A garden for wildlife

 

We do quite a lot of garden visiting during the summer, some of them large gardens, others quite small by comparison.  I like to visit other peoples' gardens to get ideas for garden design, planting schemes, spotting how well  plants grow in different conditions.

A few weeks ago Helen and I visited an NGS garden which was open for the first time and quite conveniently was only just down the road from where we live. Park Head opened this year for the first time under the National Gardens Scheme. The garden slopes down to a woodland stream and beyond that is open countryside and farmland--quite a beautiful setting.

We entered  the garden through a pergola covered with clematis and the occasional tinkling mobile hung here and there. Through the pergola I caught a glimpse of a lawn bathed in sunshine and a summer house. There was music coming from the direction of the top end near the house and we spotted a saxophonist. We've done a couple of garden visits this summer where there has been a musician. Maybe it's the latest trend to have music at open garden days. I prefer not to have music as I walk around a garden,  I like gardens to be peaceful places. I found the music intruded on my thoughts.

Out of the pergola we came  to the wildlife pond where we did a bit of frog spotting. Across the lawn was the summer house where a dry river bed led down to the wildlife pond and beyond this  to a wild flower meadow. There were fruit bushes and a few salad and vegetable beds amongst the borders which contained many perennial plants and shrubs. This was a garden for wildlife, amongst the natural planting in the borders were bird feeders, bird baths, logs left to rot, plants attracting bees and other insects.

Up near the house pots of herbs arranged along low stone walls and a few vintage pieces added a bit of quirkiness.

 Apart from the music I loved this garden and will probably go on my favourites list. It was my sort of garden and one I would like to return to.

 

Harvesting the onions

 

It's now that time of year when all the allotment holders are harvesting onions. As we walk along the lane to the allotment we can see onions strung up in greenhouses, laid out along benches or left lying on top of the beds. They are everywhere.

I spent an afternoon last week harvesting my onions. The tops had started to bend over so I knew they were ready to be pulled up. Not only that, I could see that they had grown amazingly in the last couple of weeks. Then came the annual problem of where to put them to dry out. The first lot went on top of the brassica net frame, another lot went on an old growhouse frame which Richard dragged out of storage.

A couple of days later when the roots had dried out I moved them all to the cold frame which is not being used for seedlings at the moment.  There is no room in the greenhouses to store them and not much space in the shed either.  They will be fine in the cold frame until they have dried out completely and I can clean them up and put into onion bags.

With the onion bed cleared and weeded I made use of the space to plant some lettuce seedlings and sow some more radish and beetroot.

Richard has been doing some work on the fence down one side of the plot recently. Our neighbour on the other side does not look after his plot and the weeds get out of hand. There are some really bad weeds growing there--nettles, Himalayan Balsam, bindweed, hogweed to name just a few. So Richard has put some black weed suppressant membrane along one section of the fence and a length of bamboo fencing along another. These are just materials which we had to hand. They will not stop weeds from growing under  the fence into our plot, but they will help to stop them growing through and will hide the ugly view we have of a very neglected plot.

Through the garden gate-- July

Once again I'm joining Sarah at Down by the Sea for her monthly 'Through the Garden Gate' slot.

Everything is growing well in the garden now, the borders have filled out hiding the weeds. Occasionally I spot the odd weed raising it's head above the plant foliage and I can pull it out. It's a relaxing way to do the weeding--no bending! There's a lot of deadheading to do as flowers go over--that's another gentle sort of job--especially if the weather is very warm.

Some of the earlier flowering plants have needed a good cutting back, like the hardy geraniums which get to look very untidy when they've finished flowering and will sometimes flower again if cut back. This has left some gaps in the borders. It's a problem I have in my garden during July and early August that there can be a lack of colour before the vibrant hot colours of August appear. I bought a dahlia and a liatris to fill a couple of gaps, in other places I have put pots of flowering plants.

We went to a car boot sale last weekend. Richard hates car boot sales, but I love wandering around looking for bargains. So it's not a thing we do often, but we always manage to get a few bargains, usually old items which we can put in the garden to use as plant containers or simply to add a bit of interest in little corners. This time I bought an old copper coal scuttle complete with verdigris even Richard thought it was a bargain and was happy for me to buy it. 

I also bought an old metal lantern which the stall holder said she had bought in France, she said French stuff has lots of character! There were some other good things on her stall but I'd spent enough money by then. In time I will plant something in the coal scuttle--when I find the right sort of plant. I think a fern would look good.

It's good to be able to take time to enjoy the garden and July and August are the months for that. We have been spending time  having lunch outside when it's been warm, sitting with a coffee in the morning or a glass of wine in the evening. Hope you've all been enjoying your garden this month.

At last the leeks are planted

One of my favourite winter vegetables is leeks and I like to grow as many as I can. We've usually had a good lot of leeks to harvest down at the allotment, but last  year they didn't do at all well. So I'm determined to do better this year.

We have been planting leeks for a few weeks now as space has become available. The first lot were planted at the end of the onion bed in late May, another lot were planted a few weeks later in what I call the spare bed which is not part of the plant rotation. The last lot were planted this week.

