My half-hardiness has been well and truly established...

...I've been trialled and tested and let me tell you this: I wouldn't be welcome in my own garden...I wouldn't be able to take it. I know this because I've been in bed for the past two weeks with the most almighty plague which I haven't been able to shake without the help of evil, pesky pills (the sort that will, no doubt, kill us all in the end anyway)...

All this, I suspect, because it's been a bit colder and wetter for a bit longer than normal. It irritates me beyond measure.

I yearn to be a geranium, but I am actually an orchid, FFS (more of which later)...

If I didn't have a small child to look after, I might well stay in bed until May you know....

It's the centenery of the Chelsea Flower Show, ... Have you got your tickets? If not, then I have TWO to give away, for the Wednesday, courtesy of my lovely friends at the RHS. See below if you want to get your hands on them.

But first, I've been getting excited about the show from my snotty bed. May is a favourite time of year for me - Newness and the knowledge that it's going to be *relatively* safe to go outside without being hit with a stabbing wind or lashing rain...

It's very difficult to get a proper idea of which show gardens are going to make me go oooh this year, but here are a few (in no particular order) that I'm getting a bit excited about:

Jo Thompson's FERA garden

A garden that starkly draws our attention to the fact that our trees are under threat from pests and diseases. It'll have an avenue of DEAD trees in it...beauty and ugliness side by side.

Adam Frost's Homebase Garden

This is being billed as the ultimate modern family garden, with an emphasis on helping children to understand the natural world. Lots of wild-life attractors here, along with a place to sit, eat and play.

 Kate Gould's Wasteland

A garden built on waste ground, and full of recycled materials sourced from that site.

Ulf Nordfjell's Laurent Perrier Garden

I just know this is going to have me come over all dreamy and peculiar...sucker that I am, for softness and romance.

Christopher Bradley-Hole's Daily Telegraph Garden

This is supposed to echo the making of the English landscape - you know, the way in which it got all patchworky with fields. Full of English native trees and shrubs, and the blocks will represent those fields. I like the Japanesey edge to it as well.

It's tough to get a proper view of the show gardens, which is why my favourite bit of Chelsea is pretty much always lurking around in the big tent, taking hundreds of pictures of exquisiteness and listening in on the experts giving advice on how to grow stuff.

Now: those tickets.

If you want them just do the following:

1. Enter your email into the 'Subscribe' box on the right of this page. (Don't worry, you won't get bombarded with emails; it just means that these posts will go to your inbox...I only post about once a month). The reason I want you to do this is because I'm planning on doing some new stuff, just for subscribers - little videos and extra projects that subscribers will get before anybody else.

2. Tweet or share this post on Facebook (you don't HAVE to do that, but it would be very gorgeous if you did). You can find my Twitter and facebook page just up there on the right, underneath the subscribe box. Either just re-tweet or share straight from my twitter or facebook page, or hit the 'Tweet' or 'Share' buttons at the bottom of this post, but remember to tag me by name so I know about it.

Twitter: @laetitiamaklouf

Facebook Laetitia Maklouf

3. Put a little comment in the box below telling me your favourite thing about Chelsea (this can of COURSE, be food, or gardening gloves, or GNOMES) x

My rosy outlook

I have done a BIT of gardening recently...

...well, I say *I*....what I really mean is *he*

HE turned my compost heap, and HE mulched my beds.

I had not touched the compost for two years, and the bottom layers were lush.

Hunk likes the physical work (and it really is a work-out...much better than the gym). You may not believe this, but I watched him, in the soft drizzle, working away and was hit by a pang of jealousy that I couldn't join in (bun in the oven). He likes to work to music...it keeps things flowing.

The garden looks all warm and comfy now...and much tidier (I also pruned my roses you see).

...I plan to do an Arne Maynard and wrap some of them around dome-like structures this year...see how they like it. It was so beauteous at Chelsea last year, and I tried to do it when I got home, but the everything was too stiff and prickly and I chickened out. I'm going to need some of those lovely big willow or hazel supports...where do I get them? Anyone know?

Other news:

I've been busy doing a bit of filming and writing for the very brilliant app that is IntoGardens, and its sister, 'Gardens' for iPhone. Do check them out, if you're at all interested in gardens and general loveliness.

I've been blogging for Crocus all about hanging things up too...

I was going to flash some seedlings at you in this post, but it's too long, so you'll just have to wait.

