Helen died peacefully on Friday 24th May with her family around her.
Mark
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A walk through the garden …
This video takes quite a long time to load – but hopefully worth the wait …
Posted in Spring
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Evening sunshine in May
Sadly Helen is very ill and unable to post on her blog anymore. However she is sleeping in bed facing her beautiful garden and when she wakes up she can take in the lovely view.
Clive went out yesterday evening and took these photos – he said “When the sun comes out at 6 p.m. it is the prettiest garden in the world.”
Jenny (Helen’s sister)
A small video of the garden taken yesterday evening.
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Posted in Spring
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a little before and a little after
These two photos show the design of the garden in year 2003. The idea was that the formal grass paths and small circular lawn gave structure and formality to the planting which was fairly unstructured – because I am a plant lover and have tried to pack in as many plants as possible. The following year we gave the lawn and path edges a severe trim and there is one photo to demonstrate that (and it was taken in spring, whereas these two were taken in late summer.
There is a sculpture which I got when I worked at Bradley Gardens, and it had been abandoned at the back of the property with some rotting at the base. It lasted a few years in our garden, and we did rather love it.
I uploaded some photos that Mark took yesterday to our Day by Day section under 30.4.13. You can view them here:
https://pygardens.co.uk/day-by-day-in-the-garden/30-4-13/
The patio is in no state to be called finished, but it is at least a bit tidier than before. Also Mark has finished the mammoth cutting back task in the lower third of the garden. We have an old wheelbarrow which we use as a feature, which we are going to refill with new plants this year. There are also some photos of the veg beds now the potatoes are in. Jenny and Clive gave use an azada one Christmas, which is a back to front spade – I’ll photograph it another time. Mark says it is very useful. The only beds that need a tidy up now are in the middle section where we have three planted area. One around the garden seat on the zig zag path route, one below that, which is essentially a grass feature, with an ornamental rhubarb incorporated. We only put that bed together last autumn, so we have the summer viewing of that to look forward to. Finally we planted up a small semicircular bed below the patio on which the summer house sits and that is a mix of shrubs and perennials.
Posted in Autumn, Flowering plants, Grasses, Plants, Shrubs, Spring, The seasons
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a little tenderness….
We made a visit to one of our local garden centres yesterday afternoon. This particular one lives up to it’s name – Down To Earth. They sell lots of bedding plants and several small pots as multi-buys. We weren’t shopping for these, but did succumb to buying some lithodora, lavender and rosemary and one small conifer. Mark asked me if it was a dwarf – and I pointed out to him all the conifers we have in our garden that were planted as babies were also ‘dwarf’ conifers. It seems better to go by the height in 10 years on the label! Some of our conifers have given real structure to the garden, and I’m sure it could take one or two more to go in small and grow over the next ten years or so into an item of real interest…..Anyway, we looked around the shrubs and saw some lovely Ilex varieties, some Ceanothus, and some other attractive looking shrubs whose names I forget at the moment. We need to take out the existing plants from the area we are going to make-over (which is being invaded with ground elder and Euphorbia Griffithii, then do some measuring and planning. At that stage we can go back and buy what we need. I noticed that amongst the grasses that they were displaying were Carex Bronze and Carex Frosted Curls – we have pots of these which have self-seeded around our garden. We’ve already given away several pots, so it must be a very prolific plant.
Last year I insisted that we take out some of the self-seeded ferns in our ‘raised kitchen bed’ which was home to three huge ferns which were growing in the wall at the back of the bed. They were so mature that they were dominating everything there, but at the moment I am rather missing them. However, I only have myself to blame!
We have two particular plants in our garden that really have no right to be there. We have a Gunnera manicata and a Phormium. Each year the Gunnera survives the battering of the north-east weather – each year we expect to find the roots killed off by frost, but amazingly there are new shoots coming up out of the ground, under it’s own leaves which we bent over it to offer a little protection. Height wise, it isn’t a massive specimen, but that is just as well, as we have got it planted in a rather delicate position by the gravel path going up the garden. It reaches about 6 – 7 feet. Another plant in the garden which we are surprised by, is a purple-leaved phormium. It has been in the garden for a good few years. A couple of years ago, it surrendered to the cold and frost in the spring and died right back. Mark used the hedge trimmers to take it back as far as possible so that all that was left was a neat mound of strong dead leaves. Last year it made a little come back – with some shoots poking through the mound. This year it has come back as fresh as a new plant would look. It is tempting us to get another one this year. We’ll just have to see…….
