GARDENER'S WORD - IDEAS AND TIPS

 Not only am I starting to wake up after semi-hibernation but my garden is waking up too.  Here, high up on the Pennines, things can be a little slow but the last few weeks of mild weather have stimulated trees and plants into growth.  Yesterday, on my travels to visit an aunt, I saw a camellia and a magnolia in such magnificent bloom that I have never seen before.  They were huge and smothered in colour.  Moreover, a sure sign of good weather is that lots of the seeds that I have in pots in my home, covered in plastic, are germinating.  Already the seeds that I dug out of a butternut squash, which I bought from Sainsburys's, grown in Argentina, have germinated.  The pumpkin and courgettes have germinated, as have a couple of  tomato 'Gardeners' Delight' seeds.  I shall still be growing Tumbling Tom, as I did last year (see below) but this year I have bought a yellow version too.  I am waiting on the sweet peppers and Ogen melon no...

Now it is July, I am reaping the benefits of my garden.  The tomatoes are ripening, the pick-and-come-again type lettuce are wonderful.  The strawberries, though not abundant, are delicious.  The herbs are growing well and faster than I can eat them.   I am still awaiting the runner beans to appear although there are plenty of flowers. I had a tetanus jab last week.  It's a must for gardeners as tetanus is carried in the soil.  Falling over near a rose got me good and skewered and that was a very sharp reminder to get my tetanus jab redone! 

The other night, at midnight, two hedgehogs visited the grass area in front of my bungalow.  These little creatures are excellent for keeping slugs at bay so they can come around the back and visit my garden any time - just don't bring your fleas with you, please!

You might have seen the post on this website where I showed how I make hanging baskets.  We are now into July which is the peak time in the garden, I think.  Here are the hanging baskets in all their glory.  I have recently, however, found it necessary to clip back some of the violas and petunias and they were trying to take over the show.  Can't have that, girls.

My roses are coming along famously, despite the wind and lack of rain.  Princess Alexandra of Kent, a relatively new rose to the David Austin collection, is just brilliant.  Although it is a bush rose, it could, by the look of it, be trained as a short climber.  The white clematis, Arctic Queen, is only a short specimen, reaching about 6ft in all. However, the flowers, as you can see by the photo below, are as big as my hand.

The lovely long spells of summery weather with sunshine and little rain, has had its effect on my garden. The roses are loving it, with a little help from my watering can. The lawn, however, is being temperamental. The lack of rain seems to have encouraged the weeds to try and get the upper hand and while my lawn is still green (and many public places have brown lawns now) it is not as it should be. We had a heavy downpour of rain the other evening and there must be leaf blockage in the guttering as the rain came over the top in waterfalls, almost wrecking one of the hanging baskets.  Looking up is not the best for people like me with vertigo and you would have laughed at me standing under a waterfall, struggling to get the hanging basket down and away from the deluge.  I was drenched, and covered with bits of compost off the plants.  The things I do for love of my garden.  So far, the tomatoes are doing brilliantly.  Hope they ripen.

Lazy days are here and I now have the perfect aid to laziness - a hammock swing.  It even flattens into a double bed.  How's that for pure decadence? Garden hammock swing with canopy I also now have stepping stones as I didn't want too much wear and tear on my lawn.  A perfect lawn is a must for me.  It irritates me a bit that my lawn edges are not, yet, straight.  I tried to get them perfect but there is still so much stone in the ground that there wasn't much chance.  In time though; in time.   Garden hammock swing with canopy Garden hammock swing with canopy

Today has been a bit rainy and dull but now a wind has picked up.  I bought a mini-greenhouse yesterday where I have put my pots with young pumpkin, butternut squash, lettuce, sweet peppers, and assorted herbs, out of the dismal rain.  Rain is good but not to the point where plants start to drown in the rain-saturated soil, or mildew and botrytis can take a hold.  Below, my new mini-greenhouse - it is very tiny, only about 2ft x 1ft x 5ft high (60cm x 30cm x 150cm high), yet there are four shelves.  It can hold quite a lot and, apparently, is an award winner.  Nice thing is if you don't have use for it all year long, you can pack it up and put it away in winter or even use it throughout winter and pack it up in warmer months.  Whatever works for you. Strawberries, below, are coming on but they desperately need some sun.  The lawn is growing like crazy and too wet to mow.  At the side of the strawberries, I have tubs with mixe...

Recently I bought extra herbs for my garden. The curly parsley that I bought earlier in the year has taken off so much that I have had to repot it into a large pot and I have used quite a bit of it already! The apple mint is doing well. I planted that in a large terracotta pot that had lost its bottom to the frost! I sank the pot into the garden border and that should stop the mint spreading. Mint in a terracotta pot Like I say, I bought extra herbs.  One is coriander (see photo below).  Although many think it is used just for spicy Indian dishes, it is also popular in South America where they use it in 'sopa' - soup to us.  I also bought chives.  The last lot I bought didn't seem to be doing too well.  It would seem that Alfie, my Ragdoll cat, likes chives.  I found him chewing the tops off the old one.  This new one is not to be shared!  Coriander I bought a plant sold as a Oriental salad herb called Mizuna.  Its...

