- Blog

Am taking a short break from my blog. Back soon, meanwhile some photographs from the May garden....

Clematis Freda

....growing round the window

A full greenhouse

Trays of flowers..

..and dark exciting buds on the delphiniums already

I do love May! Have a good week, and thank you for reading.

Simply Grow.. and muck in.... 05/06/2012

No philosophising today - all muck and magic. The muck was the heap of manure which has been sitting on our drive all winter (!) Mixed with the home made compost it made a great top dressing for beds which have had nothing added to them for years. The magic was provided by the weather - still sunny - and these camassias.

Camassia leichtlinii coerulea (what a mouthful) does well here, coming up every year with no attention whatever - a star with it's starry flowers.

Simply Growing....and looking at the bigger picture.. 05/05/2012

I'm interested in the idea of the underlying geometry of the garden (see Liz's comment on Cubist gardening on 3rd May). In garden design I find that if it works on plan on paper then it usually works in three dimensions in reality.

Proportion really matters, and harmony with the buildings in and surroundings of the garden. In a well designed garden you are aware of this harmony though you may know nothing about how it was achieved.

If you'd like to know more about how it can be achieved I'd recommend John Brookes' Garden Design Book. In the chapter Learning To Design, Choosing and Using a Grid, Brookes shows an excellent way to create this harmony, which is always the starting point for me in any design.

I'm interested always in the underlying design or philosophy behind ideas of all kinds, not just gardening ideas, and in looking at things from different perspectives.

For a completely different perspective on your life do try to see Around The World in 60 Minutes on BBC 4 - it is on BBC i player for another four days. Brilliant.

Simply Grow....befores and afters.. 05/04/2012

Winter 2000

Summer 2009

This is looking towards the same corner of the front garden. It's interesting to look back on how we got from 'before' to 'after'....I do remember sitting on the front porch and drawing out the basic shapes literally on the back of an envelope! And planting little birch trees about 4 foot high....the grass improved just with regular cutting, the soil proved to be quite fertile and I began growing lots of things from seed as soon as we got an 8 x 6 greenhouse (2002/3 I think).

A lot of thinking, imagining, and sheer hard work.

And pleasure, joy and relaxation.

I do love my garden.

Do you have any before and after shots of your house or your garden?

Why not go and dig them out?

Simply Grow....imaginatively? 05/03/2012

When I look at this....

I see this!

Without the vision of the flowers and the colour combination in my mind, I wouldn't perhaps be prepared to do all the sowing, watering, hardening off, planting out, thinning, feeding and tying in that it takes to get from one to the other! From many years of practice and trial and error I have a lot of confidence in my skills I guess, and I find this kind of work very therapeutic - I love it, and it doesn't feel like 'work' most of the time....and come summer the pleasure of walking out of the door early on a quiet sunny morning and walking in among the flowers, smelling the scents, delighting in the colours of the day's new poppies and picking a few of the colours that excite me most to put on the breakfast table - well it's heaven.

I must do more before and after photos.

Simply Grow..and make a statement.... 05/02/2012

It occurs to me that with the addition of some white gypsophila my patch could go all patriotic this year! (See yesterday's post.)

Hmmm. Too gaudy.

In this quarter of the cutting patch I've put sweet pea 'Gwendoline'- pale pink with a very good scent, and a pot of mixed Spencer type sweet peas I bought when I thought I didn't have enough from seed. (I did.) In the centre are Shirley poppies as last year. Around them I will put Nigella damascene - pale blue with attractive seedheads, and euphorbia oblongata - lime green the same as the canes. All the way around the edge I've sown night scented stock - I adore the smell of this.

In the third quarter will be cosmos, gypsophila and poppy Cedric Morris with all its subtle un-nameable colours. I think I'll mix these all together like a meadow effect.

The fourth quarter will have everything that's left over! It already has alpine strawberries around the edges.

The planning is a big part of the fun....

Tea and toast on my favourite perch - yes, we're still having warm sunshine!

Simply Grow..and have fun with the space.... 05/01/2012

The Cutting Patch is beginning to look like business.

Envisage in this quarter, if you will, red sweet peas - Winston Churchill, and sweet pea Matucana - deep purple, fabulous scent, surrounded by cornflowers Blue Diadem and Black Ball, surrounded by Clary Sage (blue) and deep blue larkspur. In the middle of the wigwam I've sown red Flanders poppies - hopefully they will pop through the sweet peas.

I can see it so clearly in my mind's eye - I always can, and sometimes it works (and sometimes it doesn't!).

To be a gardener you have to be an optimist., don't you think?

Am still deciding what goes where in the other three quarters....