Through the garden gate--March

The weather has not been very Spring like in March and I know we are all longing for some warmer days with more sunshine. No more snow please!  We have been working on our new garden whenever we can but we have had so much rain.  We get so disheartened when it rains hard and the bottom beds fill with water, but we can see progress. The spring bulbs which I planted weeks ago have brought some colour to the borders.

        

I have been enjoying the Hellebores which I planted. Some of them are a lovely dark red colour, one of them is called 'Anna's Red'. I bought it because my granddaughter is called Anna and she has red hair. I just had to have it! I łove plants which for different reasons remind me of people I know. I wonder now if I should look out for plants which are named after my other grandchildren?

On my potting bench is a collection of small pots of spring bulbs--tete a tete daffodils, yellow and purple crocus, blue Chionodoxa and Pushkinia. It's a lovely display of colour. I have planted some containers of violas too. They are around the garden in different places-- the garden table, outside the kitchen door.

Under the Weigela in the front garden are some bulbs which in  last month's 'Through the garden gate' blog were covered in snow. They are looking much more cheerful now and I have added some lavender and Heucheras to the front of the border. 

This is a border which is tucked away and can get forgotten, but it does get quite a bit of sun. I cut the Weigela back last year when we moved into our new house to make some planting space underneath. It will be good to have a bit more colour there this year.

I am pleased to say that my ankle is recovering well and I am able to get about the garden more, I can even use the spade and fork now, so as soon as the weather is better I will be doing much more planting in the garden beds.

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

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

Easter Monday on the plot

With lots of family things going on over the last week, we haven't had time to get down to the allotment to do any work, apart from occasional visits to feed Ziggy the cat and to check the seedlings in the greenhouses. So it was good to be reunited with my plot on Easter Monday. I had a long list of jobs to do.

Ziggy was there as usual wanting to be fed. I think she would eat until she burst if we kept feeding her. She certainly doesn't look underfed. And she now lets us stroke her. When we first adopted her she wouldn't come anywhere near us and didn't have a voice, just a snarl. Now she follows me around as I work and meows all the time which can be a bit annoying, but I am learning to ignore it.

 I am really loving my two new greenhouses. The seedlings are coming along great and I never fail to get excited when I see new seeds coming through. There is something so amazing about new growth. I was especially pleased to see that the peas I sowed in a length of guttering a few weeks ago are now starting to come through.

 One of my allotment neighbours gave me some cabbage 'golden acre' seedlings which I potted on and put in the greenhouse. I also had some spring cabbage plants which I'd started off at the end of last summer. These were ready to plant out, the first plantings this year. I covered them with some netting frames to protect from the pigeons which are constantly flying around the plots.

Whilst I was doing this Richard did some weeding. Now the weather is warming up the weeds are starting to grow and there are lots of sycamore seedlings from the tree at the top of the garden. We are also seeing some Himalayan balsam seedlings starting to appear. This is an awful weed which can take over if not kept under control. Unfortunately the plot next to us is not well looked after and the seeds are blown over from there, which causes much annoyance to us and several of the neighbouring plots.

The grand children's woodland den is looking very spring like with tete a tete daffodils, blue pulmonaria and anemone. The daffodils which I rescued from Helen's old plot are just starting to flower too.

I managed to tick one or two jobs off my list before it started to rain, but I'm hoping to get down to the plot again this week to get more done.

Woodland planting

 The woodland area in our garden tends to get a bit neglected. That's because it's hidden away at the top of the garden through a little gate. I clear it up about two or three times a year. But as it's a bit of a wildlife area it doesn't look too bad for being left to look after itself. Spring is the time when It gets its first tidy up. There are lots of crocuses which start to emerge about now so I like to clear up all the leaves and tree branches which have fallen during the autumn and winter and reveal some colour from these flowers. There's ivy, vinca and honeysuckle scrambling along the fence too which always need cutting back. I noticed this week that the vinca is flowering, I love those little blue flowers at this time of year. There's also a clump of hellebores which is looking lovely.

I started the clear up last week. Once I'd cleared away all the debris and done the cutting back I was able to see what else is coming through and soon to flower. There was a small clump of mini daffodils amongst the crocus. I thought some snowdrops were needed, every woodland garden should have snowdrops. I planted three little pots, but they looked lost--you don't get many snowdrops in a little pot. I shall have to get more. I also bought some trays of tete a tete daffodils for some more instant colour. Holly the cat joined me as I planted and must have thought it was some sort of game as she kept digging up the bulbs--naughty cat!

Planting  so early in the year I had to be careful of not disturbing any other plants which had not started to show through.  The soil is  a bit compacted with roots which can make planting difficult.   Plant labels always seem to disappear through the winter and I often struggle to remember what is in there. What are those tiny leaves just poking through the soil? Ah yes I know--Brunnera!
It's looking much better now, more colourful and very spring like.

Making a woodland garden

The first day of the half term holidays, Helen and the grandchildren arrived to whisk me off to the allotment.  I was surprised. Firstly because it was raining and secondly because the children are not usually so enthusiastic about going to the allotment.  Gardening with children is often a bit hit and miss, so when they are keen to go it's best to encourage them. And I had a few jobs for them to do which I thought they would enjoy.

Last year I helped them to make a woodland den at the top of plot 8. It's an area where we can't grow any fruit or vegetables, there's a big sycamore tree, an elder bush and a holly, with a privet hedge along the plot boundary at the top and lots of ivy. The ground slopes down from the privet hedge forming a steep bank. Last year this bank was full of weeds, but I thought we could make a woodland wildlife garden here.  There are a lot of birds about in the trees and shrubs, we have put bird feeders up around the plot and built a bug house.

A couple of weeks ago I tried digging the soil in this area. As I expected, it was full of roots from the trees and shrubs, but after getting rid of some weeds I did find some pockets of soil where I could dig to some depth. So I cleared a few patches where I thought we could grow some woodland plants and made a start by planting some pots of spring bulbs, crocus, snowdrops, tete a tete narcissus and also some bluebells which Richard had dug up last year when he was clearing some of the ground in another part of the plot.

When we arrived at the allotment this week the grandchildren were quite enthusiastic about having a garden area in and around their den.  They set to work defining these planting spots with stones and pebbles and making paths.  Somehow I managed to end up being the labourer, collecting buckets of stones. We also planted up another little border with spring flowers.

By the time they had finished their jobs, it was all looking really good. I'm looking forward to seeing the woodland garden spring into life soon and we will be adding more plants as time goes on.