A Garden Update

In the garden ...

The weather was kind yesterday and played nicely so M was able to do everything I'd planned. The photo immediately above shows where most of the changes are. Quite a few of the plants that were in the centre bed have now been moved; the honey garlic has been removed and M has taken them with her, and the three scabious plants are now in the corners of the far bed, two on the left although the photo only shows one, and one on the right hand side. The poppy has been removed which is a shame but it was never planned and nearing the end of its flowering period.  The nandina has been moved to the front of the centre bed and the rest of the perennials are the newly purchased plants - foxglove pink panther, gaura rose, erysimum 'Bowles Mauve', verbena lollipop, and still to come, a salvia cerro potosi. Also in that bed are the alliums, now going over, but soon to flower are the gladioli, sweet peas and a few crocosmia that escaped the cull.

It doesn't look much at the moment but these changes give a better structure to the centre bed and is filled with perennials that repeat flower until the first frosts. This bed still needs some ground cover plants but that will be decided later on. For now there are geranium tiny monster and the sunken pot holds some mesembryanthemum to provide a bit of colour for this year. The obelisk will be moved once the sweet peas, assuming they ever grow (!), have flowered which leaves space for another shrub, possibly a hardy fuchsia similar to the one in the first photo. Next year, the sweet peas will be grown in one of the bigger pots. The cotoneaster and the jasmine have both been planted and will be trained against the fence panels - they've been planted for all year round interest but mostly for the winter berries for the birds.

The rest of the new plants have been moved into their patio pots and the fruit trees swapped into the bigger pots my sister gave me. The mangetout didn't make it - pigeons, I think - so those two pots have been used for the new poppies, one of which is in bud so I will get some more poppies to enjoy this year!

I've decided that all of the spring bulbs will be in blue pots which meant that the four pots already planted up had to be transferred into the blue ones, so that's been done. I'll need to buy some more blue pots for the rest of the bulbs but have plenty of time to sort that out. 

The veg are a diappointment in that they are growing but not really thriving. As mentioned above, the pigeon enjoyed the mangetout so that leaves me with mint, runner beans, dwarf beans, tomatoes and a chilli plant. There are a few green tomatoes and the dwarf bean plant has some flowers, and of course the mint is the healthiest of the lot!

I'll take some photos of the patio once all the pots have been moved. I'm looking to buy a pot mover, similar to this one but I still have an old sack truck in the garage which, with a bit lot of attention, may do the job and save me some money.