Thursday, August 25, 2016

Garden at the beginning of August 2016

Still getting caught up, but at least it is still August!

Lawn at the beginning of th month, with a baby for scale. LO really enjoys playing in the garden, although it's a bit more difficult now she's crawling as it's hard to get on with anything before she has to be removed from somewhere she's not meant to be!


Apples ripening on the standard tree. There are several on it this year, and they seem to be ripening slightly earlier than usual.

Lots of apples on the espalier tree. This one is further behind the standard, and produced a lot of apples, which I was a bit late thinning so they are all still rather small and green looking. I have hung CDs up already in the hope of protecting the crop from the squirrels this year...


Looking over the raised bed by the Golden rod and Physocarpus. These have grown really tall this year with all the wet weather earlier in the year.


A new plant! This is Salvia 'Joy', which was a Christening present for LO. I had fun deciding where to plant it for her. There was also a cardboard container shaped like a hand grenade which was a "wildflower bom", which we're going to have fun throwing into the border later in the year!


And the first lot of raspberries are ripe. Since then we've had another whole sieve full, as well as all the ones LO ate in the garden.


My patio containers. I'm pleased with them this year, especially as there's little I have really done to maintain them.


I held an open garden event and coffee morning two weeks ago, which was a little stressfull to organise with a baby around, but went really well. It was fun to show off the garden to the thirty people who came, and I raised £170 for charity!

Thursday, August 04, 2016

Garden at the beginning of July 2016

OK, so July ended up being rather busy and, despite my best intentions, I didn't get round to blogging at all. Oops. I haven't yet taken the August pictures, but here are the July ones to get it started.

One lawn, with LO playing.


My newly arranged pots on the patio. I am really pleased with how these are looking now.


I cheated and bought ready-planted hanging baskets, having worked out that buying two hanging baskets (as we didn't already own any) plus the plants to go in them would be more expensive and a bit of a hassle with limited time available. The idea is then to re-use the baskets in future years. The water butt is getting a lot of use now the weather has turned warm. We've actually managed to completely empty it once already, even though I got the biggest one we could fit in.


The sedums are beginning to flower, and are really popular with the bees.

 I had to thin the apples on the espaliered tree as so many had grown, as you can see below. Last year we lost all of them to squirrels anyway...


So pretty, we've had this Anthemis tinctoria E.C. Buxton for about five years, and I usually put a plant support in for the flowers, but didn't get round to it this year. It looks so pretty mingled with the sedum below! Think I might do the same thing next year.


The raspberries are growing well, and have now almost got ripe berries on them.


And the rhubarb went completely crazy in the warm weather with all the rain earlier on!

Phew, July done. Now I really must get round to getting the August pictures taken...