#;; will leave this up for about a week so feel free to get planty! <3< /div> Explore tagged Tumblr posts

[rafaelcb]

WHO: Rafael & OPEN.

WHERE: Lavender Lane.

WHEN: Houseplant Day (January 10).

This was not his usual haunt on a Friday afternoon. Rafael would normally spend his time at the coffee shop, or at home on the couch, listening to Sinatra and reading over case work, flipping through possible listings. But... he had been razzed one too many times about how there was no greenery in his office, and when he saw the flyer for houseplant day at Lavender Lane, he had made the decision to do something new. "I'm never going to keep this alive," he half muttered, realizing the person next to him could probably hear what he was saying, but... it wasn't untrue.

[gospelaccordingsam]

Hello from the garden! It’s an absolutely gorgeous evening so I thought it would be totally work dragging my imac desktop computer outside and then using my long extension lead that I use to mow the grass just so I can sit outside in this gorgeous 21C weather! GORGEOUS!

So, let’s get started.

Iris and Alliums

Last year we had these irises out on the 31st May, and the red rose at the top of the garden was in bloom. this week they opened on schedule, but the rose has only just started to break bud! Which is almost two weeks behind last year!

I’m planning on moving these Irises as they are in a weird place in the top bed by themselves and they should be with their friends in a nice clump! (but I love how they pair well with this Allium!)

Salad

I don’t know why it took until the age of 25 to realise I could grow my own salad leaves and never have to buy a lettuce again. I’m not sure if it’s all that cheaper… actually, I haven’t bought lettuce since February… so maybe I’ve saved £6… at most… I guess… It’s just really nice and so easy and you can really grow any lettuce anywhere!

This is my resowing of Swish Chard for this year as last years plants are going to be a little tired this year, but also spinach! I love spinach! Possibly the best salad leaf! steam it, eat it fresh from the garden! a super food!

Anyway, Get a pot, put some compost in there, stick your seeds in (maybe keep them inside in the cool so they germinate) and then stick em outside and you’re done!

Berries for EVERYONE!

  I have a terrible habit of eating all the berries before Sarah gets to them… however, in my defence I basically live outside during the summer months and  look out to the garden from my office… sooo…. who can blame me!?

Anyway, this year should see a bumper crop of Raspberries, strawberries and blueberries!

Planty

the name for our elderflower comes from this sketch from 30 rock:

We’ve had this little guy since he was this big:

This is when Sarah brought him home from the eisteddfod and the view from my old bedroom window… that was a real transformation garden from a gravel bed to a little garden.

Fun fact: The rose and fuchsia are in my current garden but that lavender didn’t survive the move!

This week after about 3 years, planty is blooming!

He’s getting bigger and bigger, (You can see him in the top right corner of the garden behind everything!)

You can also see the Angelica, which Sarah bought after learning that it can be used as a natural sweetener….this morning at breakfast my dear sweet housemate said ‘I’m waiting for it to bloom before I use it’… and I replied ‘that is it in bloom’, ‘well, that’s very underwhelming’ replied Sarah after a brief pause.

So we are either going to use planty to make elderflower or elder berry cordial (which was the original idea when we got him!)

    My peas are looking good too!

These have been out here since April as they are a pretty hardy, I noticed during the winter one of the rogue seeds I planted in a daffodil pot germinated and started to grow well until the snow wiped it out, so I think it’s well worth starting them off inside during march and then throwing them out when it’s not planning on snowing, they’ll take a frost or a big of cold!

Final Update: Chamomile

I’ve been listening to music while doing this update so I feel like this whole blog is going to seem weird and fragmented!

Last year I saw on Gardeners’ World that you need to attract hoverflies to kill aphids by growing plants with small tight flowers, well it worked and I have been living a wonderful pretty much aphid free life ever since.

While I was buying fennel seeds (thats the small tight flowers part of this story) I also saw a packet of chamomile and thought I’d give that a try, well dear reader, I’m gunna make some tea… and then I’m gunna spill the T… something something something drag race glitter sequins wiiiiiiiig. (See I’m cool and down with the kidzzzz.)

It’s been very successfully this year and I’m hoping to get lots of flowers from these plants over the course of the summer.

Long Read: My favourite part of the Garden, so far.

