Garden geekery

For the first two or three years of living where we do I paid little attention to our little back garden except for putting washing out on the line or hacking at the hideous Russian vine that would threaten to overtake the whole patch.  But as I became more interested in the allotment and growing veg my general interest in gardening developed. We got rid of the vine and the pointless pond and paid attention to the amount of light the garden got, where the shady bits were, which plants naturally seeded in the garden and flourished.

It's not a South facing garden but it does get light from about 10am - 3pm each day, ferns and foxgloves do well and it's at this time of year that I love watching the ferns uncurl.  Ferns are so jurassic, the leaves uncurl from egg like pods and develop vivid, vivid green foliage which sway in the breeze.  I love them and have been adding more to the garden year on year.  In the morning I stand bleary eyed at the kitchen window and check how far the leaves have uncurled and what shade of green they are that day.

Garden geekery

Well the week of hell finally ended (at work I was covering four people's workload on top of my own) and this weekend it feels like all I have done is sleep which hasn't left a lot of time for much else.  But this morning I did go to the car boot sale and pick up some plants for the garden and later this afternoon MoMa dropped off some plants she had picked up for us!  (I was asleep when she called so didn't get to say thank you in person, sleep really was a major theme of this weekend.)

MozzyMr and I live in rented accommodation so there isn't much we can do to the structure of the garden.  In an ideal world we would change the patio tiles and repair or completely change the raised beds.  This summer I decided to finally make the space our own, we have a well established lavender, hebe, and a fantastic acer that MoMa donated to us when they moved.  These three have set the colour palette for the garden so I'm looking mostly at smokey blues, purples and sage greens....

Mewster exploring the garden next to the hydrangea I picked up from Aldi for a bargain £5! 

The lavender was given to us by MoMa, apparently it never really flourished in their garden but seems to like it in ours.  It was a quarter of the size when we put it in about four years ago.  This bed has been completely taken over by foxgloves, not that I'm complaining!  I have no idea where they have seeded from as we never planted any foxgloves but every year more and more keep popping up.  I stopped trying to keep them at bay and just enjoy the foliage, next year these should all flower which will be amazing.

The plant in the middle at the back with the purple flowers (I forget what it's called) was a purchase from the car boot sale this morning, next to it on the right are  Granny's Bonnets.  In front we have another car boot sale purchase, the small fern, that has been in the ground for about a month now and seems to like it's new home.  Finally on the right next to the gnome candles is a thyme that MoMa gave us, it had been on her stall as part of a display and had seen better days, to begin with it looked like it was dying off, I was ready to dig it out and replace it but it rallied and seems to be doing quite well.  I don't know whether to dig it up and over winter it or fleece it when it starts to get cold again, any suggestions?

I love these planters that MoPa put up on the back wall for us.  Originally there was a russian vine across that back wall.  I hated that damn thing it was completely out of control, the landlady would comment on how much she loved it but we decided to dig it out, it's growth throughout the year was ridiculous and as she didn't have to care for it we decided the best decision  was to be rid of it and replaced with these.  Over the years they have had a number of different plants in but my favourites are always geraniums.  These white geraniums formed part of the selection MoMa brought around for us this afternoon.

This is my non-rockery, rockery collection.  Ignore the Walls Ice Cream container for the time being it has some munched up primroses which need to come out and be replaced.  To the right of that is a geranium purchased for a bargain £1 at a car boot sale approximately three weeks ago.  In the white pot to the right are the succulents that I bought in France.  In the front row (left hand side) are three little house leeks that I bought at the car boot sale this morning for 50p each!  They look a bit small and lost in that pot but will grow into it!  The rest of the plants were the ones I bought in France back in June.

I'm building up a fern collection under the clematis, this narrow raised bed hardly gets any sun and the fern on the left loves it there so I figured I shouldn't fight it and just keep adding more to the bed!