Veg Plotting

  Here's my copper foil glass heart lovingly made for today in a workshop at The Pound arts centre recently. It's perfectly paired with a stand lovingly crafted by NAH in his garage workshop here at home. We're also a good match in many other ways and celebrate our 42nd wedding anniversary next month 😍 Happy Valentine's my love x

Here I am with my friend and fellow garden writer Sue on Chelsea Press Day, our fab photo kindly taken by another friend and photographer Ian Thwaites, who's given his permission for me to use it in this post. Thanks Ian!* 'Oi, stand aside,' I hear you say... 'we want to see the garden you've been telling us about for months!' Well, here it is... ...almost exactly the same view, but without us!  I'm also rather fond of this photo looking the other way, despite it being shot into the light. I think it gives it a slightly mystical feeling, especially as I mentally called the tree on the left 'the whomping willow' whenever I saw it. Weren't we lucky with the weather! The reaction to The Flood Resilient Garden on the day, on the Chelsea TV coverage, and in the press was immense. Naomi and her co-designer Ed certainly caught the zeitgeist after our miserable rainy winter and spring. Joanna Lumley said she adored it. Here are a few more scenes from the...

I spent an amazing couple of days at RHS Chelsea helping Naomi with the planting tasks for her Flood Resilient garden . This is what I learned along the way... Have hi viz, will travel! Luckily I didn't need to borrow NAH's heavy duty railworking hi viz jacket and trousers (on standby in case it really poured with rain), nor did I need a hard hat as I was working after the main construction phase. I had to take an online site safety course and test before being allowed on site It's good to travel comfortably and wait until the last moment to don your heavy steel capped boots. Even better when you find a bench at Chelsea Barracks to do so whilst admiring their fab Chihuly glass installation at their Spring Festival Have a spare pair of steel capped boots available when the rubber tread on your day one boots drops off on the way home. Luckily I was by the Barracks when this happened and could swiftly change into my trainers. Even luckier is my shoe size is almost the same as ...

Let the Flood Resilient Garden's build commence! My friend  Naomi and the rest of the team are on site at Chelsea today, so now all the dreams and plans are set to become reality. I'm getting really excited as I'm working on the build just before the show! Hopefully there will be time to snap a few quick pics when I'm there so you can see what's happening. In the meantime we'll have to make do with the sketched design - as you can see there's a lot crammed into a small space. FloodRe - the garden's sponsor - have an interactive version on their website which allows you to explore the garden's features thoroughly - both in terms of the various habitats and planting - which are also chosen carefully to help with flood resilience, as well as the more engineering aspects to the design. As a result I'm currently pondering whether we can have some extra wide guttering installed on our house as we have real problems with overflows on an increasingly r...

One of the highlights of the recent Garden Press Event was the Guernsey Clematis stand where they showcased their two clematis due for launch* at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. If you're unfamiliar with the company name, then I'm sure you know of the lovely Raymond Evison , who is the breeder behind these two new plants. * = if they're launching them at Chelsea, then it looks like I've let the cat out of the bag 😉 On the left of the photo we have 'Lindsay' with 'Guernsey Flute' on the right. Both have been selected for their plentiful blooms across the entire length of their stems, flowering from May through July with a second flush in September. They grow to around 6 feet in height (90-120cm in metric) and are good candidates for a large pot as well as the more usual site in the garden. 'Lindsay' is the one for sunshine and 'Guernsey Flute' for the shadier side of things - as is the case with most white clematis. Unlike its forebe...

I've spotted primroses popping up in many places on my walks this week and it's a welcome sight to see them. I found the pictured ones in Old Hardenhuish Lane on my way to Lidl* yesterday. They're in a patch on the edge of damp woodland next to Hardenhuish Brook and I've also seen them close to the River Avon right in the middle of Chippenham. They're a timely sighting as I'm thrilled to be working with FloodRe's The Flood Resilience Garden team in a small way during the run up to Chelsea Flower Show. I'll provide the written content for their Plant of the Week spot on the garden's Instagram account over the next few months. It just so happens the primrose is my first entry this week - you'll find snowdrop, birch and dogwood there already, as provided by Naomi , the garden's designer. My primrose finds show they're an excellent fit with the show garden's ethos which is to demonstrate simple choices in design and planting can help a...

It's Bank Holiday time for us to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and amongst the usual Union Jacks and bunting, Chippenham has put its own special touches to the celebrations. Like many communities we have some special postbox toppers and I found the one above earlier this week gracing one in Monkton Park. I know our Knatty Knitters have other plans afoot, so I'm off to explore the centre of town later today. The Museum has had a couple of Jubilee projects I've been involved with. The Young Photographers group worked hard on their '70 Years, 70 Faces' and found at least one face per year of the Queen's reign. NAH and I went along to see ours at the Yelde Hall and add a new meaning to 'we were beside ourselves'! You may recognise a couple of the faces as Mark Allum (below me) and Lisa Lloyd (top right) from Antiques Roadshow live in Chippenham. I think NAH has fared particularly well in the photos, but then I'm biased! I - along with my WI...