Although this garden is only two years old there is one space that I’m happy with, it works, it doesn’t need to be changed or fiddled with, I would never say I’m 100% certain that I don’t need to move anything, but I think everything is in a good place.

The patch of garden right next to the patio is done. I don’t need to do anything to it. it’s perfect!

It’s where all my original plants are that I moved from our old house to here, while making a dirty mess in my car on the way over but they have produced well enough that I think it was totally worth it… also I seem to have a full bag of rubble in my car every week now, so I tend not to notice it as much.

but this section looks perfect, it’s in the row of tulips, so it has tulips in spring, daffodils, then the alliums take over, then the iris and geranium followed by the lavender, hardy fuchsia and the rose. Maxine will fill in over the summer I’m sure and be a beautiful little ball in time for winter structure.

This section is perfection! it does exactly what I want it to do and I don’t have to do anything to it.

Note: My neighbour just came outside and said hello to Brenda the cat, so I was just completely distracted by whatever just happened, but ‘meowy paws’ is my new favourite nickname for Bren.

Anyway, back to perennials. I was about 90% certain that the little fuchsia was finished after the snow but it’s slowly coming back, hardy fuchsias are usually the last thing to break and get going, I’ve found. they tend to take a while to grow new shoots and I have definitely been very guilty of thinking one had died because it was just so lifeless in late April. I remember last year being very paranoid about this one and cutting it really hard back when it started growing because I thought it was struggling. they are slower plants than the average perennial when it comes to getting back to business, so when it comes to hardy fuchsias I’d say ‘Give it time!’.

The other factors about this corner of the garden that work are the irises, and more notably that they are in a clump. Never underestimate the power of a clump. It sounds stupid and you’d like ‘well they’ve given me 12 bulbs, I’m going to space them out, I don’t want to put them in a sad little clump.’ but it does so much more in the garden than one or two solitary plants spotted about the place. I, of course, am guilting of doing this as well… I mean, it’s economic to want to spread the colour around surely?! And in the winter when I was putting in my Alliums I thought ‘oh I spread them around the garden, which I think works well but this winter when I plant more I’m going to do a drift across the big boarder and into the wildflower bed so it looks a bit more intentional and less like there was a mix up at the bulb factory.

That being said Alliums look best as a ‘casual clump’, poking out as a glorious ‘middle story’. I think their purple heads above an impatient sea of fresh green growth makes the whole garden seem positively Italian…  I’m not 100% sure if that’s even what an Italian city garden would look like… but I am wearing a giant straw hat and have drunk enough wine in this garden to know that when I step out of my kitchen door on a warm summers day, I’m on vacation!

for this spot at this time I’m happy, I think it’ll fill in and look glorious all summer long, but a garden is a process. I think DIY shows where they makeover a garden in a day are a bit silly because if you plant for your garden to look good on the day then it’s going to look good right there and then but maybe not in spring or late summer. In my garden all the work has been done in winter, putting in bulbs, mulching soil (with varying success, I know) and sowing seeds were all done during the cold months so that when we got lovely weather I could shout at my garden ‘Go go go!’

So now, in May, I’m sort of done…. nothing drastic needs to happen… the path has been moved, all my seeds were sown, plants bought, supports put in… I could probably go on holiday for two weeks like I did last year and miss everything.

This part of the garden has really grown and changed as we’ve gone on, mainly through Sarah deciding to put things places. so the parsley was just thrown in ground as a little stump of a plants with very little chance of surviving and is now quite a good bit of winter interest, even if we don’t use that much parsley in our cooking, it still looks pretty good. the same goes for the lemon balm, which quite frankly, should not be there for how aggressive it is! but, for now, It’s all under control, all these plants fighting each other in this little part of my garden are just where I wanted them. now I only have to do the rest of the garden! But I’m absolutely certain that different patches will (not wanting to sound to into plants but) ‘reveal’ themselves to me. And by this I mean, I’ll look at them one day and either think ‘oh that worked out well, great, I don’t need to mess with that’ or I’ll have a vision of what I want the section of garden to look like and it’ll all come together in my mind!

Well, wish me luck with that.

  See ya next time reader! (and by that I mean my one reader, hi mother!)

      Blogging From The Garden Hello from the garden! It's an absolutely gorgeous evening so I thought it would be totally work dragging my imac desktop computer outside and then using my long extension lead that I use to mow the grass just so I can sit outside in this gorgeous 21C weather!