When I was younger weekends used to be spent tearing around the shops and buying a new dress or two. A few years on things have changed dramatically, and now I like to spend my weekends collecting China – Emma Bridgewater or pretty tea sets, shopping for plants and being a busy bee in my garden. I have to say I’m so glad I have changed, I feel at home in the garden, and love to enjoy a cup of Green Tea out of an Emma Bridgewater cup, whilst taking in the sights and sounds of my planted sanctuary.I thought I would share my happy place with you and the changes and updates, which are continuously happening!
My garden is relatively small but with a full time job it’s a nice size to potter about in. I have a small patch of lawn and two miniature borders at the front of the house next to our drive. At the back of our house is my bigger but still small garden. In here I have a nice sized lawn and quite a few borders as well as a strip of patio.
When we moved in nearly two years ago the previous tenants weren’t really gardeners (which is fair enough), so the garden was covered in cigarette butts (disgusting but true), an Acer tree, a couple of shrub bushes and a ground covering plant that I keep shipping off to my mums garden (as she loves it). We also inherited a lovely Montana ‘Elizabeth’ climber and a variegated tree that were well established, planted from the original home owner of previous years. Although it wasn’t a completely blank canvas we treated it as though it was, as it had been unloved for many years and needed some TLC!
Once we had stripped away the choking, ground cover plant, we set about the weeds and dug over all the soil. Unfortunately a lot of the borders contain old broken bits of glass, china, stones etc so we tried to remove as much as we could from the soil. From here we had a nice canvas to work with! My mum kindly divided some of her plants and supplied us last year with young seedlings from her garden. We began to fill the borders and create interest in the garden and also filled the patio with pots brimming with plants to fill the stark grayness of the slabs.
From there the garden has grown and with it so has my interest. I believe I am a garden magpie picking up colourful or interesting plants most places that I go – my partner despairs as I’m always coming home with plants! This year I have sown a lot of seeds and bought myself a little greenhouse. The wonder of nature has interested me even more, as I have been discovering seedlings popping up everyday! I’m hoping to get a bumper crop of flowers and veg from my seedlings this year, so I will keep you updated on my progress!
Please comment, say hi or let me know any tips or advice you have! I’d love to hear from you!
Fork to Fork 
It sounds like you completely transformed the yard! Your garden is absolutely beautiful!!
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Thank you very much! That is so lovely of you to say! I just put my own little stamp on it really 🙂
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Wow you have done a lot with your little plot. Love the lavender or whatever the purple plant is. Well I have a pretty big garden for the suburbs but I haven’t been successful with Veg for a few years now. Luckily I have a plum tree, red currants and a rhubarb plant that look like they will all do well again this year! I will keep dreaming of keeping such a nicely manicured garden as yours.
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Thank you Jodie! Your comments are so lovely! It looks amazing where you live! Your pink Lupin in your about me page is fantastic! I have one of those as well and it is covered with leaves! What sort of soil do you have in Eastern Switzerland? The fruit sounds like it is doing really well! Oh thank you! I think your plot looks lovely! Mine is only small so is easy to tend to 🙂
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Lupin? It took a while to think what you were talking about but now I remember. Lupins are one of my favorite flowers and that whole prairie style garden likewise. That is why I love September here in Switzerland. We have heavy dense clay soil, well at least here in my part of the world. At least I think that is what it is called. My German sometimes confuses me. My soil and drainage is awful, and was the cause of a flood in our basement this week! Major enough to now be cause for a renovation of the whole basement level. Thanks again, Happy gardening!
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I have heavy clay soil as well, it’s not the best! Pots are a great saviour! Hope you managed to get the flood sorted? I bet that’s the last thing you needed!
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You have a beautiful garden. It looks like a lovely place to spend time. 🙂
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Thank you very much! That is such a lovely comment! It certainly is! I’m loving your blog! I grew up on a farm 🙂 I loved your post on Asparagus! I hope your enjoying it? 🙂
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I’m happy you’re enjoying my blog. Thanks so much for your kind comments! We love asparagus and are having it almost every day while it’s in season. 🙂
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Aunts, mothers and total stranger gardeners with a shared passion are great resources to perennial plant sources. Family history can be tracked by gardens as well as genetics…roots are roots 🙂 You are doing great, beautiful.
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Thank you so much! Such encouraging words thank you! I hope I can be a good resource, I certainly love to read other people’s blogs to fuel my brain of gardening wisdom 🙂 Roots certainly are roots! Thank you for reading my post – it means a lot! 🙂
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I suee you have a bucket rigged up u on a rope…can you tell me what that’s for?
Thanks for “liking” my small garden on my blog…honestly I almost considered pulling the pics down because it’s so ridiculously small, most people wouldn’t even call it a garden.
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It’s my washing line and the bucket holds the pegs, it comes in very useful! 🙂 It’s lovely! Any space can be called a garden, it’s what you get out of it that counts! 🙂
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What a nice welcoming garden! I understand my husband does not me buying flowers for the garden. I think it is a guy thing. I dig up wild flowers on the farm or save their seeds to replant them in my yard. We walked around the garden this weekend and he commented on how many new flowers we have in the beds. He wanted to know where they came from. My husbands attitude is if we can not eat it that he doesnt want to waste the energy on it. He was impressed what I had accomplished when he wasn’t looking with a minimal amout of effort. Our flower beds are finally filling in with flowers. I want flowers to bloom from early spring into the fall. I bought seed packages and discovered he complained less. I actally got him to dig me a new flower bed. I bought 3 small rose bushes for the new bed… I would love to do more, but I just don’t have the stamina to keep up with much more. I had to conceed he was right. I am more than content with what we have now.
Honey
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Thank you very much Honey! That is very kind of you! Sounds like you have a lovely garden and you have put quite a lot of effort in to it. It is not easy growing things from seed and trying to get plants to take off when they have been replanted so well done! It’s always lovely when you’re happy with your garden and you can finally enjoy it! It makes all the hard work worth it! Lovely meeting you Honey and look forward to reading your blog! 🙂
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