Posted in Grasses, Plants, Shrubs, Spring, Uncategorized
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more bad weather moments…
Yesterday we had hailstones tumbling out of the sky and I am told that we had some snow this morning (but I missed it, as I was still in bed). No wonder the daffs took their time coming out. They are in full-swing now and, although we don’t have as many of them as we used to (I guess because we lose some each time we do a make-over), they do create some bright colour in the garden. A photo of the lower beds after today’s efforts:
Mark has not managed to get into the garden during the week, but today he has managed to put in a few hours, despite doing his ‘swimathon’ last night at Prudhoe Waterworld. The garden below the trellis has now all been cut back, weeded (I suspect of many of my lovely geraniums and other perennials) and now is on a ground elder battle. In one area below the silver birch there is a lot of ground elder which has taken hold amongst the plants – but we are going to dig up the plants as well – as long as they are not rare. We have a lot of Euphorbia griffithii ‘Fireglow’ in that area, so a lot of that will go on the compost heap. Can’t risk giving it to friends, in case we give them ground elder as well. That is not what friends are for…..
We have cleared the bases of two plain large Hebes which give them a more stately look, that is, as if they are meant to be there.
The sun has shone quite a bit today, but I didn’t let that fool me. So I wrapped up warm before I went and sat on the lunch patio – which is in a terrible mess. It is awaiting the new log storage and a plant pot make-over. We have lovely plants in plastic pots, and in the lovely pottery pots, we seem to have rubbish! Grasses – particularly Carex bronze and Carex Frosted Curls – seem to enjoy making babies in our garden and therefore we have about 6 of these to locate from pots to border. Last year, we created a grass border below our zz garden seat area ( I must post some photos of it), which were all babies. It doesn’t take them long to mature into a decent sized plant.
Tomorrow the seed-potatoes we bought a few days ago in Tom and Joe’s nursery, will be stuck into our veggie beds. We have just bought one variety , King Edwards, and know very little about planting potatoes. They have buds on them, but not very developed stalks on the buds – but I believe we can stick them in like that and they’ll be ok (I may be terribly wrong about this, so please tell us before tomorrow if that is the case, as once they are in, that is it!
We are going to try two methods, according to how much compost has been allocated to each bed – some will just have a dibbed hole leveled off to fit the base of the potato to the soil. Then covered deeply and then left to their own devices. The others, will be planted in a trench and as the green growth comes through, more compost dragged over them. I believe this protects them from early morning frosts, and encourages more potatoes to grow on the roots. Clive built a ‘greedy boy’ on one of the veg beds so that has compost piled right up against it. It is functional and allotment – style, but if it does what is says on the cover, who cares? I have found three photos – one showing the veg beds when in their glory, another showing them pretty neglected and full of wild flowers and the final one, of them having been filled with compost. There don’t seem to be any close up shots of the veg beds when they were truly run down!! There will be a couple of photos to post tomorrow when the potatoes have been put in. but meanwhile here is a link to today’s photos, and a couple more of the veg beds .
https://pygardens.co.uk/day-by-day-in-the-garden/27-4-13
Posted in compost, cutting back, patio, Plants, Uncategorized, vegetables
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what a difference a day makes…….
Well, it does make a difference – at least in our garden…..
And warm enough to have lunch outside and a lovely cuppa – courtesy of Clare next door – mmmmmm
Mark has been cutting back – very correctly this time, I’m glad to say. The only controversy has been finding Geranium Roseanne. We think we have found it, but if we have quite a bit of it has been inadvertently weeded out. We have relocated a few plants, which have needed moving for a few years. I nearly didn’t get up this morning – but I’m so glad I did! Mark hadn’t listened to the radio for a while, so he listened to the match – Sunderland v Everton; and I listened to Mark listening to the match! Also some neighbour’s children were out playing in our neighbour’s garden with a Frisby – so it was quite an afternoon, dodging frisbys and awaiting the next bit of excitement on the radio!
