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Showing posts from March, 2011

The Year of the Garden

Herbs at Sheepdrove Organic Farm I walked the long way home by the canal yesterday just because it was there, all narrow boats, sunlight and ducklings (ahhh!) and blackthorn blossom blowing into the water. Soon I am going to the official launch of the National Gardens Scheme Yellow book, a genteel and pleasant occasion and I am looking forward to seeing my NGS friends. It is perverse. The more there is to blog about, the less time there is to do so and vice versa. On the work front there are places to go and people to see and on the garden front it is all getting going in a very exciting fashion. My car has very rudely gone bang, which means that my garden centre list is starting to get slightly out of control. I try and exercise extreme restraint at all times, but right now I want to get pelletted chicken manure and two Lonicera fragrantissima and a cardoon and a small shrub rose and a couple of dark orange Erysimum and some candelabra primulas and an evergreen shrubby thing to

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.