Meanwhile...please do sign up on the right (where it says 'subscribe'). I won't bombard you with hideousness I promise, it's just a feed so you get this (rather sporadic) blog in your inbox, and so that you get exclusive stuff, for subscribers only, like little how-to videos and stuff like that! xxx

Five of the best for February

I went into the garden today (bit early, I know - how unlike me...I mean it's not even MARCH yet is it)

...but there was a sliver of sunshine, and the grass was gleaming, and the whole thing just sort of said 'come hither'. So out I waddled, inappropriately dressed as usual, and stood next to the Lonicera, and breathed deeply. I planted this shrub three years ago, when I bought it in a small pot at the garden centre. I never dare to hope too much when it's something I truly madly deeply love, so the fact that it has shot up and out and everywhere and is now blooming its gorgeous heart out is the best feeling...like I just won something in a raffle.

If you don't have one of these, they'll be on sale NOW, flowering so you can sample that sweetly floral pong. Buy one and put it in. QUICK. It will make your Februarys sing.

There are snowdrops too.

I find it ridiculously difficult to get a good photograph of a snowdrop, but here you go. These are a slowly increasing patch of I forget which one...S. Arnott perhaps?, which are prettily scented, and which I pick mercilessly (naughty me)...but then I'm not in the garden enough over the winter to praise them like I should.

Buy them now. Put them in a pot if you don't have a garden (these come from a pot where I'd kept them, on my windowsill for five years). Use John Innes no 2 compost, with some added grit. Enjoy.

Hellebores are the very loveliest of things out now, with their speckledy petals and wonderful bruised colours..

It is for this reason alone that I forgive them for not having scent (cardinal sin) but you can't have everything...you mustn't be greedy. I grow them under my apple tree, but also in window boxes and hanging baskets, where they do well enough for me to murmur to myself 'I must've done something GOOD'.

An essential plant in any garden (sorry to be bossy, but it is true), and, as I said, you don't need a garden to have one or two in your life. Multi-purpose half and half with John Innes no 2 and you're laughing.

Sarcococca. I won't go on about sarcococca

....I blether about it far too much. Suffice to say if I had to choose between House of Cards (which I am LOVING) and my sarcococca, then Netflix would have to do without me. Here's var dignya, for your delectation.

...And yes, if you don't have a garden, then it will do perfectly gorgeously in a pot...nice and deep please. Thank you.

And an update on my indoor shenanigans:

I sowed basil and some peashoots, amongst other things, just under three weeks ago on my Crocus blog. Basil just appearing now (it takes its own sweet time, does basil), but I've been eating sweet pale green peashoots for a couple of weeks now, and they look (and taste) just DIVINE.

...it's like you can FEEL the chlorophyll, coursing through your body, doing you GOOD. Time to sow another pot I think. I also have rich micro-pickings of lettuce, coriander and dill.

Even if it's only February, my plate says it's summer time.

I had ten people over for Christmas lunch...

 ...Here are some truly terrible photos of how I did my table and stuff...

Itching now for a day in the garden....

Santa baby...

My daugher's Christmas List goes like this: Princess Dress (pink), Princess Gloves, Princess Ring, Princess Crown. Father Christmas has taken note.

Here's MINE:

Lovely old watering cans (£30-40) from Petersham Nurseries.

Beauteous Christmas (and any-time-of-year) light to hang on my apple tree (£119.99) from Crocus.co.uk

Jean Dange Bohemian Pot (£54.95) from Clifton Nurseries

Six fat quarters (that's quilting speak for 6 pieces of fabric) in gorgeous vintage prints (£20) from V&A

Utterly glorious scented stuffed fish, made with old silks and brocades (£45) from Tobias and the Angel, where absolutely EVERYTHING is covetable.

Long tie shirt ($283) from Tucker. Exquisite silk printed things that I lust after.

A bouquet each month for a year. I defy anyone not to want this. (£450) from Common Farm Flowers

Confessions of an idle gardener...

I didn't die.... ...but I HAVE been a bit distracted with things other than blogging recently.

We're heading into Christmas (I love Christmas), and this year everyone's coming to MY house, which will mean 'decking the halls' properly, WITH toddler, who has informed me that she expects to be involved in a big way. All that to come....

But meanwhile I wanted to shout from the rooftops (very late, but better late than never) about a brilliant talk by the wonderful Matthew Wilson on autumn plants that I went to at Clifton Nurseries. Luckily they're still going on, so if you fancy some winter inspiration PLUS a shoppatunity, then book yourself in asap. I was particularly thrilled to be given the low-down on some grasses that I was lusting after, and these are definitely on my Christmas list.

...Oh, and also you get CAKE.

