The Gardener's Rest: March 2014

So spring has sprung early this year....or so it appears. It is March. The nights are very cold and on clear nights, thanks to our elevation and the new LED street lighting, the night sky is absolutely amazing. I'm not sure my current camera could quite capture the sharpness of the stars, but take my word for it. The new lights have made such a difference to light pollution. Anyhoo, you haven't tuned in to hear about stars. The new garden is the star here.

There is much to do in the bottom garden this month. First up we moved the compost bins to the area behind the dry stone wall so they are out of view from the patio above. The compost bin that was left behind by the previous owners was about half full of lovely mature garden compost, ready to use (apart from the egg shells which they didn't crush up before adding....and there are a LOT of egg shells!

The garden compost was heaped up in the area where we are extending the Birch bed.

Bumblebee started clearing the raised bed in preparation of his veg patch. He plans on growing rhubarb, potatoes and carrots....I would like to add some sweet peas if he will allow it.

The Man That Can marking up the bed extension.

I just could not resist adding some colour to the Birch bed. Two shades of pink and a bright white should do it for now.

Climbing hydrangea should feel at home in this shadier spot by the shed.

Of course now we no longer have the skip, look at all this builders waste dug up from the very area we want to extend the Birch bed!! Fortunately most of the whole bricks were put to good use in the edging.

Bumblebee was very hard working in just one morning clearing his veg plot. We'll return to it next weekend, weather permitting.

And the completed extended Birch bed! Lots of room for more plants....

The spring bulbs that survived the move in a pot have made an appearance in the warm sunshine this week.

The fending on the right was treated, along with the trellis and the clematis pruned and trained in. Then the patio and decking got a thorough jet wash. We actually did not realise that some of the stone is almost white!

It took a while, but this bed was weeded, pruned and shaped. We picked up some half price dwarf narcissi for a bit of spring colour.

Plenty happening with the orchids inside too. I have all but one plant in either flower or bud. This one was a bargain at half price last year because it had finished flowering - a great way to buy your orchids.

The last job of the month (so far) is moving the gravel, putting down weed membrane and then replacing the gravel. I removed it, The Man that Can replaced it. A fine tuned team.

Watch this space!

As yet, winter has been mild. There has been very little snow, and even less sunshine. It has been the wettest winter on record with many places being flooded across the country. There has been a fair amount of activity in the bottom garden however. In October our lovely friends bought us a Himalayan Birch tree so we created a bed especially for it using the bricks found in the garden.

Vine eyes and wire were attached to the fence panels which were treated in late summer.

Autumn brought a bounty of material to add to the compost bins, with a great many leaves to bag up to create leaf mould.

And then the best part of creating a new garden - the plants. We bought two winter jasmines to cover the fence on the shadier side of the patch at the bottom of the garden.

And three New Dawn climbing roses. The idea is to create a seating area to be able to drink in the scented pink blooms. We chose New Dawn for both fragrance and the name has a special meaning to us.

The apple tree gave us a huge harvest last autumn and the unknown variety of eating apples were delicious!

We've hard pruned the evergreen honeysuckle as it was pretty much out of control. The deciduous one on the right of the arch has been tidied up and the new shoots tied in. There is a clematis here too, which has also been tied in - hopefully to make a better display this year.

Then came the major job of the winter. Clearing out the bottom garden of all the builders rubble that was dug up when creating the Birch bed.

There was also an awful lot of junk left behind from the previous owners.

Wasn't sure the binmen would be too pleased if we tried to dispose of all the rubbish and bricks in the wheelie bin, so we hired a skip. By the end of the week this was full!