wendyswonderlandgarden

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

Category: gardening

August 18, 2016

August in my garden

So I start another blog with an apology! And that is that I’m sorry we are over half through the month before I get round to my monthly ‘what’s on flower in my garden’ post. My only excuse is that I have busy painting (not as in painting pictures)

Anyway there is quite a lot flowering at the moment although things are ‘going over’ quickly probably due to lack of rain. Hoping we get some tomorrow to fill the water butts and water the thirsty garden.

My sweet peas of which there isn’t a picture this month are doing really well and smell amazing even when you aren’t right next to them.

So, here are my pictures including cosmos grown from seed in the  greenhouse earlier this year.

Leave a comment
July 23, 2016

RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2016

Yesterday Mum and I went to the RHS flower show at Tatton Park. We’ve been going on and off for a number of years and its a nice day out looking at plants and show gardens. This year as with the past few years we struggled to find the gardens as they had hidden them well. I think we saw them all in the end. For me personally I didn’t enjoy all the gardens as much as I used to, its seems to be about prairie planting and wild flower meadows which in some ways just means weeds to me. I like some of those but a good garden for me is full of colourful plants no matter what other structures they may have. I found a few. The other thing I noticed was that if I liked the garden it would invariably have been given a ‘silver gilt’ medal and if I didn’t like it they got ‘gold’. I know the RHS are looking for something different to myself but I have never noticed this with the medals before.

It was a pretty hot day so we didn’t buy any plants til just before we came home partly so we didn’t have to carry them and also didn’t want them to wilt. We bought 2 Echinaceas. One a creamy yellow colour and one an orangy/red colour. I will post pictures once they have been planted.

I hope you enjoy the pictures I have taken.

 

Leave a comment
June 14, 2016

June in my garden

So, this morning I did something I don’t do often.. and that is garden in the rain. Here in the north-west of England we’ve had more than our fair share of rain in the past week or so – fortunately we haven’t been flooded here but I know people who have. Anyway, I had some cosmos and agrostemma (corn-cockle) grown from seed in the greenhouse desperate to be planted out and as we’ve had so much rain I wasn’t sure I could wait until it stopped for me to do some gardening so I got out my special new garden wellies and out I went very quickly. I didn’t even water them in as, well the weather was doing that for me!

This afternoon, however, its dry so I guess I could have waited but I wasn’t to know! My garden is coming on really well at the moment with all this rain, with some things flowering and fading away too fast because of it, but its saved me watering the garden lately. My poppies have nearly all finished now, and lupins are fading fast too, not helped by the pesky aphids that I keep spraying but still keep coming. Don’t they understand they are just not welcome in my garden!

Last month I showed a picture of a bright pink shrub I named an azalea, however, it has since been pointed out to me it is in fact a rhododendron! Sorry about that.

This month flowering in my garden, are gorgeous white foxgloves, definitely one of my favourite colours in the garden (if white is considered a colour), a valerian which strictly speaking I moved to the front but is still in the place it came from and in the front garden! A dark red trailing pelargonium on the wall and my red lupin with a purple flower (I do have a purple lupin in a separate flower bed). Lastly my first dahlia to flower – mystic dreamer I think its called

Lastly, some exciting news. A lovely girl I know who blogs her paintings and poems is currently painting one of my garden pictures. If I like it and I’m sure I will, I will post it here when its complete. Watch this space….

Leave a comment
May 10, 2016

May in my garden

This seems to have unintentionally become a monthly feature of my blog where I challenge myself to find something in flower in my garden that I haven’t posted about previously. At this time of year that is fairly easy as new things are growing and flowering weekly, in winter its a little more difficult.

I have today, planted out my sweetpeas sown from seed direct into the garden. I have only ever grown them in pots before so it will be interesting to see the difference. I have also surrounded them with slug killer (sorry to any slug lovers out there – you are welcome to mine any time you like)!

I have also fed my potted plants and dianthus for the first time this year. I am notoriously bad at feeding plants as much as I love gardening.

So here is my offering of whats in flower today in my garden.

1 Comment
December 19, 2015

Merry Christmas

A quick blog to wish all my readers and followers a Merry Christmas.

As any regular readers know, I always try to include pictures of things currently flowering in my garden. Well its December and while a mild one at that, I have exhausted my supply of winter flowering plants for now. So, I have cheated slightly and have included our new indoor poinsettia, we kept last years plant but there are no red leaves on it so have bought a new one.

IMG_0370.JPG

Also some shop bought flowers which smell amazing

IMG_0369.JPG

And lastly our first decorated Christmas tree which is artificial but looks pretty real. We do have a real one as well and its currently waiting patiently outside to be allowed in!

IMG_0356.JPG

So Merry Christmas to you all, I pray its a peaceful and stress-free one! I will likely not post again now til next year! xx

Leave a comment
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

Leave a comment
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

Leave a comment