I re-did my window-boxes when I got home, by plonking in some chillies that I bought on impulse on my way out (as you do)...They were initially for a halloweeny fix, but they are still going strong and I love them....the white cyclamen will just have to wait a while...

...And I haven't been totally idle.

I DID sow my sweet peas, and I DID sow my hardy annuals, and I DID make toffee apples, sir *curtsies*

Garden sluttery and lavender baggery

 

The garden has been neglected (and is none the worse for that)...I'm sluttily leaving it until the second half of September, when I shall whip things into shape in that 'back to school' way we all have.

What HAVE I been doing?

well, mothering really. A three year old takes rather a lot of creative energy. You have to stay one step ahead.

I rarely manage it, so it's mostly me, running on a treadmill, really fast, just to stay in the same place, if you see what I mean.

This is not a blog, just some pictures of the lavender bag we made together... (or rather, I sewed, and she said 'oh commmoooooooon mummy')

Sometimes I think this blog should be titled "An excuse to show you my small daughter's beautiful dimpled hands".

...but for information's sake, you dry your lavender for a couple of weeks, pull it off its stem, make a little bag from some old, thin Liberty lawn (and using backstitch, of course...this is not the sort of thing for which one would go hoiking out the sewing machine...cumbersome things). I do not even hem - pinking shears do nicely - and tie the thing with a proper ribbon or bit of grosgrain.

The result is surprisingly heady, and I shall probably make more, because one small bag really does make a whole drawer smell delicious.

I'm taking a break for a bit now. Normal business will be resumed when the blogging god tells me to get on with it.

Until then xx

Take-home Chelsea: Cleve

Remember Chelsea?

I've been meaning to do a few blogs about doing Chelsea at home but, like the British summer, I am slow at getting into gear this year...

A few stand-out things have stayed with me since Chelsea, and they won't go away. I think this is an excellent marker of VERY GOOD STUFF. Hurrah for slowness.

Cleve West's garden for Brewin Dolphin was my instant favourite. Not JUST because of the frothy, billowing planting (which, if you know me at all, was bound to appeal), but more importantly because all that froth had a foil...

...my eyes could dance over bliss, and then have a rest

The planting was staggeringly beautiful (this IS Cleve after all)

Ferns and alchemilla creeping, with irises, euphorbia, poppies ammi and matthiasella holding their hands, and then the whole thing crowned by cirsium and crambe (which wasn't even out, but was all the more beautiful for that...I do love the PROMISE of something don't you?)

To get this at home any time soon is tough without access to a Russian oligarch

...those amazing yew monoliths need years and years of growth and clipping...this is gardening for your grandchildren.

But you CAN do it small, and get the same effect.

This is one of those occasions where if you have little or no space, you win. You can fill a space with these, and get that same sense of majesty and softness because your garden is within each container. In the ground it would just look a bit embarrassing because the topiary would feel too small.

You need:

Container. Make them beautiful. This is one of those times where you should probably pay more than is strictly comfortable. Mine is from Crocus, for whom I regularly review products. Their own-brand terracotta pots are distinctly lovely, with a soft apricottyness about them. Get your pot first and then choose your plants accordingly.

A piece of topiary. Box or yew, but for Cleve-ness, choose dark, mysterious yew.

Some froth. Fine to go and find some frothy bedding like diascia or verbena at the garden centre, but for less faffing next year I'd go for little ferns, alchemilla mollis, or erigeron.

Method:

I use a half and half mix of multi-purpose and john innes 2, and I usually bung in a handful of fertiliser granules if I have them to hand. I plant slowly and carefully because I enjoy it. I water diligently and always put a big saucer under the pot so that the compost can soak moisture up from the bottom. With terracotta pots like these, I also water the outside of the pot when it's hot.

A courtyard full of these, or a long path lined with them? Fabulous.

Slow things...

I love slow things.

Here's something I made almost a year ago, when I was rushing around being very un-slow, filming stuff for telly.

Succulent off-sets, pinched off and squidged into the gritty-compost-filled frog of a brick. (You can get the recipe here).

It was done in haste (and many, many times over, because that's what you have to do with telly). I don't have a 'before' pic and I can't find the clip anywhere...but it is ridiculously easy to do. What I didn't get to mention then (because with telly you can't ever really say stuff that YOU think is relevant) is that a succulent will take its own, very sweet time to spread.

These little babies are the result of almost a year of benign neglect.

I like that.

Sweet Peas...bringing it

I planted some roses and sweet peas a while back.

