New Year, new blog post, new garden plans
It’s 2023! Garden-wise January can be a bit of a grim month. Everything looks brown and soggy and the days are still very short and usually cold, offering far fewer opportunities to get outside and do anything more than tidying up fallen leaves or cut down decaying stalks. I do always get strangely excited about…
Cambo Walled Garden, August 2020
Photographs taken by me at Cambo Walled Garden, late August 2020.
Make your hens at home in the garden
Owning a flock of hens doesn’t have to mean bare lawns and patchy plants. Your chicken coop can be an eye-catching feature, or blend into the background – and you don’t have to sacrifice your lawn for your feathered friends either. Let’s have a look at how to keep chickens in the garden without compromising…
Wildflower Love ♥
This year I have set myself a casual challenge to learn to identify more wildflowers. When I say it’s a casual challenge, it’s one that has developed in part because of my natural curiosity about plants and in part through necessity. Garden visits have been almost impossible this spring and summer because of lockdown restrictions,…
Quadgrow trial – part 1
Let’s talk tomatoes. At the beginning of this year’s growing season I was lucky enough to be sent a Quadgrow planter, after spotting them at this year’s Garden Press Event in London (back when we are able to travel freely around the country – remember those days?!). I was really impressed with the set up…
A good year for the roses?
Roses are the quintessential country garden plant – they’re a symbol of royalty and romance, celebrated in art, and even flavour our food. For some, they’re an essential element of a good garden, while others find them old-fashioned or fussy. It’s true that some roses can demand a little extra care, but there are so…
The highs and lows of henkeeping
Keeping hens in your back garden is a glimpse into the good life, a step, albeit small, towards self-sufficiency. They might only provide your lunch and some ingredients for your next cake, but owning chickens allows one a slightly superior air in conversation. “Oh I never buy eggs any more, our girls provide them for…
Cosmos – out of this world!
No garden should be without cosmos and its heavenly flowers. After a bit of a slow start with these brightly-coloured blooms, I’ve become a convert, and now I sow them from seed every year to ensure I’ve got plenty of these cheery favourites to brighten up my borders. Cosmos bipinnatus are half-hardy annuals, which means,…
Get Into Grow Your Own
“Nothing tastes as good as home-grown!” – a familiar cry from allotment owners and keen gardeners everywhere. But is it true? And are you ready to find out for yourself? Why?There are many reasons why growing your own is a good thing to do – both for yourself, and for the environment. When you grow…
Garden Goodies @ GPE 2020
Last week I attended the Garden Press Event in London for the first time – this is an event organised to allow the horticulture industry to come together so that journalists can view the latest products, find out about new campaigns and generally share information and news. It was a whistlestop tour of all the…
Peat free compost
I was recently sent a couple of sample bags of peat-free compost from Westland* – in fact, they turned up shortly before Christmas – cue much head-scratching as I tried to work out what on earth kind of huge, heavy present had I forgotten about ordering… The two kinds are New Horizon All Plant compost…
Time to plan…
It’s winter, but it’s not cold. Little green shoots are appearing – but they’re too early. Hellebores are emerging, the witch hazel is blooming and we even have a couple of snowdrops almost fully out in the front garden. It’s SpringWinter – not cold enough to be properly winter but not light enough to be…
Where do ladybirds go in winter?
