Veg Plotting

I don't often 'play' with my photos after I've taken them, but as soon as I'd used a posterize app on this cheeky little robin in my garden, I simply knew I had to use it as this year's Christmas card. Have a wonderful festive season, no matter what life has thrown at you this year. I look forward to seeing you in the New Year.

It's currently a real pleasure to walk on my lawn, not just because of the delicious feel of the cool grass on my toes, but also for this year's visual delights. There's an explosion of colour, and a new flower for my lawn compared to those I found for last year's #nomowmay survey  in the form of the pictured purple common self-heal . I didn't know much about this plant before it appeared in my garden, but having looked it up, it's an interesting addition. Its common name alludes to its use in herbal medicine, particularly to treat sore throats and halitosis and it's used regularly in Chinese medicine. It's also edible, so I have another potential salad ingredient at my feet in the shape of its stems and leaves. The bees love it too and it turns out it's an important plant for them as Jean Vernon told me on Twitter: "...it really helps as there is a huge June gap in terms of food plants for pollinators. So good you are seeing more bees."  Y...

Like many of us under lockdown the past couple of weeks, I've had a bit of a spring clean, both in the home and the garden. Yesterday I turned my attention to a huge bag of garden stuff  accumulated over the years from various events and realised here was an opportunity to inject some fun into the garden. Our gardens are fast becoming our sanctuaries and a healing space for our times, but oh yes, some fun is needed now more than ever. I felt a little down on Friday and a cheerful task in the fresh air was just what I needed. Half an hour or so's work and my little flowerpot man now greets me as I step into the garden as do my welcome flowers. I rescued the arch from the bottom of the garden last year and decided it was crying out for the string of solar lights I'd found in my bag. Childlike I couldn't wait for it to get dark yesterday evening so I could admire my handiwork and was delighted the moon joined me for the photo session. Skipper and Spot are always ent...

Last year I took part in the first #springnaturediary , an Arts and Humanities Research Council project which is also taking contributions this year. I'm chuffed last year's diary made the final cut and can be read as part of an illustrated booklet. Now the world has changed for us all and it's useful to mark these strange times with another entry for this year's diary. Read on and you'll see everything has changed for me in another significant way. NAH had a heart attack on our wedding anniversary in early March and against the background of the looming Coronavirus pandemic - declared as such the day after on my birthday - I wanted to record a moment in our increasingly shrinking world. Thankfully NAH's home now and started on the slow road to recovery. It was obvious the hospital was beginning to make preparations for the pandemic whilst he was there. All that can't be squeezed into a 150 word entry which focuses on the vernal equinox, but there is...

I have a small part of VP Gardens which I've mentally called 'foliage corner'. It's quite shady, hence its lack of appearance on previous Blooms Days . This year's different because there are some new flowers on the block. They remind me of the ivy flowers on the fence nearby and are around the same size. I lost this shrub-like perennial's label a long time ago so I have no idea of the name. It dies down each winter and re-emerges late spring. It looks like the supplier who gave it to me no longer has it in its catalogue: perhaps you recognise it and can let me know in the comments? Last week I admired the greenery of the leaves, then I turn my back for a short while and this happens. At least when I look at the same bed from the opposite end I can kid myself summer's still here. It's all a matter of perspective. Garden Bloggers' Blooms Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens . Update: by the power of social media, it looks...

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...

On Wednesday I took part in a project commissioned by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. They invited anyone and everyone to write a quick 150 word nature diary to mark this year's spring equinox. Regular readers know I love this kind of project, reminiscent of the fun we had with #MyGardenRightNow a couple of years ago. You can read my [lightly edited] entry below. 80+ submissions and photos from around the country are available here . It's a wonderful celebration of this year's arrival of spring. How's spring (or autumn) looking in your neighbourhood? Today's dawn was special as the first chiffchaff of spring announced its arrival. It's a fitting way to celebrate the vernal equinox. Nature's changing so fast now. The apple boughs have just burst into leaf and my herb bed tells me there'll be mint for our potatoes this Sunday. My small urban garden is full of microclimates; demonstrated admirably today by my potted St George...