Here they are now (although the sweet peas are taking centre stage right now). I've not been very diligent with water, and I haven't fed them at all but I DID sow them in Autumn (well, November actually) which has given them a rather lovely head-start. Also, it might be a comfort to know that I'm totally awful at keeping them tied in...I just let them romp, and yes, I lose some blooms to those self-garotting tendrils but there are more than enough to accommodate my laziness. I get five or six gigantic vases a week from this arch.

Here is the 'before' picture

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Now for the fashion show:

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Here is Mollie Rilstone. She is demure, in that she seems to stay in bud longer than the others but the buds are a thing of beauty anyway, so nobody cares. Truly gorgeous.

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This is Lord Nelson. Cupani-esque but with long, long stems. Thoroughly smitten I am.

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Here is Dorothy Eckford. Purest white and I can't cut the blooms fast enough. I love her, passionately.

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...and finally, the heart-stopping Emma. I did not sow enough of her, and I hate myself. The most glorious pink, like the very insides of those tiny pearly shells you find on the beach and treasure forever.

All these seeds came from Easton Walled Gardens.

I don't know why I didn't post about sowing them. I'll do it this autumn...promise.

George and his swamp

I've been meaning to do a quick update on the swamp I made for George back in January.  

Suffice to say, George is comfortable.

Here it was in January:

Also, late to the billion dollar party, I know, but I am finally having a love affair with Instagram (although I do want to add that that THE LENS OF LIFE DOES'T HAVE VASELINE, (or apricotty, 70's filters) so I shall probably fall out of love at some point.

Lavender dayzzz...

The lavender is a-buzzing.

This is one of life's good things.

I have lavender in pots, but my main lavender event comes in the form of twelve L. angustifolia 'Hidcote' plants that edge the ends of my flower beds.

... That fuzzy softness...it needs off-setting with a tidy lawn (or better still, stone or brick).

L. angustifolia is fully hardy, and covered in deep purple, two-lipped flowers (which you can see are not out yet). The is the perfect time to harvest some stems for drying, (although do leave some for the bees - lavender being ultra-rich in nectar). To dry, just gather a handful, and tie the ends of the stems with a rubber band. Hang it in a cool dry place, upside down for a couple of weeks, and then you can make lavender bags, or get creative in the kitchen.

Here's my lavender sugar (same concept as vanilla sugar) for which I plucked about a tablespoon of lavender buds and added them to a jar of caster sugar. I'll leave that to infuse for a couple of weeks and then make biscuits or ice-cream, or something.

If you want to grow lavender in a container (and look how delicious it is with terracotta), choose a large pot, because you want to allow your plant to grow into a great big wafty hummock, and make it a beautiful one too, because lavender is no flash-in-the-pan plant, and then just mix up some peat-free multi-purpose with John Innes no 2 and keep it watered (though not fed).

Of course, angustifolia is not the only lavender - there is L. x intermedia (often known as English lavender), which is rather smaller, and with rather more rounded leaves, and then there is L. stoechas (or French lavender) which has those funny bunny-eared bracts, - deeply chic, but do watch out, because it is only borderline hardy, and a hard wet winter will nuke it good and proper.

It's nice to sprinkle dried lavender on the floor, or on a table near a lighted candle for scented winter evenings, although with the extended winter we have just endured, I have been using Charlotte and Co's exquisite scented candle from their collection of lovely lavender things, which took me straight to summer whenever I used it. I also have their pillow spray, to which I have become rather addicted, because I am convinced it helps me get to sleep faster, and dream about good things.

I rather long to be a person who wafts around in a silken dressing gown....perhaps this is my little piece of that...silken..ness.

But back to reality...I can't post on lavender without sharing how I prune. This is pretty much the only plant in my garden (bar box) that I am fiercely strict with when it comes to chopping. The problem is that if you don't do it, then you lose that gorgeous mound-thing and you pretty much have to start again with a new plant.

So...when the flowers are over  and the bees have had their fill, I cut them all off, (down to the top of the leafy bit of the bush).

Then, at the end of September I chop the whole thing down brutally to about one-third it's original size:

...just like this. You will hate yourself, and it will feel terribly wrong, but it's not wrong, it's right. This way your plant will never get leggy or woody. It will always be like a soft, purple pouffe.

x

Furtling in the flowerbed

I've been doing flowers (or 'flaars' as someone very good at it calls them) Here are a few pics, and you can get more details here.

Bunny tails, realised

Just a quick one to show you those bunny tails I planted with Babety way back when. ...Yet another illustration of the fact that plants will pretty much grow, no matter what you do, or DON'T do to them.

