My lovely friend down south has requested some close up pictures of my flowers so here we are.
The first is my gorgeous new rose ‘Nostalgia’
The next one is the cornflower with some delphiniums in the background
Finally for now the agrostemma grown from seed. They are gorgeous white flowers and I will definitely grow them again
Yesterday, Daddy, Mum and I went to the RHS Tatton Park flower show for the day. It was quite a wet day, although this is not a complaint as its much more preferable than a hot day for me looking at gardens. The floral marquee was bigger than ever and had lots of amazing colourful flowers. The gardens: show gardens, back-to-back and school ones were mostly lovely and I took some pictures which are below. I would say, however, that finding the show gardens especially is difficult as they are dotted about all over. I think we did see them all. Interestingly, on the BBC coverage of the show Monty Don said the back-to-back gardens haven’t been at the show for 3 years which would explain why we couldn’t find them last year, I just thought we had somehow missed them. I didn’t buy anything at the show, I found a gorgeous rose called Nostalgia, cherry red petals on the outside and white in the middle. They didn’t have any at the show for sale, but I got one on the way home at Fryers Garden Centre in Knutsford.
Here are some of my pictures:
Once again I start my blog with an apology that I haven’t written for a while but I’ve been unwell and spending limited time in the garden.
Anyway, I’ve been harvesting tomatoes, raspberries and cherries this week. The cherries have been hard to get as I put netting on the tree to protect them from the birds. This worked but I have to get the cherries off the tree through the netting!
The foxgloves have almost finished and I have chopped down and composted them. My agrostemma are flowering with lovely white flowers and the cornflowers are doing well too. Both grown from seed by myself earlier in the year.
To finish some pictures of my garden taken today.
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.
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:
Not much to report today but thought you might like to see some pictures of my garden at the moment. Every time I go our something new is flowering. Today is poppies, astrantia and perennial wallflowers and of course self sowen forget-me-nots
Sorry it has taken so long to post this second and final set of Madeira pictures from my holiday in March. I’ve had some issues in getting them from my phone to the computer but here they are. The garden ones are mostly the presidential gardens in the new town of Funchal and a few of the boardings at the front where they are still working to prevent future flooding.
I love this season the most, when every tine you look at the garden there is something new to see. My tulips are lovely, the bluebells are flowering, my hellebores mostly still flowering although 1 has been eaten, my dahlias in the greenhouse are shooting, the day lilies coming up from their winter sleep and one of my favourite flowers the poppy has big buds ready to flower. I also have a garden full of blue, pink and white forget-me-not. The cherry tree has been covered with netting to protect it from the birds, they ate all the fruit last year. The tomato plants potted on and awaiting their final larger pots. If I was a poet I could continue this on, but I’m not!
My seeds are having varying degrees of success and some packets due to be binned! I have sowen 30 scabious and 4 have come up, I don’t think this is a good return! On the positive side, 13/15 cornflower are outgrowing their small pots and doing really well.
Pictures for today:
It’s a lovely sunny day in northwest England and so I write this sat in the garden listening to a few birds and a loud neighbour across the road.
I have been busy sowing seeds in the greenhouse. Yesterday I sowed pink cosmos and also white ones (Sarah raven variety), good for cut flowers. I alto sowed some bright pink zinnia. I have often sowed these and they are normally very easy and flower all summer. My cornflowers nearly all came up and about half of the Agrostemma, a pretty white flower. My scabious haven’t bothered at all so have sowen dome new seeds in the same tray.
To finish a couple of pictures of bulbs planted late last year.
Mum, Daddy and I recently went to Madeira for a holiday. We have been there a few times before and love it for the blue skies, blue sky and the lovely gardens which is why there is a blog about it.
We have been to most of them before, the presidential gardens, botanical and tropical gardens on the cable car.
The plants they can grow outside are often things we would have inside and even then not to the same extent as there climate allows, such as cactus and orchids.
A few days before coming home Daddy and I ventured up in the cable car to the tropical gardens. It was quite a wet morning but I took lots of photos and want to share some of them here.
wendyswonderlandgarden 