Garden shoes

Many gardening blogs show a photograph of gardening footwear. A bit like mine really. But they do seem to be rather clean........are they actually worn for gardening or do they give them a wash at the end of the day?

Rusty letters

I was very impressed by Ian Hamilton Findlay's Garden "Little Sparta" near Edinburgh . So we have a few pieces of sculpture and some lettering and haikus all courtesy of Frances Pelly a wonderful sculptor and artist in Orkney.

I've also added some rusty letters, one saying "Ferns" the other "Herbs".

 

PS My husband wasn't so keen. "Pretentious" and "nonsense" were two of the words that featured.

To mulch or not to mulch.....

That is the question.....

There is no doubt that mulching benefits the soil and therefore the plants. If only we could make enough compost and leaf mould for the whole garden. Not a hope!

I tend to use the compost in the vegetable garden where it's most needed.

The leaf mould is spread in the borders containing the shade plants that like a rich soil and woodland conditions. And we never have enough......

The cost of buying in organic mulch for the rest of herbaceous borders is expensive - at least a couple of hundred pounds if done to the recommended depth of 3-4 inches. Can't really justify that .... it has been mulched for the last three years and the soil is much less like Montrose Beach than it was.

However after a general weed, prune and tidy-up the garden looks good. A mulch would have been the finishing touch (and kept the weeds down). But once the plants get going no-one will notice....

Snowdrop Festivals

For those of us who live in Angus there are some wonderful snowdrop displays to catch up with.

Pitmuies Gardens  http://www.pitmuies.com/

Snowdrops and aconites

Snowdrops

Aconites

Gagie http://www.gagie.com/

House of Dun http://www.nts.org.uk/Property/House-Of-Dun-and-Montrose-Basin-Nature-Reserve/

Kinblethmont http://www.kinblethmont.com/

Work in progress

In spite of a cold wet start the weather improved in the afternoon.

This year I decided to have more cut flowers in the garden. What could be nicer than a vase of our own flowers in the house or as a present? Agapanthus make great cut flowers. A friend from south Africa dismissed them as weeds which they probably are if you live there and not here. They don't grow in such abundance here and look quite exotic but I never seem to have enough to cut for the house and flower in the garden. It's the same with alliums.... So this year I'm going to have a small cutting border in the vegetable garden a la Sarah Raven http://www.sarahraven.com/shop/signed-books/the-cutting-garden.html.

It's a shame it won't include dahlias as the ones I've stored over the winter have turned to mush! I rather like their vibrant colours so I may get some more....watch this space.

So I sowed some cleomes (spider plants) seeds. I did try them once before in Orkney. What had been healthy young plants suddenly keeled over and died. It reminded me of cabbages that had been attacked by cabbage root fly. And lo and behold when I investigated there were hardly any roots left and several fat grubs. Perhaps cleomes are related to cabbages?

I also sowed some hyacinth beans which produce a stunning purple flower and bean. I first saw these (or similar) on a visit to the States growing in Thomas Jefferson's garden at Monticello. It may not be warm enough here....

The rest of the afternoon was spent clearing the borders, pruning and weeding.

Weather etc

-1C this morning. Gray and raining. Might manage to sow a seed or two........ in the meantime a jolly picture of a bunch of tulips. (Grown in the UK, hurrah!)

Heritage Seeds

I usually buy my seeds from the The Organic Gardening Catalogue. This year I decided to try some of the seeds from the Heritage Seed Library.(http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/hsl/index.php)

The Seed Library aims to conserve and make available varities of vegetables that  are no longer widely available. The seeds are grown and collected by volunteers and are only available to members of Gardening organic.

Many of the varieties have wonderful names such as a pea called "Gravedigger" or "Irish Preans" which give clues to their history. Others have more unlikely stories attached such as the pea "Tutankhamun". The story goes that it came from the garden of Lord Carnarvon and may have been one of the peas allegedly taken from the tomb in Egypt. I'll bet the Head Gardener enjoyed spreading that tale.

Today I planted two heritage seed tomatoes -  Estonian Yellow Mini Cherry and Cyril's Choice (who was Cyril, I wonder?) and also a crimson Flowered Broad Bean because I liked the colour.

Recommended

Dan Pearson talking about his new book. A gardener designer with great knowledge and understanding of plants as well as style.

Spring Flowers

The sun shone today and it was almost warm outside......... feels like spring is almost here. Gardeners are eternal optimists.......