My garden is, or I hope it will be, a haven filled with the heavenly smell of roses and lavender, and now I have a couple of dianthus (commonly called 'pinks' whether they are pink or not!) too. They are the modern pinks which have such a sweet perfume. Some of the more modern hybrids and carnations have lost their fragrance as breeders sought the perfect bloom. However, fortunately for gardeners, breeders are now trying to create blooms with fragrance once more. Hallelujah!  Dianthus 'Mrs Sinkins' Dianthus 'Doris' I only bought a couple as they are very easy to propagate by cuttings.  I bought my favourites that I have grown before: a white Pink called 'Mrs Sinkins'; and a pale and very well known pink Pink called Doris. They are hardy perennials with a lovely silver leaf.

At last the tomatoes are showing signs of fruit despite the rather cool weather, rain, and the strong breeze which seems a common event where I live. The runner beans, because of the cool weather, are onto a slow start but they are on their way.  Here's hoping that better weather is on the way too. Meanwhile, inspector Alfie, the Ragdoll Cat, is on border patrol.  

Today we have rain but the garden is loving it.  The new lawn is growing so well now that I can almost see it grow.  It is starting to thicken up with regular mowings and soon there will be no bald patches.  I have seeded those areas again, just in case! Lavender and roses I have new additions to my garden lavender - Munstead.  I already have the old English version and the leaves smell lovely when you brush past them.  Buds are forming on the roses.  Lavender and roses - the perfect combination. The strawberry and tomato plants have embryo fruit on them.  All I have to do is get to the ripened fruit before the birds do.  Alfie, my cat, is keeping a careful watch over them.

Yesterday I put together my hanging baskets and I thought I would share with you the way I do mine.  Hanging baskets with bacopa planted in the sides   I like to use the old-fashioned kind of basket and even though my baskets have a flat base, I still like to sit them on a pot.  This adds to stability and helps when planting the side plants.  I put the basket on a table as this saves having to bend over.  I have two types of basket: one type is metal and has wide spaces between the bars; the other is plastic and the spaces are narrower.  While the wide spacing allows easier insertion of plants in the sides, it does permit the plastic to bulge but this should not be a problem.  The narrower spacing, however, makes it harder to insert the plants but holds the compost in the container more firmly! Before I start, I  undo at least one of the chains .  This makes things a lot easier later on.  Then I line the basket with a ...

Yesterday, I had two more hanging baskets put up and two troughs under the kitchen window. I can hardly wait to fill them full of the lovely plants I have bought for them. However, at this time of year, in this northern part of the UK, it is too easy to be lulled into a sense of false security. There is still the risk of night frosts and the containers will need protection for a couple of weeks yet. I usually buy trailing lobelia for my baskets and tubs.  My particularly favourite lobelia is 'Sapphire' (which is a beautiful blue) though I have also bought a white variety this year for contrast.  A hanging basket can be filled with just lobelias and look magnificent.  Or even a hanging basket of violas. Violas Violas look so pretty in tubs and hanging baskets as they make lots of flowers all the time, and they smell so sweet!  Did you notice that?  Above is a picture of a tub I planted up a couple of years ago. Fuchsias are wonderf...

I must have spring fever.  Yesterday, I went to the local garden centre to buy a hoe and a springtine rake.  I got both but I also bought a load of annuals suitable for the hanging baskets and tubs: violas (yellow, purple, and yellow/purple); petunias (F1 hybrid Sunshine); dahlias (green leaf mixed); lobelia (white; and Sapphire, a dark blue); impatiens (lilac coloured, commonly known as Buzy Lizzy); and mimulus (F1 hybrid mixed).  They are all far too tender to go outside, so my breakfast room (below) has now become a greenhouse during the cold late evenings and nights.  The reason for this particular selection of annuals is that they all tolerate partial shade.  My hanging baskets are on a more-or-less East facing wall and only get sunshine in the mornings.  Violas for hanging baskets My young Japanese maple (above) (Acer Palmatum 'Garnet') that I bought recently for half the price I see it in most garden centres, looks splendid...

I could hardly believe, as I drove along to meet a friend today, that it was only 4 degrees.  No wonder my runner bean seeds planted in the garden show no signs of germinating.  Painting by Kathy Chester  (external link)  I have butternut squash seeds (Harrier F1 hybrid) in pots on an indoors window bottom and all I can see is soggy compost in a misted up bag.  I think they were supposed to germinate in 7-10 days. 

It has been an awfully long winter here in West Yorkshire, and the garden plants are only just starting to wake up.  I had to pay a gardener to dig the borders for me as they were rock hard, and I am waiting for the lawn to establish as it was necessary to cover the old lawn with topsoil and reseed (a quick way of dealing with it without all the turbulence of digging over the old lawn). I want my garden to be predominantly a rose garden, full of delightful blooms and an exquisite fragrance, and I have several climbing roses, ramblers, and small shrub roses planted around the borders.  Wherever I live, I always grow the climber, New Dawn.  It has a rich and delicate fragrant, flowers profusely, is disease resistant and can tolerate shade.  New Dawn climbing rose Last year, I had a tall fence erected and it will make a superb place for all the climbers and ramblers, not just the roses.   I also have a new kind of white and cream honeysuckle, highly fragran...