Everybody! - how beautiful is this tree?
I know the roses sort of don't look real but I promise you it's a genuWINE photo. Someone has let this gorgeous bright scarlet rambler rose romp up their tree, and it looks like the whole plant IS a rose. One of those serendipitous things that happen, because I honestly don't think you could make a rose do this as perfectly as it does here.
Best if you click on the images - they look much better surrounded by black.
When I started this garden I had this mantra going round in my head...it said:
...and (squeal!) I think I've done it!...
Like, I've had a picnic on the lawn and it feels like I'm in a real live actual proper garden. I love it, and I've made loads of schoopid mistakes (including forgetting to stake anything so it's all falling over, planting things too far apart, or not close enough together...the list is endless.
It's been an interesting year, in which my life has been completely turned upside-down by a small bundle of chub called the Babety. It's hard to remember what things were like before she arrived, and I am constantly amazed by how something so small could wield such extraordinary power. When she was born in May last year, I was still living in a flat and gardening in my kitchen and on my balcony. I thought we were fine...I was blissfully happy, but then suddenly, and without warning, in the arctic freeze of December, I woke up one morning (or perhaps I had been up all night with the babety)..anyway, I howled loudly that we were going to have to move, because I needed a garden...and fast.
Looking for houses, buying houses, leaving houses and moving to new houses is not high on my list of happy stuff to do with ones time. It's a funny, wrenching thing to get involved with, laying yourself open to elation and disappointment in equal measure in the buying and selling...and then having to say goodbye to somewhere you've been for many years, somewhere you know intimately - I suppose I'd liken it to a love-affair that comes to an end, by mutual consent, with much sadness, but an admission that you're not good for each-other any more.
We arrived at our new house on the 11th February this year. It was getting dark when we finally got in, and the boxes, and feeling of rootlessness, and of not knowing where the nappies were was quite unbearable. This is when you're so very thankful for family support, and you blush with shame to think of how horrid you were to your mother and father for so long....and you thank goodness you have a fabulous Hunk to be marvellous and wonderful on so very many levels. I put the babety to bed, set up my kitchen dresser and felt somewhat comforted. The next day I walked out into the garden...this funny-shaped, green space that I'd only seen twice and had fallen in love with. Out there, wrapped up in all those jumpers and coats, with a steaming mug of tea, I stood with a feeling of utter bewilderment and also a guilty naughtiness..as if I wasn't supposed to be here - as if I had stolen it from someone more deserving. (BTW, I still get snatches of that guilty feeling...so odd).
I've made the beginnings of a garden...(yes, that's what I call it)...a garden. I've made it relatively quickly, with wonderful help from family and friends, planting everything in snatched hours while the Babety is sleeping. I've managed to do it because I've changed as a person since becoming a parent. Lack of ruminating and cogitating time has meant that now I make decisions really fast...I don't agonise any more. If I had more time to think about this garden, it would still, I promise you, be in the planning stage. Instead, lack of time has made me reckless, and recklessness seems to have worked so far. Things just literally get bunged in and I cross my fingers and hope for the best.
There's so much more to be done, of course..and a book to be written - but I'm celebrating my May milestone in the spirit of observing some very precious advice someone once gave me, which is that the future is really none of my business, the past has happened and no longer exists, and all that matters is right here, right now, so enjoy it.
xxx
What richness! - Today, in this heatwave, all this lovely stuff has happened:
Kolkwizia amabilis 'Pink Cloud'...MUCH treasured and something I've been SO excited about seeing...has POPPED! Thanks little bush.
And then the iris bonanza:
First this:
...then these two later on in the day...
...and then...INTAKE OF BREATH...
my first geranium flower...such an amazing blue...and such veins - I am over the moon to see it. I'm hoping to see a sea of this very soon because I've properly spread it about.
and lastly, this:
It's my first rose (I'm welling up right now)...I've been squishing the aphids off it for weeks, and it's emerged unscathed, smelling sweetly but with that wonderful citrus 'choke'.... this is pure white and almost blindingly eye-drawing but who the hell cares? I'm absolutely un-done by it.
