New ingredients

What I lack in culinary skills I think I make up for in the garden and in my opinion certainly look better once I've cleared away the debris!

A pink and creamy yellow Aquilegia for the pink garden, with a Peony 'bowl of beauty' which has similar colours.

A bargain box! Various ground cover plants and a Papaver 'pattys plum' for the Yen.

Various pink bedding

Ingredients for my hanging baskets.

Further flower buds of r. Maigold with the first clematis to bloom. Its either Warsaw Nike or Niobe.

A juicy bud on the 'hidden' rhododendron

And vibrant osteospermum.

This is the view from our lounge room window.  The beds here are very lush thanks to all the rain we've had recently. I like these pink Aquilegias, they work well with the heucheras at their feet.

The pond is behaving now!

It's a Bank Holiday weekend again. The forecast reveals Saturday to be our best planting day. Sunday the best for enjoying time spent with friends...Bank Holiday Monday however isnt looking too good since a large weather system seems to have our name on it....if we escape it then we shall enjoy being in the garden we've worked so hard to create.

Pond update part 2

The first thing we did on Sunday morning was check the pond.  There had been a further drop in water level but not on the scale as last week.

Up it all came once more. This time advice was required from someone in the know.

I didn't want to go to the garden centre filled with all the lovely summer bedding plants...I didn't want to stop off at the allotments on the hill to check out their bedding plant sale. I certainly didn't want to go to the Botanical Gardens plant sale today either!  I was strong! (oh and payday isn't for another 5 days).

But to the garden centre we went....to speak to the pond guy.  Who suggested water might be seeping backwards on the big flat rock that supported the bottom of the waterfall.

He suggested we spend no money. He suggested a sheet of plastic to act as a runway for any escaping dribbles of water to return to the pond...and alter the angle of the supporting rock.

So TMTC spent another hour or so doing just that while the dogs and I enjoyed the sunshine, the sound of feeding fledglings and the busy bees.

And now the sound of trickling water.

Another check before the light fails reveals no drop in water level in the last 5 hours. 

Pond update

Last weekend we had a bit of a mishap with our pond.

I can happily report the problem has been solved.  TMTC spent Friday afternoon tinkering with the pipework checking for leaks and by the time I returned home from work it was back up and running. 

We'll keep checking it over the weekend just to be certain before risking leaving the pump on 24/7 but fingers crossed it's sorted now.

A Quick Glance

It's such a joy to finally see ones ideas and hard work (mostly TMTC's hard work) come to fruition, especially when you add in a dash of risk. For instance this fuchsia which was moved from the patio bed beside the washing line support because it was a bit of a monster. It seems quite happy in its new spot in the shade of the sorbus tree beside the variegated weigela.  It will flower late summer, allowing the weigela to shine now.

The yellow scented honeysuckle is responding well to its hard prune last month with some great looking flower buds.

Clematis Montana showing off its first year's blooms. Not quite as impressive as our friends in NL, but it's a start. We're creating a framework first, outstanding display later!

So far successfully keeping the 4 inherited clematis separate, gently winding and coaxing to clothe the trellis panels in preparation for the beautiful flowers later in the year.

But this one is a bit of a different challenge however. It grows so fast you could almost see it! We're trying desperately to train it along wires to the left since it has outgrown it's space!

If I remember rightly, it has blue bell shaped flowers.

Now we wait.

Time for a change

As May is coming to its end, thoughts begin to focus on the summer ahead. I don't generally plant up my baskets until late May since I don't have a greenhouse in this garden to help bring them on and harden the bedding plants off, and there's still a fair risk of late frosts up here.

So I reckon this post is more about 'jobs to do' rather than oooh look how beautiful this flower is.... 💞

Firstly the issue of the reluctant clematis in the pink garden and whether or not to move it to a sunnier spot.

And gaps..

....in the dry bed

... the bed in front of the shed

... the patio bed (May flowering narcissus!)

...and at the toe and head ends of the pond. The issue here however is access. At the toe end (above) the fern will soon hide the space where we tend to place a foot to get access to this end of the pond and surrounding plants, so this end could probably be left alone.

At the head end (below) I though about planting the broken pot of muscari around the base of the clematis at the back and perhaps moving the Japanese Anemone back a bit. I could then just fill the foreground with more ferns and Heucheras.

All the heucheras and violas are for now going to fill all those other spaces (waste not, want not).

The seat planters are going to be the providers of most of the above 'fillers' to make room for billowing petunias etc.

There is a clematis at the back there with buds just swelling. Two wooden trellis panels will be made available for it to scramble over (once they've been painted).

Another pot of iris that needs the Monty Don approach (above)

This spot around the bird bath is screaming out for some attention.

As are the spring pots on the terrace which will be replaced with our new ones currently hiding behind the seat!

There's another bank holiday weekend looming. I need to get shopping!

The Pink Garden

A review of the pink garden shows more green than pink. The bright spring pinks of the primulas has passed, although there are further buds on the plants to give a later display. Once the first flourish is over I find they bloom sporadically til the frosts.

Lime green heuchera, pink forget-me-nots and white Bellis perenis...the latter keep getting attacked by birds, along with the creamy white prims.  A large hardy geranium is filling out nicely now to the left.

A scented honeysuckle is scrambling away up this side of the arch.

English or Spanish?

The ferns have been slow to emerge down here, as has the hosta.  It's a very sheltered cool side of the garden.

I didn't think the white dicentra had survived the winter...this plant never fails to amaze me.  The pink version in the patio beds will be divided this year and a couple of plantlets popped down here.

Still plenty of space down here for the plants to beef up. Despite there being a tree, r. Dawn, r. Mum in a million, and a Viburnum, it still feels very flat in this part of the garden. There is a winter jasmine and a climbing hydrangea to help cover the fence, but the clematis doesn't seem very happy and although there appears to be some buds in the leaf joins, nothing seems to be in a hurry to progress. I'll give it until the end of June before I decide to lift it.