseum

 

I absolutely love these! Cheap to buy, come up every year may even multiply. Good long, straight stem with light enough heads that they don't blow over. You get a slight oniony smell when first cut but as soon as you submerge them in water it disappears and the flowers smell lovely....sort of sweet caramel but not sickly. Great vase life - they go on for ever with little bulblets forming from the base of each little floret - I am going to try and plant these...think it will work...easy to propagate therefore cheap to buy.

 

1. Peonies (of course)

 

What can I say that you don't already know but each year I get so excited to see the buds swell and burst open. I know that they have a short season but that makes them more appealing. They are far less hassle than roses and don't mind the rain so much. Just stake if necessary and don't plant them too deep or they won't flower. After that, just enjoy and admire....they'll live for years.

 

Hope you had a good weekend!

A Good Day

What a great day in the garden. Weather was lovely...far better than forecast. I feel that I've been sinking rather swimming - just can't get on top of my "to do" list. Other things always seem to get in the way of actual gardening.

Today I finally planted out the last of the plants that just weren't ready or just got left behind in the tunnel.....more snapdragons, physalis (chinese gooseberry) bells of ireland. In the veg garden...celeriac, yellow mangetout, more climbing french beans and the last of the pumpkins.

My tomatoes were a disaster. Sown too early and then with the cold spring they were kept inside the house for too long - I ended up with leggy pathetic plants so I was delighted to be given a surplus of super healthy baby plants from a fellow gardener....gardeners are so generous! Now I've got Ailsa Craig, Gardeners Delight, Moneymaker & Tigrella. I have a few of my own planted (Costoluto Fiorentino) but don't know if they'll thrive or not.

The perennial beds are really filling out...in fact some plants are too close together and will need moved...always the way. Lots of flowers for picking.

Valerian, catmint, astrantia, alliums, linaria (Pink Birds & Canon J Went), hesperis, feverfew, applemint, lemon balm, tarragon, single flowered gyp (Covent Garden White) & rosa Graham Thomas. Who said less is more?