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Gardening Jobs for August – sow as you grow
August jobs are mostly about watering, dead-heading, weeding, pruning and mowing. Lets get busy... Dead-head, dead-head, dead-head to keep those blooms blooming. My recommended secateurs Cut back lavender once it has finished flowering Prune wisteria Cut back...
Jobs to do in the Garden in September
Gardening jobs in September are a mixture of reaping the rewards and planning for winter and spring. I have always felt a little gloomy upon the arrival of September. It signals the end of summer and long sunny days. This is a time of year when my anxiety often...
Planting cornflower seeds – a guide
guide to planting cornflower seeds
How we created a social space in the garden
The aim of this "little" project was to create a space to socialise outside. The Deck has been the location for parties, kids play, games nights, girls nights, zoom quizzes (during lockdowns) and somewhere to curl up with a good book and a glass of wine! First...
Quick & easy garden games for the whole family
So we made it through another school year! What a year 2020-2021 has been, what with Covid, lockdowns, home-schooling and isolations. I believe school children have been heroes, navigating their way through an environment that has been pretty traumatic for us adults...
10 shade loving plants to brighten up your garden
Along the front of my front garden, this rhododendron hedge (above) provides welcome privacy and also an opportunity to underplant a shady area. Although the front garden is south facing, the canopy of the rhododendrons can provide peaceful respite for shade loving...
Gardening & Wellbeing – 5 Ways
Personally, I believe that the benefits of gardening for mental and physical wellbeing are born from its stimulation of all five senses. No surprises then that an initiative created by the New Economics Foundation called: “The 5 Ways to Wellbeing” can be applied to...
Wimbledon Cake
The strawberry plant has kept on giving and I was determined to use the homegrown strawberies this year. So what better time than July to make a Wimbledon Cake - recipe by Mary Berry. To oder "Mary Berry's Complete Cookbook" click on the link belowMy...
Flowering in June
AstrantiasThe Astrantias are like stellar explosions, perfect for highlighting the shady area under my rhododendron hedge (zone 1 on my garden map: "Up Front" - click "Map of the Garden" below). I chose Astrantia Roma (I was proposed to in Rome) though there are many...
Planting out Pumpkin Plants
Sowing Pumpkin SeedsGetting my kids outside can be a challenge, now that they are venturing into their tweens and teens. However back in April, the incentive of Halloween pumpkin carving spurred my son on to plant some pumpkin seeds. Pumpkins come in all shapes and...
Pros and Cons of a Buxus Hedge
Me and my BuxusTo lighten up the red brick of the house, I have chosen a white colour scheme to wrap around the perimeter. The 1920s home has an elegant perhaps imposing style, that I felt could do with some softening up. The whimsical and romantic hydrangeas...
May Highlights
May Highlights LilacEvoking memories is one of my driving forces when choosing plants. The smell of lilac takes me straight back to childhood and my walk home from school past the neighbour's garden. We have two...
January Highlights
HelleboresThese sturdy hellebores, also known as Christmas Roses, have had various homes in my garden. At the moment, they look right at home in the Winter Patch and will continue flowering into Spring. They like to be positioned in light shade but as long as they...
You say tomato…I say how many?
You say tomato, I say how many?... I went tomato crazy last year! Although 2020 brought with it: the doom and gloom of covid; the obsessive washing of groceries; rationing of loo rolls.....oh and finding endless uses for bananas, it also brought with it (for me...
Feed the Birds
Trees very much dominate the area where we have moved to. In turn I have been lucky enough to watch and listen to a much wider variety and number of birds. Every morning a wee robin appears from the hedge outside our back door. It seems to have found a home there...
Winter Pots
Potty over Winter Pots...I haven't been too adventurous in the past with container displays, so this winter I thought I would give it a go. Anything to brighten up January 2021. I am a big fan of Adam Frost and he has designed a planter arrangement, which I have seen...
Winter Pruning
Winter Pruning We inherited this old man of an apple tree with the house. The tree had been left to overgrow for a decade, so a couple of years ago we got a tree surgeon to take a look at it. He gave the tree a hard prune, opening up the branches, which can be clearly...
Propagating Strawberries
Over a year ago, I planted some strawberry plants in a basket and forgot all about them. Around came 2020 and I, like a lot of people, became obsessed with planting vegetables and baking banana bread. I found the bedraggled strawberry plants and thought - can I...
Winter Interest
During the unpredictable challenges of 2020, the inevitability of the changing seasons provided me with a great deal of comfort. However, as the darker nights cut short the time that I could normally spend in the garden, I have to admit a sense of sadness when Winter...
Planting Tulips
As November comes around and the days become shorter, I start longing for Spring and for the garden to come back to life. Planting spring flowering bulbs is the perfect antidote to those winter blues that can creep up on all of us, giving us a sense of future and...