wendyswonderlandgarden

Living in this part of the country – north west England we get all sorts of weathers. None very extreme but it’s been up to 33 miles an hour wind these past few days. I thought I had prepared the garden well – attaching new seedlings to wooden sticks and attaching the sweetpeas to their sticks. However, this isn’t normal windy weather and so plants in pots have been falling over and not the little plants but a magnolia in a pot and a tomato plants and several others.

According to my Facebook memories we’ve had bad weather at this time of year the past few years!

We’ve been daring and put the washing out today, it’ll get dry if it stays on the line!

Anyway, I just wanted to share a couple of pictures of firsts for the season – first dahlia which I grew from seed last summer and first sweet William with a lovely light scent. I’ve come to appreciate scent more and more the past few years. Til next time, hope you don’t get blown away in the wind!

I’m still watching RHS Chelsea flower show on tv (we record most things we watch) and loving seeing the celebrities gardens such as Mary Berry and Kelly Brook. They are huge. As usual I didn’t agree with the medals, one show garden with weeds in it got gold and the beautiful garden by Chris Beardshaw didn’t get a good enough medal in my opinion. That made no sense to me at all! I am looking forward to going to the first RHS show at Chatsworth with my friend next week.

Onto my garden. I have news (I always feel like I’m on Tv’s top gear when I say that) the cats that so loved messing on my garden have moved house with their owners of course. I am so relieved but praying the new neighbours don’t have pets!

I have bedding plants to put in, a few from the garden centre and some homegrown. My little wooden wheelbarrow has had some repairs and a lick of preservative  and is ready for the summer planting.

Plants currently flowering in my garden include the below. A yellow iris that I don’t remember planting, 2 pink roses, one that climbs and one with the roots in the drain (I think), also a geranium and a mock orange in a pot.

It’s a lovely sunny and hot day in my South Manchester garden. The country is sad and shocked after what happened in Manchester (20 mins from me) on Monday night but I can always be cheered up by my garden.

There has been so much to do in my garden but I’m nearly there. I’ve probably spent about 8-9 hours in the past few weeks weeding and pulling out self sown forget-me-nots. I don’t know how we have so many!

I’ve planted into the borders the purple cornflower I grew from seed. They are lovely little plants. They each have a stick beside  in case they get too tall.

 I’ve moved my dahlias and tomatoes outside now and all other plants that overwinter in the greenhouse. It’s looking a big bare now. I have planted 15 white sweetpeas and 9 pink ones with lots of slug pellets.

Lots of things are either flowering or getting ready so here are a few of them. 

I also have some gorgeous heuchera which have flowers but really I grow them for the leaves. 

So these aren’t really my department after all if we all watered them they’d die by drowning, however, they do deserve their place here as they are plants and they cheer up the house. The last picture is of an avocado tree, daddy has been trying to grow these for years by planting the stone and we’ve never yet had a fruit and this particular tree is trying to take over it’s spot in the porch. It’s growing so fast I think you could watch it grow!

What a lovely sunny and windy day for working in the garden, 22 miles per hour wind speed – Daddy is very interested in tracking our weather! 

But I have lots of sweet peas to plant and according to Monty Don from Gardeners World I should have already done this job. I couldn’t decide between pink or white so bought a pot of each and ended up with 30 plants. I then ordered a support frame online and when it came it was a kit of bits, not what I was expecting at all. Anyway, Daddy has got it in the ground, replacing the Acer tree that died last year, he did use his industrial strength drill to get through the roots. I also put some in a large pot and have the pink ones still to plant and a few to give to friends. I have also spread many slug pellets as I really don’t want them eating.

A few pictures of what’s flowering in my garden to finish and I’m slightly spoiled for choice as the garden is full of flower – especially forget me nots which self seed and my neighbour keeps forgetting the name of!

An amazing smelling lilac bush which has been in the garden for years. Mum threatened it with being dug out recently and I have been talking to it and encouraging it to flower and guess what it has!

So yesterday I watered some of the garden and today while I write this blog it’s chucking it down with my washing outside and no I don’t want to bring it in as I’ll get soaked!

I have finally potted on my sweet peas although according to BBC gardeners world I should be planting them outside about now, which is fine but according to the weather forecast it could be cold at night so I think they are safer in the greenhouse for now, I have 30 little plants and I only really wanted about 10 but I couldn’t decide between pink or white so I bought them both! My seeds are doing pretty well – lots of cornflower, creamy yellow cosmos and zinnia have come up but so far no primrose, sweet William or white foxgloves. I think the latter may have been washed away. Such small seeds and I watered one day without the thing on the end of my watering can.

Last pictures of tulips today and I promise not to bore you anymore. They didn’t do as well as the expected sadly and I will be putting a numbe for pots worth into the ground shortly. The daffodils on pots continue to do well year after year so I will plant more of those next time. Also a picture of my wallflowers in pots and they smell lovely! 

Just a little post to end the week with my favourite tulip Jan Reus. I originally had 10 and now only 3 are still in my garden and sadly I can’t find them in the shops. I’ll keep looking and one day hopefully I’ll find them again. 

I can’t believe it’s April all ready, time is flying so fast! There is much to be done in my garden – yet more tidying, weeding, grass cutting, seed sowing, planning if we need any more plants. That said, I don’t look after this garden alone. Well 4 gardens – I’ll try and explain more in a future blog. Anyway, we each have our areas of work. Daddy cuts grass, does heavy digging work if I can’t manage and have already attempted it and looks after the compost heaps. He also looks after the fruit trees although I usually pick the ripe fruit. Mum looks after bushes and cuts the lawn edges while I collect them. Me – I look after the flowers, sow seeds, weed, tidy, plant containers of which we have quite a number, water in the summer and whatever else hasn’t already been covered.

Oh and if you thought that’s all I do as there is so much listed I used to have a full time job and will hopefully again one day. I only actually spend maybe 5 hours a week out there between April and October and much less in the other months.

I also garden for my neighbour across the road at this time of year once a week. She has a lovely spring garden with much colour and scent at the moment, with primulas, muscari and daffodils flowering, 

I have some foxglove and cosmos seeds waiting to be sown but I need to buy my seed trays first. Last years were too flimsy to be reused. 

There is so much on flower right now in the garden so here are a few things I haven’t already shared. Some gorgeous new dark red tulips, muscari and a pieris. (I hope that’s how it’s spelt).