..by which I mean:

that the seeds were less scattered than plonked

that the watering was slapdash, and sporadic

that the whole thing dried out to a crisp during the heatwave

that the plastic tub was dropped, and up-ended, and the contents splattered all over the floor, and had to be shoved back into place...MORE THAN ONCE.

...and, no doubt, more felonies that I am conveniently forgetting to mention...you get my drift.

I have never met a plant with such exquisite feel-appeal. I wish I had sowed squillions....for my garden.

Living pinkly, with Kaffe Fassett...

When I was about eleven I was given a Kaffe Fassett knitting kit for a stripey batwing sweater. I hadn't taken to knitting much before this, but the promise of that stipey confection made me stitch and stitch until it was finished. Scroll down to a lifelong love affair with everything Kaffe Fassett. His textiles for quilting are heart-stopping...the way he uses colour is always gorgeous, crazy and seemingly SLAPDASH (even though it probably isn't)...I like this...a LOT.

...Also, I think he's about the handsomest man in the whole wide world apart from Jeff Bridges. Kind, laughing eyes...always does it for me....

...so my heart pounded like a crazed fan when I spied him in a gloriously kitted-out hut at RHS Chelsea. I was crazed enough to accost a passing photographer and make her snap us...

The hut was painted a delicious pink...a kind of unidentifiable pink. He told me it was his version of 'dried blood'. I'm not sure I've ever seen dried blood so pretty, but there we are.

Here he is again....with bunting.

Anyhow, I wished immediately that my own hut was painted that colour, and then I remembered that I still had to paint my daughter's wendy house. Her favourite colour is pink (it changed from orange to pink a while ago)...I think it is somehow unavoidable this, because I have taken great pains (well, SOME pains) to bring her up to favour green or blue, or yellow...it hasn't worked. And seeing Kaffe's hut kind of sanctioned the whole pink thing.

As you can see, I couldn't quite get Kaffe's pink (I had a grand total of two hours to buy the paint and do the deed, so no mixing or agonising allowed)

But I DO love it so.... and it's echoing my cistus and my roses, and making them sing even more, if that were possible...

The small person is rather taken with it too...

Pod love

I adore the London Eye...I went on it when it was born and I think it's one of London's better things.

...Plants make it even BETTERER

This was Andy Sturgeon's one-day pod-fantasy conceived for a project called Cityscapes.

...It is very, very very pretty, especially when the Thames is all a-glitter....

Plant list is simple:

Cydonia oblonga (definitely one for my lust list)

Cenolophium denudatum (was going to be angelica but the cold got the better of that idea)

Deschampsia caespitosa

Hesperis matronalis

 The perfect spot for a picnic...

Enough with the rain already!

Here are some edible flowers ... eye food as much as tummy food, and an antidote to this chilly rain...

Lilac is one of my favourite velvety petal foods. Fling it in salads or on top of a cake.

...but there is also sweet cicely

...and forgetmenots (of which I have an embarrassment) ... and if this is just too cutesy for you, then have a look at my myosotis strawberry pot over here

Cakes are a good way of dealing with a rainy day. These ones are from a recipe in this book. If you can cope with the fact that the lady who wrote it looks a bit scary, then it's really rather good. These cakes are proper delicious...better than victoria sponge ones, in my humble opinion, and really easy to make. I use tiny paper cases instead of big ones, and they produce the loveliest mouthfuls ever. Reduce cooking time a bit if you're going miniature.

My mother's camellias

...She hasn't space for bushes...so instead she wall-trains them.

...It takes a while....

These have been here for as long as I can remember - (the pink one was given to my mother at the birth of my older brother)....What I'm trying to say is that they're older than ME.

I don't remember them ever flowering so abundantly as this year.

...leaving a trail of luscious bounty....

Too many blooms to carry indoors, (like so many precious babies) and float in bowls

...So they get used to anoint topiary...'n stuff.

I'll write a recipe for this one-pot-wonder once I've grilled my mother on her secrets.

a bientôt

x

The Greens

Tulipa 'Spring Green' This, and T. Princess Irene are probably (PROBABLY) my favourites....although I won't be HELD to that.

New, baby box leaves. The velvety softness of them, and that wonderful smell of NEW....best part of spring? Quite possibly.

Lovage - starts off all curly and shy, and then it turns proudly into a goose-foot...- my preferred stock seasoning. Delicious raw, or, or as a sauce (see my book), or shredded into natural yoghurt for curry night.

An Honesty Meadow

Here's the poppy garden that I posted on way back when... All done up with honesty and erysimum...

The owners don't go in for any fancy gardening....

They just SCATTER seeds, and do nothing else..

Very bad photos...sorry.