From my door to your home, I hope this time is as merry and bright as it can be under the current circumstances. This year's wreath is foraged greenery on a straw base with ornaments saved from previous ones. It's bearing up remarkably well after nearly 3 weeks despite no moss or oasis base to keep the foliage moist. New-to-me greenery used in this way are the Clematis 'Winter Beauty' I pulled from the pergola, plus lots of fragrant rosemary from a friend's garden. I spent a lovely morning at my neighbours recently where we all managed to create something beautiful for our front doors in aid of Dorothy House , a cause dear to her heart as they looked after her late husband so well. Enjoy the turning of the year towards the lighter days again and I'll see you in 2022!

 

October days are rather special at Exbury Gardens , not only for autumn colour, but also for their amazing collection of nerines . You may remember I visited last spring for their centenary year ; it's always good to return in a different season to see what a garden has to offer. A gorgeously sunny day last week and the trees nearing their peak autumn colour meant it didn't disappoint. Before we have a proper wander around the garden, The Five Arrows Gallery is the place to be with its special exhibition of Exbury's nerines. These are the stars of the collection this year and includes a selection of the new hybrids picked out by garden director Nicholas de Rothschild and Theo Herselman, who heads up the Nerine and Lachenalia collections. There are also plants to buy here, some of them available for the first time. They are that new. Here's Theo just after this year's exhibition opened, photo courtesy of Chris Stephens of Otso Creative. I bumped into Theo at the glas...

I was holding a hope for Malvern's autumn show going ahead this weekend, but sadly the current situation meant it wasn't to be. However the fab team at the Three Counties Showground came up trumps with their Plant and Garden Fair earlier this month instead. Lots of the nurseries I'd planned to visit were there... and plants were indeed purchased, but the highlight of the day were the talks which took centre stage. I confess flower arranging hasn't really been my thing up to now - I'm more of a plonk and put sort of gal - but Georgie Newbery previously, and now Jonathan Moseley are helping me see there are possibilities in this line. As Jonathan explained in his talk, picking flowers encourages them to bloom more, thus dispelling the notion mine are better off in the garden instead of displayed in the vase. Jonathan shared plenty of ideas for autumnal arrangements. Simple yet effective jam jar style posies were much in evidence albeit framed and hung on display, or e...

A little while ago I told you about my latest WI project - A Day in the Life - which I started in May and included a blog post about my day under full Lockdown conditions. I had an amazing response with over 31 women taking part, that's around two thirds of our membership. I then spent most of May and some of early June collating it all into a magazine called Lockdown Life .  The picture above shows the front cover with a photo of a local community mosaic which I chose as its colours are similar in tone to everything else. It was such fun to do and I learnt a lot as it was my first attempt at such a thing; I now have a much greater appreciation of the editorial process.  The magazine's reception has been amazing and I even got to talk about it on local radio recently! It's also going into the Covid-19 archives at our local library, museum and history centre, so we've definitely made our mark on the history of these strange times. So how did I make the magazine? It was ...

I should have been at Press Day at Chelsea Flower Show today, but instead I'm thinking about it from the comfort of my own home. It's rather nice that a little bit of Chelsea has come to me instead, in the form of the pictured clematis, 'Olympia', which was due to be launched at the show today. I'd planned to reveal it in its full glory, but instead I've had a little insight into the kind of angst the growers and garden designers go through in their preparations. It arrived a couple of weeks ago from 'the Lovely Mr Evison' (as I call him), packed with love and full of health, vigour and bud. And it's remained that way ever since, despite my finding it a special pot on the patio. I think last week's cooler weather held it in check, and - like many of the exhibitors this has happened to - I expect it to finally reveal its blooms during Chelsea week after the judges have passed on by. I'll post an update when it does, in the meantime...

Sometimes a plant gets under your skin; one to be pursued no matter how hard the chase might be. Hesperaloe parviflora  - aka Red Yucca - proved to be such a plant for my garden. I first came across it in Austin at the Garden Bloggers Fling last year . It's a native plant to Texas and was found pretty much in everyone's garden; also at the gorgeous organic nursery we visited in the rain; and thanks to the legacy of Lady Bird Johnson and the wonderful work of the Wildflower Center which bears her name, it's seen along all the roads and freeways around the city. Of course it's a key plant for xeriscaping , its tough agave-like rosette leaves - without the skin piercing spikes and with intriguing 'stringy bits' (my technical term) - are ideally adapted for the harsh Texan conditions and whilst I'd mentally named it my plant of the Fling, with a sigh of regret I'd also consigned it to the 'not suitable for my garden' pile of potential pla...