This is the question I’ve been asking myself lately. I’ve noticed more ladybirds than ever in my garden this year. They’ve popped up all over the place – in pots, under the bin lids, on doorframes, in the house, and – thankfully – on my plants, presumably feasting on any pests which would dare to…
September Stars
It seems I have a late summer garden – there’s more colour on show in September than there has been during the rest of the year. The front garden is currently showing off all its colours – yellows, pinks, peachy dahlias and flashes of reds from the crocosmia, roses and even a few second-flowering geums. …
Flower & Food Festival
This is one of the highlights of my gardening year – Dundee’s Flower and Food Festival. I go every year and really enjoy being in the midst of the best of what our area has to offer in terms of plants, produce and food. There are displays of beautiful plants and flowers, from amateurs, dedicated…
Learning lessons…
This summer I have been learning a few lessons. Not the book-reading kind – I’ve taken a break from horticulture studies as I decided that it would be madness to add this to the summer agenda of school holidays, parenting, working, enjoying the heatwave and almost constant watering. I plan to resume studies in September…
Playing the long game…
Gardening is a lesson in playing the long game. I’m a quick-fix, instant-gratification type of person, so my growing love of the garden has brought with it an appreciation for taking things a bit slower. For taking the long view and planning ahead for the same season, the next season, the next year, the next…
#TBT to Chelsea Flower Show 2018
As it’s Thursday, and I didn’t have the time to write about it at the time, here’s my own little summary of the joyous day I spent at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018! This was my first ever visit to the show and it’s fair to say I was excited. Very excited. The event lived…
May snapshot
As I suspected, with the coming of Spring is the waning of the blog. However, I would never judge another garden blogger for forsaking screen in favour of soil, so I hope you won’t judge me similarly! It’s now early June and I want the garden to stay as it is for a little while…
Spring has sprung…
…and my blog is suffering! But it’s a good sign – I’m blogging less because I’m spending more time in the garden. I have to – there are seedlings to prick out, beds to mulch, weeds to weed and plants to pot up. And it’s only going to get busier from here on in! Real…
Best kit – top 5
Well the weather is still deeply disappointing here. I look on Instagram and see photos of daffodils, anemones, primroses and even some tomatoes beginning to flower! And then I look out the window and see grey, brown, damp and a chicken coop slowly turning into s a swimming pool. I must keep reminding myself that…
Despite the snow…
It snowed again. The weather has once again put the brakes on any serious gardening activity this weekend, although I did manage to sow a few more flower seeds in the greenhouse while dodging the snow showers on Saturday. I also stepped out into the front garden for about 10 minutes to take some photos. …
The best laid plans…
I’m sitting indoors looking out at the sleety rain pummelling my garden, still pretty sodden from being covered in several inches of snow and the subsequent thaw. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. My plan for this week involved taking annual leave from work, getting lots of seeds pricked out, sowing more, mulching, digging,…
Shinrin-yoku: forest bathing
Tree-huggers and leaf lovers, come this way… After a week of house arrest due to the snow, then frantic work days catching up after the snow, plus too much talking, eating, drinking, thinking and social-media-ing I decided that the best and quickest way to feed my soul and enter recovery mode was a good solid…
Soulful Sunday
Just a little break from the usual garden-related chat to join in a new meme which has been started by The Mindful Gardener. She suggests sharing on your blog ‘anything that makes you feel emotional, warm and fuzzy, grateful, inspired, appreciative of the world around us’ and as I have experienced this in the past…
Houseplants
Blame it on the winter weather, blame it on Instagram, blame it on Jane Perrone and her brilliant On the Ledge podcast… Actually I think I have only myself to blame – it was only a matter of time before my plant obsession came indoors… Yes, I have succumbed to the charms of houseplants. I…
Back garden planning…
It’s time to concentrate on the back garden for a while. I’ve been turning my attention to planning the front borders up until now because there’s just so much bare soil out there. I now have this space three-quarters planned – there’s just one corner I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do with yet. I’ve…
Garden visit: Cambo Estate
This is the perfect time of year to visit Cambo Estate in Fife, when it hosts its annual snowdrop festival. I make a point of going each winter/spring because there’s no better way to lift you out of the winter doldrums than gazing at hundreds of snowdrops. And there are, literally, hundreds of snowdrops at…
Sow many seeds…so many seedlings
I’ve been on a sowing frenzy. Although I work part time and theoretically have two days each week to spend in the garden/greenhouse doing lots of lovely gardening…it never usually works out that way. Family/work/home responsibilities often creep into this time and so I have to grab gardening opportunities with both hands and make the…
Witch Hazel
I take photos of the witch hazel every year when it blooms. I think it’s because I’m just so glad to see some colour in the garden. This bush shines like a little beacon in the darkest corner of the garden, close to the compost bin, and I don’t always notice it straight away, but…
Chickening out
I’m a bit feather-brained at the moment. We have three chickens – Minnie, Polly and Iona – they’re our first little flock and we’re extremely fond of them. I have previously documented their arrival here and since we got them they seem to be quite happy in our back garden. They’ve recently started laying again…
