This post is prompted by Al's recent blog post of 8th April where you go to your first folder of photographs and choose the 10th photo. He tagged me. I won't tag anyone specific, but if you want to join in, let me know in a comment to this.These Johnson's Blue Geraniums are planted in a semi-circle around the apple tree by the paddock. The original plant came with me from Dorset, 22 years ago. I had bought it on a coach trip to Leeds Castle in Kent. I think it cost the princely sum of £1. Anyway, I added to that one little plant and am rewarded each spring by a mass of flowers (shame about the dried-up raindrop on the camera lens in this pic . . .) I have various other hardy Geraniums in the garden too, and have a bit of a soft spot for them, along with the Aquilegias which are my favurite cottage garden plant.
My garden is very important to me. It is a definite factor when house-hunting, and although I have found some absolutely perfect gardens, the house or the situation has let them down! One exception - and it was overpriced and we couldn't afford it! My ideal garden meanders a bit. You can't see all of it at once. It isn't neat and tidy, but the combination of colours and flowers give a WOW factor. Ideally it has views, and mature shrubs and trees, and a wildlife pond, and room for a polytunnel, vegetable patch and hens. It should have soft fruit and a small orchard, or room for one. It is a country garden, not a town one. If someone had done all the hard work and planted it up I would be more than happy, as I have had to start all my gardens, bar one, from scratch. That takes time, effort and money and I am now more than happy to walk straight into a ready-made one. The words "plantsman's garden" in the brochure really make me prick my ears up!
Not for me the vast expansions of flat lawn and straight borders of bedding plants. No garden fences in sight please. No postage stamps posing as "gardens". No high-falutin' designer gardens or Japanese gardens with strategically-placed boulders in a sea of gravel. Oh, and NO DECKING. I absolutely LOATHE decking.
Oh, and as a passing note to my dearly beloved one, the property in Shaldon, perfect though its Gothic bits are, offers only a concrete roof garden, and the cats and I say that WILL NOT DO!!!
Hullo BB,
ReplyDeleteThanks for joining in on the theme. Like you I love a garden. Unlike you I'm not a gardener. Well more truthfully a reluctant gardener. I enjoy it once I'm started but I always slightly worry I'm going to do something disastrous. I envy you natural gardeners, you creative types who know what goes with what and how to plant for the extended life of the garden across the year. Like you I love my fruit trees and dislike the 'parks and cemeteries' type of garden.
Thanks again.....Al.
I agree, you CANNOT have a concrete roof garden. One of the furbabies might fall off!!!
ReplyDeleteI've loved catching up with all you've been doing lately and totally adore those bookshelves in Hay! If K makes you some, then he can make me a couple when he's finished :)
Hope the weather is kind to you at the moment, it's lovely here and not too ashy!
I LOATHE decking too, and the foul word PATIO !Cottage gardens are best,rambling,not very much lawn,fruit trees,vegetable garden and greenhouse,hedges or mellow old garden walls and of course the hen house and run.PARADISE ! We are very lucky to have all these things,but I would like it even bigger than the third of an acre we occupy.
ReplyDeleteMissing my Johnson blues, filled the garden with them practically, also the dusky pink ones as well. Glorious weather today ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm wading through garden catalogs and feeling over-whelmed by the funds it would take to approximate the gardens I left behind in Vermont when we moved to Wyoming 12 years ago. What I can afford to plant this year is going to look rather sparse, but we are blessed to have the many shrubs and ornamental trees which were planted here many years ago.
ReplyDelete"Bio-Kova Karmina" is what I found at the garden center last week--an unfamiliar cranesbill. I was hoping for Johnsons Blue and Wargrave Pink.
Our Kentucky cottage has a concrete floored "car port" attached to the side entry. It is proving more useful than I expected--for everything other than the car--and not too unsightly as there are plantings all around. The idea of a roof garden as a desparate measure has never appealed. There has to be some lovely unstructured space with shrubs and green grass and billows of flowers.