One of the most exciting things about having more space to garden is the prospect of more picking opportunities. I designed the space with four raised beds for a crop-rotation-system vegetable plot but very soon realised there was no way I was ever going to be organised enough to stay on top of things on that score, and that flowers were just as nourishing to me as vegetables, so I set aside two of the raised beds for my Picking Patch.
One of these I planted up, roundabout style, with bedding seedlings from the garden centre - Dianthus barbatus, Cosmos sonata and some snap-dragons... It really did make me laugh when I'd finished planting it up...it looked exactly like the rows of polyanthus that get laid out in lines every year in my local park. But you know, it's okay, because the flowers are blooming, and the other day, I cut a few and put them in a pretty jug, and I'm beyond thrilled because there's going to be so much more of it, for ages and ages. It doesn't look like much right now, but when I've filled in the gaps with more (home-raised) seedlings I think it'll be gorgeous in its own right. If you're salivating over the jug, by the way, (lovely isn't it?) then you can get them (and lots of other glorious ceramics) from Christina Gascoigne, here...she also made the teacup below that's playing host to my sweet rocket.
The other raised bed I sowed with hardy annuals - Cornflower, nigella, ammi majus and stock. I'm carefully, murderously, thinning these out (with the help of some kindly slugs) and hope that this will look utterly spectacular very soon (if the whole lot doesn't get nuked by creatures).
These picking patches are just there to fill out what I'll be pilfering from the rest of the garden. I find it impossible to leave well alone, and have been filling vases with anything that's around....so:
I picked this, minus the dicentra for the Babety's birthday two weeks ago....it's still lovely even though it's going to seed, but then, as Miss Pickering states so wisely, longevity is highly overrated....here's some luscious detail...
If you're wondering about the gorgeous little jug, it was a present from Annabel Ridley, who does brilliant glass engraving...you can find her stuff here.
Here's some of that glorious Epimedium I was going on about before. (Epimedium x youngianum 'Niveum') ... I love the way the flowers dance on their boing-y stems whenever I breathe on them. I have this by my bed, and often take it to the bath with me.
Here it is in macro-lense magic:
Then of course there's the Catmint - Nepeta is its latin name and called Catmint because cats adore it. I have a troupe of neighbourhood felines who hang in my garden all day to be near to it. I'm not overly keen on them, just love the Nepeta, so I'm willing to put up with them and throw their poo away...and honestly, they were hanging out here before I planted the stuff. I have two types of Nepeta, N x faassenii 'Six Hills Giant' which edges my bee border, and a smaller kind, N. mussinii which gets rather squished by the cats lying on it. Both are gorgeous, especially if you really look at the flowers, which resemble (to me) the faces of fat sopranos belting out Wagner:
...see what I mean?
Well, okay then, but it looks delectable in a vase with a little sprig of Choisya 'Aztec Pearl' (Mexican Orange Blossom)
(That little girl is my mother, by the way)
But that's not all...I've discovered Hesperis (Sweet Rocket) in a major way after I bought a whole lot of perennials on offer at the garden centre. The flowers are the most wonderful purple and they smell yum. Here are a couple of sprigs in a teacup - but of course, they can be eaten, along with the leaves, in salads.
I grow heaps of herbs, and they need cutting to keep them coming. My herb patch is NOT just outside my back door like it's supposed to be, but a little way down the garden (too far if you're in spiky heels and it's pelting with rain), so I pick a big bunch of everything and have it in the middle of the table, and harvest from that....here's some parsley in a beautiful jug.
If you're prone to lurking on Twitter or Facebook, you'll probably know it was the Babety's first birthday the other day, and we celebrated today with a May picnic which would have been TOO perfect if the weather had played ball...but it didn't, so it was just right (phew).
There were many, many presents (I don't think you ever get that many presents again do you?...thank you wonderful gorgeous godparents!)...and good friends, and laughter.