A total redesign
These are scary words! A TOTAL REDESIGN of the front garden. This means digging, moving, sowing, replanting, more digging, weeding, propagating… I can’t wait. We’ve lived here for three years now and I have tweaked the front garden only slightly each year. It’s been good to wait and live with the garden for a while. …
Curly wurly
I’m noticing a certain kind of shape around me at the moment – for the past few days I’ve been spotting curls and twists, exposed I suppose by the bare branches of winter. One that I notice daily is the contorted hazel (Corylus avellana ‘Contorta’) which is right outside our back door. This large shrub is…
Monkeying around…
I’m really quite pleased with this weekend’s main gardening project – moving my monkey puzzle tree. Actually I’m really quite pleased to have been in the garden at all – it’s been ages. Pre-Christmas, Christmas and post-Christmas did not leave much time to get outside and tackle winter gardening jobs, and when there was a…
Dig/No-dig
To dig or not to dig…that is the big question I’ve been asking myself lately. I have six large raised beds and all of them are needing a bit of TLC in order to improve the soil and make them more productive. As we inherited these with our home when we moved in three years…
Bittersweet peas
I’m having a love/hate relationship with sweet peas. Actually that’s not strictly true – I love them really, but I hate the way they make me sneeze. I’m growing lots of different varieties this year and although it’s now September and Autumn is definitely peeking its head round the corner, they’re still going strong in…
An epiphany…
Looking around the mix of various shrubs, trees, annuals and perennials in the front garden I often become frustrated by its lack of consistency and theme. Many of the mature plants were there when we moved in and I have enjoyed acquiring many more shrubs and perennials over the past couple of years and filling…
Catching up
I’m not going to apologise for neglecting my blog. Because I don’t like it when other bloggers do that – I think blogging should be one of those things you can pick up and put down. There are very few things in my life I have time to keep doing consistently (apart from, like, bathing…
Interlude
Some of you might have noticed a wee bit of a gap between posts. Here’s what the garden got up to inbetween…
Planning…
It’s time to get planning. For the past few weeks and months, a lot of ideas, plans and wish lists have been floating about in my head or, when possible, noted on my phone (Notes, Reminders and Evernote are the gardener’s friends for recording these on-the-go). I’ve also sorted through the seeds I have left…
A day in Edinburgh
When I’m not in the garden I do my best to hold down a job, working in communications. Today I’ve been in Edinburgh at a PR festival, in an attempt to learn a bit more about my profession and do some networking. So I’ve spent the day listening to PR experts discuss the media, politics,…
Geranium or pelargonium?
We’re going to talk geraniums and pelargoniums. I am developing a love for both, however it’s only recently that I’ve discovered I’m calling one of them by the wrong name. I’m learning to tell the difference, and it’s a useful skill because the two types need to be cared for differently. True geraniums are also…
Too busy gardening to blog about gardening!
Which is a good thing, really! But I have missed writing these updates and sharing the photos and plants which I’ve accumulated in the past couple of weeks. The weather has, unbelievably, been marvellous – sunny and warm and perfect for getting into the garden and planting out all the seedlings and young plants which…
A murmuration of starlings
Although there wasn’t much murmuring going on, more like a joyful breakfast cacophony! We were visited yesterday morning by a little flock of parents and fledglings – a kind of nursery outing if you will. Some of the babies looked very newly fledged, others were bigger and bolder and all were calling frequently to the…
Flowers/Fruits
The blossom is now giving way to potential fruit. Walking around the garden a couple of evenings ago I marvelled at how a flower – petals, pollen, delicate things – will change and swell and eventually turn into a fruit. The plum blossom in our garden is finishing, but the big apple tree’s just starting…
Catching up…
Well it seems it’s been a busy couple of weeks since I last wrote a post. Thankfully, part of the reason for that has been some lovely weather – when the sun’s shining I’m not inclined to stay in the house and stare at a computer screen, I want to get outside and garden! Some…
Nesting
Spotted this afternoon…Mrs Blackbird sitting in the large nest she and Mr Blackbird have built in the ivy wall in the back garden, nicely hidden behind a large conifer. I noticed the nest a few days ago but it was only today I spied one of them actually in it. And she spied me spying…
A few photos
My current faves in the garden are the little patch of snakes head fritillary and the hellebores at the front of the back border, still going strong. I took my DSLR and 50mm lens out in the evening sunshine tonight and managed to get a few shots of these which I’m really pleased with. I…
Sunshine and snow
It has been a week of VERY mixed weather, with the past couple of days seeing glorious sunshine…while little flakes of snow gently drift down from above. Beautiful but c-c-c-cold. So I’ve been wrapping up some of my tender plants or bringing in those in pots which I’ve been hardening off, like geraniums and fuschia.…
Lobelia learning curve
I sowed lobelia last year, directly into the raised bed I used to grow cut flowers* and they did quite well, but flowered fairly late in the season and are not really great for cutting, they’re better for baskets or pots. So this year I sowed early under cover, with the aim of using the…
Julianne Robertson 