I've taken SO many photos of my garden this year, some I'm saving for future posts, some are simply happy moments which I'm sharing today. Since getting my cutting garden up and running three years ago it's provided me with so much more than just beautiful flowers. This year it's abundance has been a currency for connection and kindness. Whilst lockdown has been lonely at times, sharing my activity in the garden and chatting online with so many like minded souls and selling my flower jars within my local community has been the BEST thing to come out of these strange days. I have had the pleasure of swapping plants with my neighbours, exchanging wise words and even the most beautiful smelling candle for my homegrown bounty. I love how simple jam jars of flowers have inspired so many to get growing and adding flowers to their own gardens. As someone who struggles with their self worth, my flowers have shown me what I'm capable of and I'm excitedly drawing up plans to turn the whole of the back section of the garden into a cutting space to sell more cut flowers next year.
The biggest success this year has to be my incredible Ammi (above), towering tall, it filled and hid a really harsh new fence. Autumn sown and rather neglected during the winter - it forgave me and produced clouds of white flowers for months. I have taken out two thirds of it as it suffered so much wind damage recently and I needed the bed space for cosmos, dahlia's and some unlabeled plants! It's a firm favourite and is on my plant list forever more.
Another great success has been my wild 'meadow', it was simply the bare patch where the compost bin once stood. I added a seed mix in March and has done its thing ever since. A few tips if you fancy doing similar would be to mix your seed in with sand and sow in a grid pattern so you know what's growing should be growing. Secondly once freshly sown, cover with chicken wire or mesh, cats and small children take no care in freshly planted areas - this is my preferred method of keeping them away. This would be great if you have no time to garden but want to look at a flower filled space. This patch isn't big it's probably 80 x 120cm so you don't need a lot of space to get growing.
Talking of meadows, I've kept a lot of self seeded grasses around the edges of flower beds. It's looked really romantic as the grasses this year have been beautiful. However, I went in hard at the weekend as the grasses have passed their best and removed a few big clumps, they were housing too many slugs and snails which have been rampant this year. I have lost a lot of small plants to these greedy beasts, I can't lose any more.
The hydrangea bed I dug in the winter of 2019 has really some into it's own. They loved our soggy winter and have really started to grow healthy and strong. I cannot wait for this bed to become fully established, it will be magnificent in a few years. I've been adding some climbing roses to fill the fence, they were really slow to get going but in recent weeks have started to flourish, as they are climbing I think they will flower next year on this years growth, again I can't wait. This bed looks really gorgeous first thing when the light amoungst the tree creates the most beautiful shadows, it's a favourite spot to stop and ponder in the morning.
With my own "second wave' of flowers due (dahlia's, cosmos, zinnia's and sunflowers are coming) I'm looking forward to seeing what the second half of summer brings. Like I said earlier, my plans for next year are grand (but scalable), I'm taking note of the quiet weeks so I can plan flowers to fill gaps and working out how to grow in bigger quantities (new greenhouse, maybe?!). If you don't already, you can follow me on Instagram where I share more of what I'm growing. Have a great weekend. x
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