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. ~ Robert Frost in Fire and Ice Frost went on to say he favoured fire. I wonder what he'd make of today's frosted VP Gardens and the reports of the polar vortex with numbing low temperatures in the USA? We have snow forecast for later on today. Stay warm everyone.

The weather's turned colder this week and most of the autumn leaves are down, ready to add their mulch to the garden over the winter months. I took a few snaps recently to show you as my final celebration of this season's gifts. This post serves as a final record of the Berberis thunbergii 'Gold Ring' at the bottom of the garden. It comes into its own at this time of the year with the most incredible fireglow to warm this gardener's heart. However, who in their right mind adds a thorny shrub to one of their main garden beds? Well, I added three of them and it's high time I corrected that mistake. I'll ponder a replacement shrub over the winter; something with similar fireworks is my intention. Ideas anyone? Elsewhere the wispy silver birches I can see from my bedroom window are being their usual seasonal barometer. I spend more time than I should simply watching them and I love seeing how they change with each season and the sky behind them. ...

The great thing about memes like #mygardenrightnow is they let us pause and have a proper look at the garden. I've been on holiday this week and I thought the recent cold snap would mean a wintery drabness on my return. Yesterday's inspection showed the garden's having none of it. There's still plenty to see, plus a few surprises. Autumn hasn't quite finished here at VP Gardens , which means there are flashes of colour and some floral delights everywhere I look. True, they're on a smaller scale than previous editions of #mygardenrightnow, but the current season means they're especially welcome. Those fat hellebore buds shown bottom right in the collage also show promise of winter delights to come. We've only just got home, so I'll have to leave the festive part of this edition of #mygardenrightnow to other contributors. I'll focus on the hope part instead... ...I was delighted with the efforts of  Clematis urophylla 'Winter Be...

Our final #mygardenrightnow is a chance to show off the festive edition of your garden and to seek out any hope during the darkest time of the year. You may be surprised how much life you find! That's the beauty of this meme; it gives us a chance to go out and really look at at what we have out there. Whether my autumn leaves are still yellow, or have started their transformation into a dark, rich mulch remains to be seen... All you need to do is take one photo of yourself in the garden - more if you want - and post it on your blog or favourite social media. Don't worry if your garden is looking bare or a mess, we want to see real gardeners and gardens! Christmas decorations or green shoots pushing their way through the soil, plus any floral or winter structure you want to show off are especially welcome. Your favourite coffee cups/tea mugs and winter attire will be fun additions. Use the hashtag #mygardenrightnow so we can find you and come a-visiting. The fun start...

Only the second recorded sighting of a hummingbird hawk moth in Chippenham this year - exciting! Phew how marvellous that was! Many thanks for all your contributions to #mygardenrightnow last weekend ; we had over 400 posts, around 250 contributors and over 500 photos shared across blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Contributors came from the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Italy, France and Ireland. As usual there was tons of variety in your posts and I'm sneakily pleased about the number of washing lines included in the real gardens you shared. We spotted loads of garden wildlife too thanks to your posts; with our first sighting of hares and my excitement at finding a hummingbird hawk moth in my garden amongst the highlights. We also had our first barbecue - at last. I declare dahlias and tomatoes as the most popular flower and vegetable featured, though onions and roses came close. Here's a summary collage of some of the photos I ...

Early doors in my PJs... I look at raindrops while Jess and Skimble yell 'Oi, where's my breakfast!' It's quite a different day to yesterday's warm sunshine, yet the #mygardenrightnow weekend's going strong and I still have stuff to share from my garden. One of the things I love about blogging projects is they can take you in quite unexpected directions. I contacted Bren on Friday - one of the US bloggers I met at this year's Fling - to see if it was OK if I posted about #mygardenrightnow on her #gardenchat Facebook Page . We ended up having an enthusiastic video chat instead (my first!) with Bren actually in her garden at the time, then she put together the video below of our conversation, illustrated with lots of photos from previous editions of #mygardenrightnow. It sums up perfectly how we all come together for a 'virtual peep over the fence' - thanks to Karen for that neat summary :) If the embedded video doesn't work, try th...