...and there was chocolate cake (made with love by MOI) from a recipe by the brilliant Jo Weinberg from her book How To Feed Your Friends With Relish. Lucky I got a picture of it because the whole lot was eaten instantly, which probably had something to do with the fact that it contains THREE blocks of best chocolate (two melted and one cut into gravelly chunks that you get inside the sponge and it melts on your tongue and is like heaven) and two whole blocks of butter....ho hum... Here it is in all its glory, with crystalised violet and pink petals left over from last month (see my recipe for these here) and those lovely shiny silver sugar orbs. A real joy to make ...me, pots and pans, radio 4 and peace...bliss (I miss baking regularly because my garden shouts at me for attention).
I also made a new jug of lilac syrup and concocted some rather yummy, alcoholic, (strictly for grownups) jelly which was so blush-inducingly successful that I'm going to put it in my next book...here's a sneaky peek:
If you've got any birthday party images, do post a link to them here in the comments - I'd love to see them.
Epimedium x youngianum 'Niveum' ...a little darling and a complete impulse buy the other day, when I was only supposed to be window shopping....makes my heart sing:
...terrible photo....but the butterfly flowers kept bobbing up and down in the breeze (a good reason for a bad photo). Will replace with a better one tomorrow...promise x
I spent a couple of hours last week tidying up the front of the house, which hadn't been touched since we arrived. It's a funny, triangular-shaped bed, enclosed with very new, very orange brick. I had a Cytisus battandieri going begging (the result of a catastrophic accident when ordering my plants...I just clicked 'add to cart' and it arrived - beyond my control I'm afraid). Anyhow, I had no space for it in the garden, so I bunged it in here, along with the existing lavatera and some french lavender. Amazingly, they all have the same silvery-blue-green slightly hairy silky thing going on...reminding me rather of my babety's earlobes. The Cytisus is particularly beautiful:
...and it goes rather well with it's orangey brick-work wall.
So I spent some time and a fair amount of energy making it all nice, and then this morning I woke up and found that a hideous fox had left his hideous revolting calling card a-top one of my lavender hummoks. I'm not going to show you a picture of it - it's too disgusting. I tweeted my disgust and received various bits of advice from all the lovely people there. Jo Thompson, garden designer, said I should get a patterdale terrier (I'd love that, but Mr Pug might not), Ursula Cholmeley of the beautiful Easton Walled Gardens said I should inject the fox with hot lead (hmmm...lack of wherewithall) but Lucy Inglis, author of the brilliant blog on Georgian London said I should put (and I quote) 'something of yours, unwashed, tied to a stick in the middle of [the bed]'
I'm not a proud woman....and I'm desperate too...hence this:
The neighbours can't see it unless they actually look over the wall into the flowerbed...if they do, then they're being nosy (a bit like me) and if they're nosy, then they'll be delighted to see something so weird (as I would be) - so I figure it's okay for a day or two. Fantastic Mr Fox is a clever wily thing, and I hope he'll remember not to come on over to my place long after the pants are gone.
A quick round-up of progress (because I so easily forget) At the end of February we had this:
Then after lots of digging with the help of my friend James at Indigo Gardens, my dad and The Hunk, this:
And The Hunk made me some raised beds, and then I went shopping, hence this:
And then we had a short interlude for Easter, and the Babety's first flip-flops:
And the garden got planted, and it looked like this:
And it got sunny, and we had our first picnic:
And then I tackled the Apple Garden, and i did more planting and watering:
And the babety got cuter, and I did a lot of weeding:
And also a lot of planting and sowing and mowing:
And now this is where we are now, on May Day:
It's not sumptuous and floriferous and wafting yet, but I know that when it is sumptuous and floriferous and wafting, there'll probably be something else I wish it was.
But....bees are visiting and birds are singing, and little green shoots are peeping up, and tiny fruits are swelling and it's a new garden, from scratch and it's mine and I am stupidly, utterly and completely besotted with it...I must have been a VERY nice person in another life to deserve such richness in this one.
