May must be one of my favourite months in the garden. I’m sad before it’s even over knowing I have to wait another year to see the garden adopt its fresh green foliage. As I discussed in last months post, we finally finished the dry stone wall and in May we launched in to digging the paths and central
Continue reading
It was exciting this March to see some of the early flowering plants that we positioned last year burst into flower; these included the euphorbia, clematis, and some of the bulbs like the daffodil ‘Thalia‘; this multi-headed classic variety are pure white and really stand out against the bark mulch. We will definitely be planting more of these bulbs in
Continue reading
April saw a flurry of activity in the garden as we were both home for 2 weeks for the Easter holiday… We decided that we would divide up the perennials that we bought last year and take the plunge and plant them into a mixed border. We actually started first by planting 2 clematis armandii ‘Apple Blossom’ against the front
Continue reading
Yes thats right… we’ve actually made our own homegrown compost from scratch and it looks alright…if a little lumpy! Back in June 2017 my trusty helper Luke made our composting station. We did some research in to the magical formula necessary for successful composting (which requires a delicate balance of nitrogen: green stuff and carbon: brown stuff). Fast forward 10 months
Continue reading
(or to give it its full name: 30th birthday pergolation walkway of dreams). Although we said we’d stop working in the garden after finishing the first half of the dry stone wall, we couldn’t resist building something else. We had a good excuse to spend more money on the garden as it was my 30th birthday in November (oops). We
Continue reading
During September and October we continued to slog away at the wall as you can see from the pictures! It was actually easier going as we’d learnt a lot from our experiences building the first quarter. The biggest difference was realising that we could really chip away at stones so we could fit them where we needed them to go;
Continue reading
On August 1st, our first delivery of sandstone arrived! We bought 8 bulk bags worth – as you can see it was rather a lot! As I was at work, Luke had to move it from the street, which is down a short track, to our cottage (as the lorry couldn’t fit down). Luckily a really kind neighbour helped him
Continue reading
July 2017 was a busy month for us in the garden! We have started off by planting this trachelospermum jasminoides (aka star jasmine) into this pot – we also made this bamboo support from the spare pieces we’d pruned off next doors plant that was leaning over the fence. We’ve put this outside the front door in the hope that
Continue reading
With all the grass cuttings and pruning stacking up, we thought June was an opportune to build ourselves a composting station! That’s right – no bins here! We went to our local builders merchants and bought all the materials and (literally) carted them on the trolley all the way back home… My partner then worked like a trooper, under my watchful gaze
Continue reading
In May we decided enough was enough regarding our regular deer diners so we decided to build a fence that would hopefully deter them from coming in and also give the garden a clear boundary – this was also important as a public footpath runs adjacent to our garden. We made a trip to our local farm supply shop and
Continue reading