Wordless Wednesday- hollyhock
wendyswonderlandgarden
My passion in life is gardening and specifically growing flowers from seed
Tag: gardening
June 20, 2017
Sweetpeas
They’ve quickly become one of my favourite summer flowers. I should probably say cut flowers but actually I don’t bring them in much. I love them on the plant where I can get my daily fix of the amazing scent.
White ones in the back garden, some in a container and some in the garden. Pinky/purple in the front, some in the garden and some in a pot. In general the ones in pots are doing better.
June 17, 2017
BBC Gardeners World Live Show 2017
Today I went with a lovely lady from church to the BBC Gardeners World live show in Birmingham NEC. For any overseas readers I should maybe explain BBC Gardeners World is a weekly gardening programme with a magazine and this year celebrates its 50th birthday. We had an interesting trip to the show, in that we couldn’t get off the train at the correct stop as the doors shut just as we got to them and so we had to travel a further stop on, get off and get a train back to the correct station. Fortunately we didn’t have to pay anything extra but it did take up about 45mins we could have been at the show.
Its pretty similar to RHS Chelsea flower show in that there are show gardens and many stalls and a couple of flower marquees. There are also a couple of theatre set ups for ‘celebrity’ gardeners such as Monty Don and Carol Klein to speak and we heard Carol Klein today. The BBC Good Food show (another magazine) was on today as well at the same venue although most of it was very expensive. We did enjoy some samples of cheese and sausages though.
Here are some of my pictures from the show gardens and floral marquee.
June 12, 2017
Busy, busy, busy!
Well we were certainly lucky with the lovely sunny weather on Friday for the day out at Chatsworth flower show. It’s not been as nice since! However, there was some dry weather on Saturday and I managed to get 2 trays of seedlings in the garden. 1st picture cosmos and 2nd picture zinnia which some pest has been eating in the greenhouse. I don’t know who or how. I put a line of slug pellets in front of the door on the outside and have been collecting dead slugs ever since.
I think I could do a post daily at the moment as there is something new flowering daily but that would probably be too much for you my lovely readers. Here’s a few things flowering right now in my garden. The pale coloured foxglove is so pretty and I don’t think I planted it myself, think it’s self sowen.
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.
Also some shop bought flowers which smell amazing
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!
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
July 25, 2015
RHS flower Show Tatton Park 2015
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:
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.
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:
May 26, 2015
Pictures of a spring 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
wendyswonderlandgarden 