We have left some gaps with the relocation of some herbaceous perennials, so have decided to spread some woodchip – however, we will wait until we have finished the bed and then spread it on. The grasses have had a haircut:
It was so bright today that most of my photos have large looming shadows of me, so I won’t show any more of them here on my blog page. However, Mark ventured out this evening taking some photos of the nightlights – some of them light the garden path up to the summerhouse, some are in the borders of the lower garden and there is a flood light on the summer house. You can see them here:
https://pygardens.co.uk/garden-projects/night-lights/
You can view some other photos taken today here, in my ‘day to day’ section:
Posted in Building in the garden, cutting back, Grasses, Plants, Shrubs, Spring, Uncategorized
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the daffodils are out!
The big news today is that the daffodils have come out in our kitchen window raised bed – the sun is shining and it is not very windy. We now have 1 male and 3 female pheasant visitors pecking under the bird feeders.
There are also tulips, blue bells and crocus’s in these borders, and some gorgeous Geranium magnificum which features vivid blue flowers. We cut it back after flowering and in spring, otherwise it would overwhelm the area. We’ll have to see if it has been over-cut back (in spring by me this time though!). The snow drops have now disappeared, but they flowered long and well this year. These ‘wild flowers’ all came from the area where the zig zag seat is now positioned, so I am also expecting some to flower up there as well – you can never get them all out……..but it has been a couple of years since putting the seat in situ and there’s a lot of gravel, so we’ll have to wait and see. I have also put a photo in here of the pollarded willow opposite our pond.
Posted in Uncategorized
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Dismal looking day
Looking out of the patio doors onto our garden, I see nothing at the moment that would induce me to get out into the garden, even if I were fit and able! It is overcast, damp and windy. Where has spring gone? Have I missed it? Was it yesterday, when the sun was shining (although it was quite windy then as well)?
Our daffodils are still not out yet either. That may be to do with where they are planted, but still……
The pheasants are still hanging out around the bird feeder. Today there are two hens and one male. They have worked out that some seeds drop into the hebe beneath the feeder, and so they have started to jump to get to the seeds, or maybe it is to shake the seeds out of the shrub onto the ground. It is a funny sight though.
Posted in Spring, Uncategorized, Wildlife
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John’s photos
I have uploaded some photos that John took yesterday. He needs to get out and take some more in the morning, as some of the photos face the sun which is always difficult.
Here is the link:
https://pygardens.co.uk/day-by-day-in-the-garden/15-4-13
The lovely cat featured is Henry and I made sure I had permission from his owners to post his photo on here! Our cat Marmalade only comes out in the good weather, but I’m sure she’s in a few photos somewhere…..
We have feathered visitors – one male and two female pheasants, wood pigeons and raven’s also getting in on the act. It is the raven’s that I mind. I can put up with the pigeons (we have had no more kamikaze incidents), but big black birds with big beaks I find rather intimidating.
Mark has cut back the willow, which we do each year – I had to rack my brain for the word ‘pollarded’ but that is it! I’ll have to have a photograph close up of the gnarled stumps that are left. This willow is opposite the pond, and is in the bed where the accidental pruning of the weigela and philadelphus occurred. There is a forsythia next to the pond which needs a severe pruning. it doesn’t flower very well, even though I prune it after flowering. It probably needs ripping out and being replaced with a better flowering shrub.
The next garden project to be undertaken will be building the log store. It is going to go on the south facing end of the lunch patio, which we have abandoned using as a lunch patio for a while now – preferring the breakfast patio just outside our patio doors. I have sat out there in my PJ’s as it offers that much privacy!
We have to decide what to do with the old patio wood table that used to belong there – resite it or get rid of it? I think it would be a shame to lose it, but evidently one of the legs is unstable. Oh well, we will just have to see……
Posted in compost heap, cutting back, patio, Plants, Summer House, Uncategorized, zig zag path
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