It's the first weekend of September and time for the autumn edition of #mygardenrightnow ! We had a fantastic response in March and June, and I look forward to seeing how your garden's growing this weekend. I'm expecting to see lots of late season colour and harvests from the plot, plus plenty of projects and garden tasks on the go. I wonder if we'll have clear winners in the flower and crop photos this time? Mr Linky is lined up below for your blog  only contributions, followed by some FAQs for those of you who are new to #mygardenrightnow.  I'll also scout for your hashtagged submissions on Twitter , Facebook and Instagram to promote your posts. Facebook entries can be a little tricky to find sometimes, so do please give me a nudge via my Facebook Page to help find them if this is where you choose to respond (NB a tip from my friend Bren in Ohio - make sure you set your post to Public, so we can find it). A note for Mr Linky , please submit th...

What an amazing response to #mygardenrightnow over the weekend! We nearly doubled the participants from March, and more than doubled the number of entries across social media. Twitter and Instagram in particular exploded into life and as a result it's taken me a while to catch up with you all. Roses are most definitely the bloom of the moment with geraniums and lavender running a close second. It's harder to pinpoint a produce favourite, lettuce or beans possibly. We also had some early harvest action - strawberries plus various salad leaves and herbs. A mainly sunny weekend saw you out enjoying your gardens in many ways, with washing lines being a new notable feature alongside various garden toys. It's great to see real gardens being used by all family members and for all kinds of purposes. Sadly there was no anticipated barbecue activity, but a rather nice bonfire finished off Sunday's efforts. Here in the UK we awoke to horrific news yesterday morning, which...

Ahhhhhh, that's better! I love walking through dewy grass in bare feet, not that there's much in the way of grass on my back lawn this weekend. My wild and woolly lawn has morphed into meadow of sorts this month, which even NAH admits looks attractive*. It's also proved a great source for my Flowers for mum project so far, yielding self-sown perennial cornflowers, lamb's ears, and lemon balm in addition to the blooms you can see. These originated from elsewhere in the garden, the ox-eye daisies must have blown in from the A350 nearby. * = he got very stroppy about the weeds aka self-sown foxgloves in the lawn one year, so he's come along a bit since then. Skimble's demanding to say hello to you too. He does enjoy the patio when it warms up. If the embedded video doesn't work try this link instead. The Nectaroscordum are a revelation. I planted the bulbs around 2 years ago, but it's only this year they've bloomed properly. The bee...

Back by popular demand, the second #mygardenrightnow weekend is upon us! This time we're doing it as a Chelsea Fringe event because it's a cool project, worthy of inclusion in their wonderful activities. It's so cool we've even made The Guardian ! The principle is the same as before. All you need to do is take a photo of yourself in your garden sometime this weekend, then blog about it or post on your favourite social media (choose from Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram) on Saturday or Sunday and let me know when you've posted your effort. Last time we had plenty of mud, puddles, leeks and crocuses. Who knows what we'll see this time? I hope there'll be lots of evidence of you enjoying your garden as this project is all about celebrating real gardens as used and loved by real gardeners. I'll post my effort tomorrow, along with a Mr Linky to add your blog posts. I'll also patrol the #mygardenrightnow hashtag on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram...

A surprise I found yesterday - my nerine 's been multiplying while I wasn't looking Starting a new online gardening project always feels a bit of a shot in the dark, even when everyone gets all enthusiastic beforehand. Deciding to have one when the weekend forecast is a bit grim is quite a nerve jangler too. Of course it helps that gardeners are a hardy bunch, who are used to being outdoors in all kinds of weather. It's been wonderful to see everyone's contributions roll in over the weekend, 90+ all told, with hundreds of photos and other goodies taken in the process. It's now one of the most successful projects I've launched into the virtual world. A surprise I found out pruning on Saturday afternoon - I think stem damage might be the cause There's been plenty of mud, water, even snow, with glimpses of sunshine and shots of brightness in the shape of gorgeous spring flowers. I think crocuses and rhubarb just about edged the impromptu 'flo...