Making A Garden Good

A fluffy bud of Magnolia x loebneri 'Leonard Messel'

It has been an absolutely cracking weekend for gardening. Roses propped, check. Trees pruned, check. Seeds sown, yup. Little hide built for dustbin, uh huh.

As part of the plan to divide the back garden into different parts and create a sense of journey and surprise (TM), I have got a new garden arch to go across the path just the other side of the apple tree. When things dry up a bit I will paint it my regulation shade of soft aqua but I have got the plants in anyway – a box ball provides a punctuation point at the base of the arch and the beginning of the border and rose ‘Ena Harkness’ will romp up it, adding to the hot colour scheme in that particular bed. Next to that I put in the Hemerocallis ‘Burning Embers’ that I impulse bought, along with Magnolia x loebneri 'Leonard Messel', at Waddesdon Plant Centre the other night while attending the launch of the regional Berkshire and Buckinghamshire NGS booklet. Was good actually, but I hadn’t got half way home before I was asking myself why I hadn’t got a whole lot more new and exciting things while I was at it.

....Which is why I went on a clematis bender on Saturday. Ok, so I had also already got the little purple Clematis alpina ‘Frankie’, but then I passed a man in the market with lots of pretty things on a Dutch trolley, and Clematisisisis ‘Niobe’, montana ‘Rubens’, ‘Madame Julia Correvon’, Etoile de Violette’ and ‘Multi Blue’ (and a Jasmine Beesianum) just kind of fell into a bag (in a ‘crikey, better get back to the cashpoint’ sort of way).

So that’s the vertical gardening sorted for a bit....

Currently watching : Rastamouse. Makin' a Bad Ting Good is a fine rule for life, and Da Easy Crew playing reggae when the work is through suits me. (Not so keen on Ice Popp though).

Thanks to the Rasta Rodent, Da Easy Crew and President Wensley Dale, things are pretty crucial round here. It probably has its applications in the garden too: ‘Hey Miss Jekyll, me lovin’ those crucial herbaceous borders’; ‘Chelsea Flower Show goin’ to be totally crucial this year’ etc. I think this may take a bit more work....but me gettin' there. Irie.

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