I łove planting leeks, it's so different from planting other vegetables. Make a planting hole with a dibber, pop the leek plant in then fill the hole up with water. Easy but back breaking! It's also a job which the grandchildren enjoy doing.

I sowed two varieties earlier in the year-- Autumn Mammoth and Blauwgroene Winter Bandit. Two problems we have with our leeks are bolting and rust. Blauwgroene claims to have some resistance to both of these problems so I am hoping for better results this year.

All the leeks are planted now, and the first lot are doing well. I am now dreaming of all those lovely leek dishes, soups, cheesy vegetable bakes, stir fries and more.

A fruit cage at last!

 Ever since we've had the allotment I've struggled with finding a secure way of netting the fruit. Last year I thought I'd netted the blueberries well but arrived on the plot one day to find one of the plants completely stripped of its fruit. Throwing a net over might deter the birds for a while but they will soon find a way in if they really want that juicy fruit.

We've been working on the fruit bed for a couple of years and now it's finished and planted up my dream has been  to have a proper fruit cage. It would have to be a home made one as we try not to spend too much money on the allotment.

The last few weeks as I've seen the fruit slowly ripening I knew we'd better get something in place before we lost the fruit again. As usual Richard came to my rescue with his DIY and recycling skills.

The fruit cage was put together in a morning using the old net brassica frames which had been used on the raised beds on Helen's old allotment. These had originally been made using recycled wood, so they were put back into use again. Held together with string and a few screws it may not stay put for very long, but as long as it's in place until the fruit can be picked that's fine.

The blueberry bushes are on the other side of the bed to the rest of the fruit so had to be netted separately, but there were some smaller net frames which could be used. It's always good to be able to reuse and recycle.

We can now watch our fruit ripening and hopefully we won't have to share it with the birds. I'm also looking forward to some jam making sessions.

Through the garden gate--looking back on June

June was spent mainly potting up plants in containers, weeding and deadheading.  Everything has been growing so big. That must be a result of the home made compost I brought over from the allotment to mulch the beds with.

My sister in law who is a great dahlia grower gave me some Lilliput dahlias and I planted those out a couple of weeks ago in the back garden. They are a miniature dahlia with  really tiny flowers.

At this time of year we like to go out and about visiting gardens and in the last few weeks we have been to RHS Harlow Carr, and an NGS garden.  I love visiting other people's gardens. No matter what size the garden, large or small we always come back with ideas to use in our own garden.

We had a few days away in the Lake District near the end of June and everything seems to have grown even more while we were away. There has been quite a lot of rain recently which has brought plants on. The owner of the B&B we were staying at showed me round his garden. He is an enthusiastic rose grower and had an amazing number of roses. I was a bit envious as roses don't do well in our shady garden, although there is a yellow climbing rose in our front garden which is flowering well at the moment.

On the way back from our holiday we called at 'Cath's Garden plants', this is a plant nursery near Levens, within an old walled garden in the grounds of the Heaves Hotel and Cath is a Chelsea award winner. It has been on my list of places to visit for a while.  It was pouring with rain when we visited, so not the best day to linger.  I bought an Achillea 'Inca Gold' because of its orange flowers and I thought it would look good in my yellow/orange/blue bed.

I need to get out in the garden to do some weeding, deadheading and cutting back and then I might be able to find some space for my new plant.

I have joined with Sarah at 'Down by the Sea' for this monthly 'Through the garden gate' post.

 

Rebuilding the bug hotel

The first bug hotel we built on the allotment was a bit thrown together. It was done as an activity for the grandchildren when we made the woodland den a couple of years ago.  It was quite untidy, but wildlife like untidy places.  However being used as a step by an intruder to climb over the fence from the next door plot hadn't helped with its stability.

So one of this years projects was to build a new bug hotel. I was really looking forward to doing it, but  I couldn't get the grandchildren interested in helping this time. That didn't matter, I could build it to my own design. There's a lot of wildlife on our allotment, we have a big tree at the top of the plot, a hedge along two sides, plenty of debris and places for creatures to shelter and find food. So building a bug hotel may not be all that important.  But I think they look really good.

 I wanted to build the new bug home in a different place so I decided on the top of the plot behind the big sycamore tree and next to the privet hedge.  It's already a good place for wildlife with plenty of rotting logs, leaves, twigs and places for little creatures to hide. Hopefully it's also out of the way of any intruders who might want to stand on it.

foxgloves growing under the sycamore tree

Richard made a frame out of an old pallet which just fitted the space.  I collected pieces of bark and twigs from the woods across the lane outside our plot.  We had bricks, old tiles and pieces of drain pipe on the allotment already. Twigs with holes, pieces of wood, old broken plant pots, straws, stones, pine cones and leaves were used.

rotting logs

 I spent a very pleasant afternoon putting it all together and felt that the grandchildren were really missing out on this activity. Now it's finished, it looks really good and I have left  plenty of spaces where we can add more nature stuff if we want to. The grandchildren came down to the plot recently and were quite impressed by  my super deluxe bug hotel.