The flower garden
Posted: Saturday 8 May, 2004
We do have a small flower garden. It's my responsibility so tends to get attention in fits and starts.
The weather has been somewhat changeable today, with sun interspersed with quite heavy showers. We're on holiday in a week, so I'm making gardening plans. I'm good at the planning.
Basically, there are two beds and a lawn and a pond. I use the term lawn loosely. It's the grass inside the fence as opposed to the grass outside the fence. We did have a wildflower meadow, but it was too scruffy even for me, so it's sort of gone.
The smaller bed is supposed to be blues and yellows. Part of the problem is that I hate waste so find it really difficult to throw any plants out. There is a rose in the bed "Happy Child", which sums up my daughter and was gift. The rose isn't "right" but I can't get rid of it. The other part of the problem is that the hens have their dust bath in the bed. Or they did until today. I've planted some new plants, bitten the bullet and taken out some that were past their best and netted the bed. I hope it's only temporary until the plants establish.
The larger bed is... well, sort of pinks and purples with a little bit of white. A few weeks ago it looked really scruffy but it's filling out now and will probably look OK for the summer. Dan's parents gave us three old chimney pots which I plated with trailing fuchsia today.
So, two big plans for the holidays. In 2001, I think, we made a pond. It wasn't quite right so in 2003, it got a makeover. In 2004, it developed a leak. So, the plan is to puncture the lining, let it empty, clean it out and fill it with topsoil and make a bog garden. Today it seems like a really good idea.
The other big plan is for the slabbed area on the west of the house. It's kind of, well, just a slabbed area at the moment, but I have a plan to make it into a small courtyard garden, in green and white. I see white clematis, hostas, a scented philadelphus, pots of white lilies, maybe a white climbing rose. I see a divorce. Only joking!
We've loads of non digital photos of the garden that I'll get Dan to put in the gallery, sort of before and after. Well, before and during, really.
