Gardening - April 18th

I have ordered mail order plants to fill the beds. Luck had it that the first delivery arrived in the middle of the only week I will be away this spring. We planted everything yesterday but the helleborus (Niger) were looking a bit limp and slightly mouldy. The geranium (Blue Johnson) were quite difficult to work out having been grown from cuttings: it was clear which were roots but not obvious where the shoots were. Let's hope that both survive. We also watered with the cans (hosepipe ban is effective). It took A, O and I, 4 plus hours. We also planted nasturtium which had been grown from seed in the stone pot. We got some free Dahlias and Begonias in bulb form which O planted in the middle of the philadelphus.

Spring window boxes

The window boxes were abundant this spring.

Gardening Session - March 25th

We had a good fine warm day for gardening on 25th. Around 12 - 15 people joined in and we were helped by Chris from Greenspace.

We achieved the following:
- weeded and turned the soil in the two NW beds.
- planted a ring of pansies and 3 St John's Wort in the round bed
- planted 30 lavender (a further 30 planted later in the week) and 3 philadelphus (mock orange, which looked a bit lame on arrival from the garden centre) in the oval bed
- removed ivy from the oval bed near the entrance.
- planted a clemetis on W border to climb the dead tree
- planted a climbing rose on the other dead standing tree. This was removed 2 days later but a new one replanted within the week
- we also planted a semi circle of bee friendly summer flowering bulbs (spicata Blazing Star) in the rose beds and some crocosmia in the SW border

A big thank you to all the gardeners and to the encouraging comments from neighbours.