 Snowdrops are such perfectly formed little plants. Beautiful markings.

Jobs for this week

 The garden is still very wet and needs a tidy-up. The hens have been out and about and explored some of the pots of tulips.One of the pots was on its side and the tulip buds growing at right angles. Even though I've righted the pot the tulips may have a kink in them -perhaps we could start a new trend.....

Lots of jobs still to be done. Here are just a few:

* Root cuttings of perennials including crambe cordifolia

* Move shrubs and divide perennials.

* Cut back perennials and grasses from last year

* Weed and mulch

Gardener's World

Looking forward to seeing the Gardener's Gardener,  Monty Don back at the helm of the programme.   Alys Fowler's contributions will be missed. Looking forward to hearing her speak at the Scotland Garden Scheme AGM/Conferance in Edinburgh in March.

Bits and Bobs and DIY

We now have a enormous new cold-frame, courtesy of Paul and Steptoes. For anyone who doesn't know Steptoes  is down near St Cyrus Nature reserve. He sells all manner of stuff and I often get second hand clay pots and old garden tools. This time we got a shower door, ideal for the roof of the cold-frame.

The potatoes are now being chitted in the garden room.

Tatties, onions and shallots

It's time to buy the tatties for chiting. The local allotment holders had got to Silverwells, the local garden centre before us and all the "Duke of York" had gone. Some of the other popular varieties had been plundered too. In the end we bought Rocket (1st early), Kestrel (2nd early), Desiree (main Crop) and our old favourite for potato salad, Pink Fir Apple.

We also bought some shallots, a French variety called "Jermor" and an onion called "Snowball", neither of which we had tried before.

Damp Days

The garden seems damp and dark. I keep thinking the weather is improving( ie not so cold or wet) and then it rains again. I'm so full of admiration for the endlessly cheerful Carole Klein out in the garden in all weathers... and with a smile on her face. I'm like the soil I need to warm up a bit before I get going.

We've cut back some of the old growth and need to hire a shredder. It's beginning to pile up!

But plenty of work to be done. We took the box plants out in the autumn to clear the ground under the apple tree of weeds. Now we're putting the box back through a membrane to stop the weeds returning. I find planting through membrane messy and time consuming. And how to add goodness to the soil in later years?

 

This is still work in progress. A further square of box is to go round the circle and then the membrane covered in slate bits.

Spring may be just around the corner. the snowdrops are out and our fabulous double pink camellia is covered in buds.

Photos from Year 1

The seating area in the corner of the garden

The herb garden in midsummer

 

Late spring, looking up the garden from the house. 

The fruit and vegetable garden

Transition

 

Men at work. Royal Oak tree services clearing the many tree stumps.

  

A mini digger was needed to take out the remains of the pond. We still find bits of it when we're putting in plants

 The vegetable garden takes shape. I would have liked another brick wall along  the back but we can all dream....

 The deck goes in. Not our first choice but the budget wouldn't stretch to cobbles......

 The decking nearly there.

 The cleared vegetable garden with the new fence. Paul made a Potting shed bench and compost bins out of the old fence.

 Our  Gabriel Ash Green house. The only question at the time was "is it big enough?" And the answer is "no". It's always packed to overflowing..

The new shed courtesy of Dave's sheds near Monifieth. The smaller shed we moved from the old garden and turned into a hen house. Both were painted in a fetching shade of grey.

The garden then.

We moved to Montrose in 2005 . There was a lot to do to the house and so it wasn't until the back end of 2007 that we turned our attention to the garden.

This is how it looked. Ours is the bit on the right with the grass and the two sheds and the umbrella. We also own the bit along the top.  The overgrown privet hedges  were 3 or 4 metres tall and there was a pavilion like structure on the back wall. We got from one garden to the other through a hole in the wall.

We had thought a lot about what we wanted to do with the garden. The part nearest the house would be mainly ornamental and the back part would be veg and fruit. It's much smaller than our last garden and we thought it would be cleared in a jiffy thanks to the lads from East Coast Landscape gardeners. What was above the ground was cleared very quickly. Sheds and pavilions were dismantled, weeds and aged shrubs were removed and shredded. It looked great until we lifted the slab paths and tried to dig the soil. Up came one broken up concrete pond, three concrete clothesline bases, tree roots , the foundations of a small building, sand, rubble and broken glass. It was a long job......