A few goings-on.....There's no text here (but nobody ever reads the words anyway do they?)...just click on the first picture and keep clicking on the arrows....enjoy x
...someone who starts something and then looses her oomph... My life used to be littered with the remnants of Grand-Plans-Begun-But-Not-Finished. Then someone very clever and wise told me that it's not the finishing that counts, it's the having fun doing it, and gradually, one by one, things got completed without my noticing.
...like so many silky pompoms opening up to scent my never-ending 'pram outings'...
My own recently planted lilac (Syringa 'Lochinch') is putting on growth and budding beautifully but there isn't anything to pick yet,
...so yesterday I swiped these from my mum's garden:
...or both (I'm experimenting for a recipe to go in my next book). There are lots of recipes for lilac 'jelly' on the w.w.w. (i.e. the same sort of stuff you might make with redcurrants and put with lamb) - but I'm thinking of sort of jelly you might have at a children's party ...mixed, perhaps with some champagne??? - all will be revealed.
To a simple sugar syrup (one cup of sugar, dissolved in one cup of water over a moderate heat), I added this:
washed, of course, and with all traces of green removed...along with a few blueberries to make sure it'd be pinkish...
I simmered the whole thing gently for about a quarter of an hour:
...and then I strained off the detritus to reveal this:
Not really lilac colour but still beautiful, and delicious - sweet, floral, but most importantly, lilac scented. The Hunk and more importantly I (chief cocktail-concocter) shall have cocktails tonight - recipe suggestions please....Kir 'Loyal' perhaps?
I've been wanting to do a post on found objects since I got here, but today was the day it felt right to do so, because today (oh joy of joys!) I found this:
Who did you belong to, un-loved thing....I found you while I was digging a BIG hole...did someone put you there?....on PURPOSE?
When we first arrived, the only thing in the garden was this - perfect toy for the baby (and Hunk).
But then I began digging and started un-earthing hundreds of these:
Apparently this house used to be a perfume factory (according to one neighbour) - and this is the result. They're pretty, and scrub up pretty well too (although I can't get the soil out from inside them...needs some special implement I haven't quite thought of yet).
But today's find is my favourite - It's going on my shelf of found objects...here it is again:
If in doubt, use a picture of the pug
Sorry, no photos of where I went today, but I'm telling you, the Queen's garden at Buckingham Palace is one vast sward on top of which (if one is lucky enough) one might be given tea and cake, along with rather a lot of plane trees and a huge amount of roses and rhodedendrons. I don't know quite what I was expecting when I arrived there this morning, but I had hoped (being a rather nosy person...and see Nosy Corner for proof) for a glimpse of something private, or personal - something like a treehouse, or the remnants of a picnic, or a corgi poo perhaps. But no, nothing like that. It was beautifully maintained, with care and love, and you could tell this because every inch of it was immaculate, and it was full of things that didn't quite fit, but that were obviously presents from people and had to be included (eg all the rhodedendrons, for which ericaceous soil had been studiously added in bulk)...I was kind of moved by this - the thought of being the master of so much but at the mercy of having to accommodate and diplomatically display every last foreign dignitary's passing gift...Well of course it doesn't hit you between the eyes and bowl you over...it's not the product of one person's passion, but a fabulous collage of heritage (the plethora of trees planted by members of the royal family) and obligation (an entire bed of yellow roses given by someone or other in honour of one's golden wedding).
But there were deeply charming patches - the island in the middle of the lake - allowed to grow wild and home to many many nesting birds, the areas of un-mown meadow (cow-parsley, bluebells and-we were told- orchids) and yes, the achingly, painstakingly perfect mixed borders (which we couldn't get anywhere near because it would have meant stepping on that grass) but which at this time of the year, seem innocent and naked - a multitude of delphiniums, dwarfed by their stakes, peonies reaching up, huge clumps of lily of the valley, and oddities I had not seen before, like Syringa pinnatifolia, (a lilac I had never seen before) that has flowers like an osmanthus but with beautiful delicate leaves...an absolute must-have that will join my lust list. I was struck by the never-ending drone of traffic and I'm not surprised that this garden isn't the private haven I had imagined it would be...it's in the middle of a massive round-about, complete with hectic fumes....I think I too would rather spend my outdoor time somewhere a little quieter (like MY garden!)
