More on the garden

What there and what needs doing

I’ve always quite liked gardens. My mother was a very accomplished gardener. I think the garden in my new house is a bit bigger than my old garden. But this one is much easier to look after because it has lots of hard standing. It’s sort of divided into rooms. The first bit is the courtyard outside the kitchen door. This is where I’ve done the most work. Indeed just today I had a man come round to quote in sandblasting the wall. I made a bit of a mess of it trying to remove the paint myself.

I’ve had someone round to look at the patio but they didn’t come back to me. It houses my large dragon pots, one of which has in it the most expensive plant I have ever bought. A large Olive tree. I’ve just taken off the fleece that was protecting it.

This whole area was looking a bit rough before I moved in with a broken meter box, rotten trellis and gates and lots of weeds and moss. Because it’s sheltered it is hard to keep moss free. The fence I painted is already cover in verdigris again. I want to replace the hanging basket brackets and garage door. My favourite bit is the festoon lights.

The next bit is the garage. This has seen better days. There’s a narrow path besides it that goes up to the steps up to the patio. Either side has another path. It was along the low wall here I panted the new hedge. And it’s still be alive which is more than I can say for the Clematis I planted last year. I’ve bought a new one but I want to put some time in improving the soil before I plant it. The new log store is here and overlooking this part of the garden is my new weather vane. I planted wall flower seeds down the gap between the path and the garage and plants have come up and they do have buds.

The patio is York stone. Some of the slabs are loose. It has boarders all round. This is where I have planted a lot of plants but there’s still plenty of gaps. I have planted some bulbs but I need to plant a lot more. There are two smaller pots with Agapanthus in them. The two bigger dragon pots still need planting. I still haven’t taken out the wooden table and chairs for here out of the garage. There’s a line of pleached beeches that go along the left hand fence. I’d like to plant some on the right hand side too but they are really expensive.

So far this year most of my effort gone into the lawn. I aerated it and scarified it to pull out the moss. Today after cutting it, I applied a feed. After the lawn is the rose garden. I fed these earlier this week as well. There’s a small cobbled area I installed leading to the dry garden. I’d like to put an arch over this, to train climbing roses over. I’ve seen one I like. I might get my carpenter to make one if I can’t find one the right size.

I recently planted out my old toilet in the dry garden. The dry garden was my big project last year and all the plants are thriving. I was a little unsure how well they would do, as I have no idea what the soils like under the weed membrane. The box plant in the planter is drying but it was only a cheap plant from B&M. Plants never do well in that planter. It’s too small. I’ve bought lots of pebbles for this area. I also keep picking them up places and bringing them home. I want some large ones. Ideally I’d like festoon lights for here as well. There’s some gorgeous scented Jasmine by the door into the Out House which needs a trellis. I also planted a large Wisteria. There another seating area here. There’s a large clump of bluebells which have escaped from next door which I am trying to encourage and lots of wild violas.

Behind the Out House there is only my new water butt, which the newly installed gutters drain into. I want to get a compost bin. I need to plant out the pots and hanging baskets over the next month or so. Another job on my list is to paint the planks on my bench. This was repaired for me so after I moved in but the paint on the new planks is coming off. I haven’t had this resprayed yet like the rest of the patio furniture. There an old fence panel I need to rid of. Basil likes sharpening his claws on it. The pallet from the bathroom sanitary ware is still littering the courtyard. Again this is being used as a scratching post. I have a large pot of Cat Nip on the window sill that I grow for Basil. He just tends to sit on it, like a loaf in a baking tin.

I think my next project is going to be replacing the damaged fencing. At the moment I am topping up the bark on the boarders. I also need to get some feed for the two Azelas. They didn’t do very well last year because the soil is mainly clay.

I don’t really know what I am doing but I’m just trying to preserve what was here.