Through the garden gate--February

February started badly, when I went flat on my back on the wet lawn sustaining a fractured ankle . I was on my way down to the bird table with a pot full of seed. The seed ended up all over the lawn and my husband reported that a flock of starlings descended shortly afterwards to consume it all. I do wonder if they missed any and if we will be seeing sunflowers and other things growing out of the lawn later on in the year.

Well, a few weeks later after much rest, ice, painkillers and physio I am now getting about, pottering around the garden. The physio continues, the rest and painkillers are still needed after I've overdone things. I've been told it could be a couple of months before my ankle is fully healed.  But when the sun shines as it has done in the last week, I have to be outside. As therapy we have been out to the garden centre and I have bought pots of bulbs. Quite gingerly I have found that I can kneel down on my kneeler which has handles to hoist me up again. So I have planted spring bulbs and Hellebores. This is a new garden for us and one which didn't have much in it before. So I am trying to bring in some spring colour.

A box of goodies from the garden centre

In the front garden last year I cleared a space under a Weigela shrub, cutting back some of the branches to raise the canopy. This month I planted  crocus and tete a tete daffodils under its canopy. In the back garden I planted snowdrops, crocus, daffodils and hellebores in a new shrub border which we  made in January. It's lovely to see the spots of colour starting to appear. 

Spring bulbs poking through the snow under the Weigela

 Digging I definitely can't do at the moment, so Richard has done some digging out and planting up of bigger things which needed a spade. There is a large border at the side of the house which had a clump of very well established Crocosmia, yellow irises and bluebells. I dug as much of these out as I could in the autumn.  Crocosmia and irises are difficult to get rid of once they get too established and they are not my favourite plants.  Bluebells can take over a space too if allowed. They are better in the wild or in a woodland garden. As I wanted to give this bed a new look, they had to go. I brought  a Sarcococca ( sweet box) from my old garden. It had been in a pot for a few years. This was planted in the new border by the path where hopefully we will get the scent of it as we pass by. It has looked much happier since it has been planted in the bed. At the other end of the bed Richard planted a Brachyglottis.  This plant used to go by the name of Senecio. Why do they keep changing plant names I wonder? I like to grow this plant for the silver/grey foliage which I find useful for flower arranging. In the centre of the bed is a yellow Potentilla which has always been there. This is quite a good sized border and I'm looking forward to adding some perennial plants in the next few months. It gets quite a bit of sun from early morning to midday. I want to plant up some cottage garden plants which will tumble over onto the path.

The snow arrived this week, so no more gardening for a while. I was going to take some photographs of our planting work, but now the garden is covered in snow. I hope it will soon be gone and we can enjoy all that spring colour. I hope too that I will soon be able to get back to gardening properly with a fully healed ankle. In the meantime all I can offer in photographs is that of a snowy garden and a box of the spring plants before they got planted.

I am linking this post to Sarah's blog at 'Down by the Sea' for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' post

Our new garden project 3--raised beds and a seating area

We continued working on our new garden throughout the summer last year. After digging out borders down one side and along the bottom of the garden, we then turned our attention to the other side. 

One of the features I wanted in the garden was a seating area where we could put our little table and chairs. I wanted it to be a secluded area with flowers, trees and shrubs surrounding it. We decided early on in our plans that the best place for this would be on the far side. It was away from the house and faced south west and got the last of the sunshine in the evening as well as sunshine for most of the day. On this side of the garden the lawn was quite bumpy and uneven as well as being waterlogged. On a recent visit to RHS garden Harlow Carr we had seen how they had built a raised seating area with wooden sleepers and gravel and thought we could use this idea in our garden. 

First, Richard decided to investigate some of the bumps in the lawn and managed to unearth what was once a large,curved,  brick edged flower bed. We couldn't understand why it had been grassed over, perhaps a previous owner didn't like gardening? We were planning to put a flower border in this area and wondered if we should keep it as it was. It was a ready made border after all, but the more we looked at it the more we thought it wasn't very attractive looking. It would have to go.

old beds found under lawn

Because of the slope of the lawn and the drainage problems the new seating area was going to be raised up slightly with wooden sleepers to level it out and keep it dry. When we discovered the brick edged bed we decided we would still have a flower bed there but instead of the brick edge we would have it raised up with the wooden sleepers and make it bigger. This would then be at a higher level than the seating area to cope with the slope of the lawn and would look better. 

Plenty of bricks

A lot of work followed, digging out the beds. There were a lot of bricks in there, we thought we would never get to the end of all them. They are now piled up in another part of the garden,  I'm sure we'll find a use for them. A base for the shed perhaps?

setting out the timbers

Lots of digging work

Once the beds had been dug over and all the bricks, stones and weeds removed, we incorporated  topsoil and mushroom compost to help improve the soil. The timbers were then put in place.

Adding the topsoil

The raised beds looked lovely with the new soil and compost mixture and I was longing to get planting. Not yet though. It was going to be quite a decent sized flower bed so in the meantime I thought a lot about what could go in there.

muddy work

work progressing

As work progressed I did wonder at times if it would look right. I'm not used to straight lines in the garden, we've always had curves.  But there was no need to worry, once it was finished it looked great. The seating area was finished off with slate clippings.

Planting up the new beds would come later, but we now had somewhere to sit.  We loved this little seating area and throughout the summer and into the autumn we would sit there, even on cooler days wrapped up in coats! Well, having put so much work into building it we had to use it.

It's now a lovely place to sit with a drink, coffee, tea, wine, whatever--a place to take a break from gardening, relax, watch the birds, or plan the next phase of our garden.

Clean up time

A TV weather presenter recently referred to the weather we are having at the moment as 'yo-yo weather'. I think that's a good description, up and down, rain for a few days, then a dry day. If you're a fine weather gardener then I suppose you just sit back with a good book and wait for the spring. But there's lots to be done in our garden and down the allotment, so on fine days I rush outside to get a few jobs done.

We managed to get to the allotment twice last week. The paths were slippy with mud and moss and there was water running out of the gate. The lane outside the plot was really muddy. I was glad that we had finished manuring all the beds so there was no need to disturb them. Richard started work on mending the two of the compost bins which were broken and I set to cleaning out the little greenhouse. I had cleaned out the big greenhouse in the autumn, but the other one still had the dead remains of the chillies, peppers and cucumbers. Once they had been got rid of the greenhouse got a good sweep and scrub down with disinfectant. It's always a good feeling to see the greenhouse spotlessly clean ready for the new growing season.

I am a lists person and my allotment journal always has a current list of jobs which need doing. I was pleased to be able to cross cleaning the greenhouse off the list. The problem with lists though is that you never get to end of them because there are always more jobs to be added. And as we sat having our lunch at the table under the tree I noticed that the cold frames needed cleaning too. Another job to add to my list. A gardener's work is never done!  Also as I sat there I spotted a flash of blue peeping out from the debris under the tree and there was a little iris reticulata in flower. A sign of hope that Spring is not far away.