The very best bit of the whole morning though, was our guide, who was not a gardener, but someone who worked in the Queen's Gallery, and who explained explicitly that the tour would be more 'historical than horticultural'...as he was 'no gardener'...however, he had been taken round the garden, along with the other guides, by the head gardener in preparation for these new-fangled garden tours, and had, he admitted, been quite enthused by the whole experience. He had obviously planned the tour meticulously, taking what he had learned and deciding where to stop and what to talk about. Most of these stops were devoted to admiring the plane trees that were a very important part of the garden, but he had memorised and boned up on other things too, and was about to wax lyrical in front of a witch-hazel when he turned round and realised the flowers were all gone. Slightly downcast, and with a sweet smile, he owned 'Shucks, you learn all about something so you can talk about it and then THIS happens!'...Utter heaven...I want to take him home with me.
It's been a busy weekend, but at LAST I managed to plant my fig tree, which had been languishing in a corner for too long...yes yes yes I planted it IN a pot IN the ground....AND I bought a lawnmower and finally mowed the lawn (I do find that everything is SO much more fun when you have shiny new tools to play with. The lawn was mown in my nightie because it was the hottest of hot days and I got enthused early in the morning (don't know what my neighbours thought of that, but still). I was supposed to sow masses of hardy annuals this weekend but the baby got sick, so that's now become next week's project....I've still got masses more weeding to do, and a huge amount of planting in the apple garden. Tomorrow tomorrow, tomorrow.
The Hunk decided we had to christen his new barbecue tonight. Please note that I had no part in the barbecue buying bonanza...it just arrived at the door one day, in a huge hulking box, to add to the plethora of hulking boxes (still un-packed) we already have in our sitting room. Furious, I called him to squalk something about our daughter's inheritance à la Theo Paphitis on Dragon's Den but privately I was thrilled, because I love, adore and salivate over barbecue'd food, and because I loathe and detest smelly, smokey kitchens and spitting fat.
I happened to have italian sausages in the fridge...(a good thing, no matter how you look at it) and I actively encouraged him, saying that we could barbecue, as long as we had champagne to barbecue TO (so to speak). He came home from work empty handed, saying he had to go off and get 'gas'...bastard...I thought barbecu-ing was done with coal and so-forth...this is cheating. Anyway, I waited and waited (and ate chocolate egg left over from Easter and a primula salad that I had made for the shoot I did today for Virgin Gardener book Two)...and finally he returned with an (ugly) gas canister and champagne (phew).
BUT, during the long wait for my chef to return with his barbecue paraphernalia, I had time (snore) to think of something to make our supper more rounded and less saussagey. The only veg I had in the fridge was tomatoes (yum), to which I added some of my HOME GROWN BASIL....yes folks, YAY, my seed-raised, home-grown basil has been a success and is now ready for picking....so it is with UTTER, despicable smugness, that I offer this tomato and basil picture:
I write after two solid days of preparing my soil...
For What?...(i hear you cry)
Well: here's the thing - I've kind of haemorrhaged money on this garden already and whilst I shall probably haemorrhage a bit more, I'm feeling a bit pinched right now. ...To WHICH, I'm about to do a mass sowing of hardy annuals - the cheap way to be spectacular without breaking the bank.
If you're a virgin, then by annuals I mean stuff like nigella, poppies, marigolds, dill, larkspur...that sort of thing (haven't totally decided yet).
I'm in love with hardy annuals...they were my first plant love before I discovered perennials. Annuals grow, set seed and die, all within one year...flash-in-the-pan you might say...rather like a very handsome, charming man who loves you and then leaves you. Perennials are the equivilent of someone who properly loves you and stays with you year in, year out, forever...much better...much, much much better..of course.
