wendyswonderlandgarden

My passion in life is gardening and specifically growing flowers from seed

Month: June, 2015

June 29, 2015

Summer

Sorry not to have posted for a while, but in this season I am out in the garden every dry moment I can. There is always something to be done, weeding, deadheading, planting, moving of plants and watering. Oh and when all that is done admiring and planning for next season and year! A gardeners work is never done, but I love it.

Last weekend, we went to Arley Hall garden festival, its usually on for 2 days at the end of June and is a chance to buy lots of lovely plants at cheap prices, it also has a lovely flower marquee and some school show gardens. Its a great place to go just for the cheap plants. I bought 8 cottage garden types for less than £30 this year and have 1 left to plant. Among other things I bought a lovely lilac coloured tall delphinium, white with purple splashed geranium and a white and pink penstamen (still to be planted).

This weekend just gone Mum and I went to see some private local gardens that opened in aid of Wilmslow Wells for Africa. These again were lovely, we saw 2 of people we knew and 3 others. 1 was very long and thin full of colourful flowers, trees and bushes. Another had a huge wild flower meadow. I came away, wondering what we have to do to be able to open our garden for this charity. Apart from the obvious weeding and covering up bare patches of soil.

I have also recently started gardening for an elderly neighbour when I can fit it in. I am mostly weeding and tidying up and there is plenty to be done.

I will leave you this time with a picture of my first small vase of cut flowers. These are sweet peas grown from seed and in my garden. They smell amazing and I will definitely be sowing more next year.

sweet peas

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June 9, 2015

Cottage gardens

Sorry for not blogging for a while, but when the weather is good I need to be outside doing stuff so have little time to say what I have been doing.

On Saturday I went to a free talk on cottage gardens at a local garden centre. While I love cottage gardens, I am not aiming to create that here, as in its true sense its lots of plants growing a bit too close and looking a little untidy and I prefer a tidier garden. I do, however, love the cottage type of plants – roses, foxgloves, poppies, lupins etc and have these in my garden.

The talk was interesting and did take some things away from it which I will try and explain here.

Firstly, that it is important to annually feed the soil, whether its with a grow more powder or pellets that need to be rained in or compost/well rotted farmyard manure raked into the ground. Just an aside, but we have a neighbouring cat who loves soft compost on the garden for him to do his business as its soft on the paws so this will be tricky when I put the compost round in autumn as I usually do.

Secondly, not to buy all your plants at the same time of year if you want to create a garden that lasts longer than a few months, as the garden centre is always selling what is best at that particular moment. This may be common sense but something I hadn’t thought of.

Thirdly, the need for some plants that don’t die down or have some winter berries or at something to look at otherwise come the winter months the garden will look bare.

My last point from the talk, when using slug pellets they are more effective if you use less.

Something I saw on a gardening programme this week, if you want your seedlings to grow quicker, stroke them or talk to them. Somehow the air movement does something that makes them grow faster. Sorry I am not very scientific so can’t explain this further.

Regarding my garden, I have been busy potting on in the greenhouse and also planting out zinnias, cosmos and agrostemma (corn cockle). I have also been removing the spent forget-me-nots and all the weeds hiding underneath. I may be about half way now but we have so many it will take a few more sessions to complete the task. Then I can look forward to cutting the edges of the grass, a job I don’t enjoy but needs doing.

Lastly some pictures from my garden:

astrantia lupin

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