Garden Favourites

Some of my favourite flowers are in bloom now, or in bud, waiting to burst forth. There are plenty of Dicentra throughout the garden.

I love the way this one is mingling with the Chives and Aquilegias.

And the Aquilegias, my favourite garden flower, are everywhere. And I do mean EVERYWHERE! These are Clementine Purple, a really lovely variety for contrasting with other brighter colours. 

I have so many, I've kind of lost touch with the names of each one, but I know there are Winky Blue and Whites and Black Barlow around somewhere too.

As anyone who has them in their garden will know, they are prolific self-seeders. I love spotting little patches of their new seedlings, and really don't mind that you never know how the flower on the grown plant will eventually look. I love them all! 

Foxgloves and Poppies are getting ready to bloom, with the promise of glorious colour.

And the Alliums dotted all over the garden are emerging from their jackets.  I added some white ones late last year, so I'm keen to see how they'll look.

As far as work in the garden goes, well, I've been really busy again. We had a few very warm days so I got all the jobs done that I didn't know needed doing until I really studied certain areas.  Some of the Ferns in the  shady area got trimmed back now their new fronds are emerging. The larger Dryopteris ferns were done about two months ago as they looked messy and tend to unfurl earlier. Underneath some of the dead leaves, I was thrilled to find a self seeded baby fern.

It may look like a lot of bare space in front here, but when the fern leaves fully unfurl, they drop and cover this whole area.

I added a new Astilbe, just behind the foxgloves and poppies here.

And a Brunnera, which I love for it's delicate Forget-Me-Not type flowers and variegated leaves.  It should like it here as the soil is  moist in front of the wildlife ponds.

I also think I've solved the climber dilemma I had in THIS post. I've planted Clematis Special Occasion to scramble up the shed, and an evergreen Honeysuckle Henryi to twine around the Lilac. That may take some time to get going though, as I managed to snap off the main growing stem while planting it!

One other purchase was for the back wall. This was exposed when the Leylandii were chopped down a few years ago and since then I've been trying to clothe it in plants to cover up it's ugliness. The Pyracantha has done brilliantly along with Clematis Pixie, and the Ivy is now getting a good foothold and has started to creep upwards. I spotted this pretty Solanum 'Glasnevin' in the garden centre though, and thought it would be perfect to fill the left hand side. The little flowers are so pretty. If it's happy here, it should spread out nicely.

I also did some rather back breaking digging, moving my large Bay from one side of the back area to the other. It was sitting just in front of the Raspberries before and they were threatening to overtake it, so it's now in a new home with only a Hardy Geranium for company at present. I gave it a good trim too, and it's looking much healthier.

A whole new patch in the garden was added too, taking inspiration from my visit to KEW GARDENS. Can you guess what I planted? All will be revealed in my next post.

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Evolution

If there's one thing that draws me into a gardening blog or website, it's photos that show how a garden has changed and evolved over time. I love to see large areas of gardens, the heights and layers people achieve with planting and the combinations of plants, and then how it all blends into the garden as a whole. Without the aid of a helicopter, photographing mine in one go is impossible, not that it's big of course, but there are obstacles in the way. So I content myself with snapshots of areas, trying to capture the scene from different angles so I can see the changes throughout the seasons and throughout the years. Sometimes, the difference in just a fortnight is startling, and looking back over the years, it's amazing just how much has changed in my garden, and how much back breaking, hard work has gone into it.

There is so much lush green growth at the moment. The spring bulbs have mostly gone now, and the perennials are bursting forth.

You can see Clematis Pixie along the back wall here, climbing up the Pyracantha. It's an evergreen, has the most beautiful flowers and amazing scent. It's a real star in the garden at the moment. It's grown quite quickly in the couple of years since I bought it, and my hope is it will spread out all along this half of the wall.

My borrowed view of Hawthorn from the nature reserve is in full bloom. Soon, my garden will look like a churchyard after a wedding, with hawthorn confetti. 

I'm fine with this though, as it looks incredible and is currently housing a magpie nest. I've been watching the pair fly back and forth over the last few weeks with twigs, patiently building their new house, and hopefully, the eggs may now have been laid.

My bamboo sits in my shady area, along with masses of ferns, hardy geraniums and other perennials that don't appear to mind being kept in the dark for a lot of the day.

It's turned into quite the monster, and every year it just gets bigger and bigger! I adore watching it sway in the wind, it's quite mesmerising. I'm not so fond of the mess the leaves make when they drop though. There's a little work still to do in this area, as builders trampled on and destroyed some plants last year. 

My coldframe, which was on my patio until two years ago, sits against the shed now. Always bursting with pots of this and that, so many in fact, that they end up spilling over onto the garden. My Lilac next to it is in bud now. I'll be growing a climber up it this year, as the trunk is now quite bare. Any recommendations for this shady little corner? Preferably something evergreen that doesn't need pruning and will cover the shed wall too. 

I can hardly believe myself that the whole of the back wall here was covered in Leylandii a few years ago, until I decided enough was enough and had them removed. It made such a difference, as they came right up to the first lamp you can see here on the fence. I had to dig out hundreds of bindweed roots, improve the soil with compost and manure and resist from planting anything for 6 months. Torture I tell you! But it's now starting to pack out nicely. More work to fill in the gaps will commence soon.

Yikes! Were they really that big and ugly!! Good riddance to them!

The space here, in front of the shed is also new, having been planted up just last year. It's coming along rather nicely.

Last year, it looked like this. We had a garage that was falling down taken away. More space to play with :-)

I've put a lot of plants in that mirror those on the right side for a bit of uniformity, but I can never resist going a bit mad with plants that are new to me. Watch this space!

I've tried many things here, behind the shed on the left of the garden, that runs along the fence. It's been a vegetable patch, a jungle of plants and a twee little planting space. None have looked right, so my new plan, that began to evolve last year, was to create a triangular bed to the right (with the obelisk in), add a path immediately to the left of it, then pack this border out with my favourite perennials. 

I made a start last week by adding some young plants, the path will be added later in the year and I'll no doubt be tweaking the area throughout the year.

I hope you've enjoyed the little tour of my garden at the start of May. I'll be adding 'overview' photos of my garden regularly, so that even subtle changes will be remembered. You can compare how it looked on the 11th April by visiting my post HERE. 

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