Hotel 38: How Does Your Garden Grow?...

I have been busy grabbing little moments here and there to plant up the soon-to-be rockery area next to my new patio area that we built. The garden is what got me through the madness that was my wedding. Now that we are past that hoo-ha it is time to carry on and plant it up. At the moment the rockery area is filled about five foot high with pavia bricks. They are going to be moved to the top of the garden and the space in which they sit will be replaced with huge boulders of Cotswold stone..can't wait to plant it up. Someone on Freecycle kindly offered me the boulders of their old wall..lovely.

We are going this weekend.

Although we have made a start in planting up the rockery area, there isn't much in it so far aside from Hollyhocks. But here are two photos of what there IS!

Saxifrage - I love you.

Lithodora Lithospermum (blue star) - I also love you.

I plan to propogate them both and make lots more prettiness.

Behind the rockery is my little shady kitchen area - it is busy, busy FULL of life. We have an old Belfast sink we found when we moved in..currently it has a huge Lavender plant in it and it's surrounded by huge tall Granny's Bonnets..look!

One of our more unusual wedding gifts was this little lady, I like to call her Matilda, keeper of the flowers.

I was told that no matter how many times I tried to get rid of Matilda, I would always find another one when I next got home. Looks like she is staying, I am glad 'cos I like her weird little head.

Matilda stands next to my 'Woodland' bed which is FULL of various Ferns - next to the Ferns and Matilda is my 'Bleeding heart' plant. I got it for the bargainous price of £2 from B&Q..this is because it was so tatty all tangled up with its bed-fellows, I doubted it would live..but it did!

SEE!

Instagram has made it look loads brighter than it is, but you get the idea, it's pretty.

I am especially pleased about this area as I have a gorgeous old Rose tree growing here, it has to be about fifty years old. Last year I decided to cut it right down to about a foot tall as it was reaching up to my son's second storey window and looked weak and wiry. I was sadded to see that after its hard cutting back (which Monty told me was ok) it seemed to just sulk and a few shoots came up then died back. So I left it and suddenly, this last week, the shoots have shot back up, it's going mad! YEY! - moral of the story 'Never doubt Monty.' - look, behind the Granny's Bonnets..there they are - shootlets!

Lastly in this area I planted dwarf Nasturtiums and some Sweet Peas in a shallow window box - risky, I know..but they are growing. The Sweet peas have a string frame to climb up and will eventually frame my kitchen window..yum.

Further up the garden we cleared out our compostarium (yes, Baby F has watched so much Mr. Bloom's Nursery, we are brainwashed) we trained some leggy old Roses into an arch shape. Tricky and hurty, but cute.

Only another 100 foot of garden to tame after the first fifty is almost done..urrgh. I've given it four years to get in in check. Over the gorgeous wire fence you can see next door's garden..they are also taking their's on. I am hoping that soon we can both have nice gardens to be proud of.

Past this fence we have our grassy area and at the top of it, the nature reserve - a part of the garden we have saved for the Slow Worms, Hedgehogs etc, that we see there. The grass is left long and there are wild flowers. We have planted two Apple trees, a Silver Birch, and Oak and a Cherry tree, sounds a lot but it is a huge amount of space. Photos of them to come later.

But, before you get to all of that we have a space where there used to be an old greenhouse. Here we have dug out the area surrounding its concrete base and we have planted Willow whips in order to create a willow dome - they were my modest wedding present to L. Something that would live and grow with us.

Here they are in their glass creating spectacular roots..they only took one day in the glass of water to root! woah!