I've been growing this sort of stuff from seed for a while now, but never, ever on this scale. Small-scale annual sowing gives one the peculiar advantage of being able to BUY the proverbial 'fine tilthe' rather than having to CREATE it...easy peasy pudding and pie....
...but that was then - this is now, and I have to get on with it. The weed seeds are appearing, and that's a good sign - it means that the conditions are perfect, and the time has come to sow some seeds. (You can also sit on the earth with your pants down, and declare it 'pleasant' but noticing the emergence of weed seeds is less potentially problematic).
In order to sow my James Bond/Jason Bourne plants I need the above-mentioned fine tilthe. This means that I've got to clear my beds of any stones bigger than, say, an almond, and of any weeds emerging or otherwise. This is where I could have saved myself a lot of work if I had only done it properly when I first started blah blah blah YAWN...nobody does that do they? - We all get excited about planting and skip stone-chucking episode so we can get the plants in and sit back to admire our hard work.
Today and yesterday I removed weeds and stones like a person who simply exists to remove weeds and stones. I decided not to look beyond the patch I was working on, so as not to be discouraged by the amount I had to do...and in two days (and with the help, it must be said, of a wonderful childminder), I have finished the lawn beds.
Now I have four buckets full of stones and rather a lot of weeds for the compost - most of it's grass from left-over bits of turf when I was cutting the beds.
I have an aching back and a very sore bottom and legs because nasty stinging ants kept biting me as I laboured. Also my nails are hideous and I have that thing of soil having EMBEDDED itself in my skin...no amount of scrubbing will get it out - I shall have to wait until new cells grow.
I still have the bee border to do but having accomplished the lawn beds, this doesn't worry me in the least because I am quite frankly a superwoman.
...but nothing I do will ever come close to the prettiest part of my garden right now (see top of page)...Forgetmenots with brambles and something else unidentified...gentle, gorgeous, unassuming loveliness that's perfect because it's supposed to be there...and all without a scrap of back-breaking work from me....makes me smile.
My Apple Garden (or as I like to call it, my 'APPLEYDAPPLEY garden') has had a bit of a bad deal so far. I've only just begun to tackle this part of my space - it's the bit closest to the house and I call it the Apple Garden simply and only because it has two apple trees in it.
I'm a very naughty girl...a naughty and ungrateful one. This bit of my garden is a good size; in fact, it's the exact same size as my neighbour Deborah's garden, and rather larger than that of my Dove-owning neighbours on the other side....but I've left it till last, concentrating all my efforts on the big space down at the bottom; I should call it the Cinderella garden really.
There were existing flower beds here, with a mixture of foxgloves, bindweed and more foxgloves, punctuated by the odd (dead) hydrangea and a couple of standard roses which someone had clearly tried to plant at some point. After watching the digitalis and the bindweed come to life and threaten to take over I took drastic action and dug the whole lot up at the beginning of this week with the help of a couple of fantastic men (sorry for not doing it myself this time dear reader, but I have quite simply run out of PUFF). It was a mammoth job (bindweed is a b***ch to remove) and it's not over yet because the stuff will keep appearing, and I have to stay on top of it. Here are the before and after photos:
....phew!
All that's left is a couple of blue-bells and some sweet-cicely (which has fabulous sweetening properties...more on that another time).
The roses are gone, except for the climbing one which was practically strangling one of the apple trees when we arrived, so I got the Hunk to cut it down to about a foot above the ground (you can see the stump sticking out of the ground on the right) - Sure enough, it's sprouting again, ready to climb once more.
Now for the fun part - the planting. A heady combination of having hundreds of pots of plants and practically no money means that I'm filling this area with all my balcony and back-yard spoils. I put all the pots out and watered them ready for planting, and there were still vast gaps. I needed ground-cover, and fast so I went to the garden centre and bought a few pots of pulmonaria (the blue one), another daphne (far, far too expensive) and a couple of choisya. By virtue of the fact that most of my plants from my old place were white (yawn), most of the apple borders will be green and white, with a smattering of blue...all frightfully tasteful.
I started planting yesterday, but got waylaid by all sorts of things (well, babies need feeding and watering, and playing with etc, and then there's the fact that they get up rather annoyingly early, which means I can't even get up at 5am for a couple of hours in the garden...But you know...the up-side is you get inspired...and you do more than you would if they weren't around....honestly. We also spent the whole of today with cousins in the glorious sunshine - twelve little ones squealing under the sprinkler reminds me what a garden is really all about, and that I should never forget that I'm creating a space for running around in and having fun.
So I think I'll finish the Apple beds tomorrow, when I've decided where to put the water slide that has suddenly become compulsary.
I've been asked for a puggy picture...so here you go. Yesterday was so warm and delicious that I put my little baby cup and saucer vines (Cobaea scandens) out for the first time. They were doing some 'hardening off' but Mr Pug was simply sunbathing....as he gets older, his teeth and tongue start sticking out a bit...I guess that'll happen to us all at some point.
I am in doubt...lots of it - I want a lovely blooming garden by June and I don't want to toil too much to get it. I've planted up all my shrubs and stuff and if I were a patient soul, I would just sit back now, hoe in hand to nuke the odd weed, and wait for everything to fill out and cover the bare soil....but typically, I want this to happen in a trice. The answer is a hardy geranium or fifty.
I love, adore and revere hardy geraniums, particularly when they're planted by the boat-load (or 'en masse' as the gardening world likes to describe it). I ordered as many as I could afford from this place a couple of weeks ago, (brilliantly knowledgeable they were too, and very helpful in choosing the varieties) and they arrived looking deliciously gorgeous but painfully small.
There are three varieties:
'Dragon Heart' for the Bee border (deep pink with a black centre)
'Orion' for the lawn borders (blue as blue is blue)
'Buxton's variety' for the Apple borders (paler, softer blue and used to an altogether shadier time)
I planted them today - each one tucked in nicely and watered with love, and I'm hoping these will wash my garden with colour, and that this will last well into autumn....let's wait and see if anything comes of my geranium dreams...
Today is the day I launch my blog. I've properly got butterflies...please be nice.
We had an utterly delectable day yesterday here in London - the kind of day that makes you want to take a fair amount of clothes off and feel fresh air on your skin. The garden is slowly but surely taking shape. I started off in the middle of February, with a larger-than-average space, pretty much all of it lawn.
After many days of ruminating and cogitating and many more days of digging and weeding it looked like this:
...and then after many more days of planting and planting and more planting it finally looked like the beginnings of a garden:
This garden is about creating a space for my family - a space to play and eat and sit and love.
This blog will chart the development of the garden right from the beginning (complete with all my mistakes...I LOVE mistakes).
All this will go into my second book, which will show you how to create a garden from scratch, and have it up and blooming come summertime, without haemorrhaging money or having a hideous time with builders.
I'd love and adore it if you'd come with me, and leave your comments and criticisms.
Elsewhere I'll be showing you fun, easy, chic stuff to do with plants even if you don't have a garden (this is my first one, and my pot-gardening habit isn't going anywhere) - I'm still a windowsill girl at heart.
So yesterday I had the sunshine on my skin, and the urge, suddenly and without warning, to eat slices of beef tomato with basil en masse (so to speak)...If you've read my book, you'll know that I've had a nightmare with growing basil from seed, so I tend to get a basil plant from the supermarket and divide it into little bits...this way it lasts much longer than it normally would, and you can start munching in a few days rather than a few weeks. I did this yesterday, using the remnants from my division to feed my desire for summer flavours and planting up the rest into three little pots. I must say though, that I have managed to germinate some basil just before I moved, (fluke of flukes). This makes my heart sing and I want to run out into the street and hug total strangers...It was easy peasy to do and I'm going sow some more tomorrow to make sure it wasn't a complete fluke...
