Garden Blog - Part 1

Warning: this blog contains a description of a garden and its contents; trees, plants, flowers and all that shit. I know it’s dull to anyone else but I’d like to record my garden of 2008 so I can look back on it next year and learn from it, both in what to plant again and what mistakes to avoid.

In March this year I invested a fair wedge of cash in employing someone who knew what they were doing (finally admitting that I’d never do it myself) to make my garden look pretty.
Here is what it looked like after the garden dude had finished…




I wanted somewhere to sit, have BBQs and laze about, so there is quite a bit of decking, as you can see. I picked up a ludicrously cheap set of garden furniture and have enjoyed several afternoons plonked lazily on that decking whilst supping beers. Sadly, I’d have enjoyed a lot more nice days out in the garden but summer 2008 has been as awful as last year. Still, there are a couple of weeks of August left and maybe September will be nice.
As well as the decking there was a newly laid lawn (again, for lounging on) and some large empty beds for trees, plants, flowers, veg, whatever.
I’ve planted a bit of everything, but in the large empty bed on the picture above and next to the giant conifer I’ve planted decorative plants. Part 1 of this blog is about my new trees and the flowers I’ve put in the large side bed next to the fence. I’ll scribble something about what I’ve put round the conifer later on. What I’ve planted in pots dotted around the garden and the veg I’m growing will be covered over the next couple of days.

Are you ready?

The Garden Pt1 – Trees, Plants and Flowers

Trees first.
During a trip to the Scotland branch of the Allan family last autumn, I remarked to my sister-in-law about how ace the giant monkey puzzle tree looked. And so, a few days before Christmas a mini one turned up in the post. It was the first thing I planted out, here it is…



Now, I don’t know if I’ve put it in the right place. Because of trees which overlook the decking, the monkey puzzle doesn’t get much direct sunlight in summer after about 9am. Maybe it isn’t the best thing for an obviously exotic plant that it doesn’t get much light. I’ll keep an eye on it, as the trees shading it are deciduous then it should get quite a bit of light in early spring.

The other new tree is of my favourite fruit: the cherry. It’s a Stella cherry tree (let’s see if I can write this without once writing cheery by accident) which self-pollinates and apparently produces dark red/purple juicy fruits. It won’t this year, but hopefully it’ll grow enough to give me a spectacular blossom display next spring, and then give me enough cheeries (no, couldn’t do it) to last the summer. Here it is fighting amongst some sunflowers, it’s the darker leaved one.



I removed a couple of the other trees but left the ludicrously sized conifer and kept another couple for privacy reasons. They’re the ones which may hamper the monkey puzzle tree.

As the garden was being prepared back in March, I popped some seeds in trays and started to grow some thing indoors. The first thing I wanted to try was sunflowers. They fascinate kids, but I’ve never grown one before so I guess I was kidlike in wanting some for the garden. I ended up with waaaay too many and have dished some out to pals, but I still found room for 8 myself.
The enemy of the sunflower is wind and I lost a 7ft one to it last Saturday. That made me sad. Fucking wind. I also lost a smaller one, but that oddly kept on growing and now has three different stalks (though no heads). Only two sunflowers are out so far, one is 8ft6 (260cm) and one much smaller at 5ft11(180cm). Here they are…





The others haven’t sprouted yet, but I have one which will probably overtake the 7 footer I currently have. It’s already almost 9ft and doesn’t look finished yet. Christ, it’s going to be really windy this weekend, I hope it survives. I can see it swaying uneasily already. I’m worried, it’s too bloody big.




The other 5 (except maybe the multi-headed one) will probably be around the 6ft mark. Being autistic I’ll record the height, position and flower head size of each one, picking seeds off the best and trying again next year.

The main choice behind flowers was whether they attracted bees and butterflies. If they did then I’d probably buy it. The sunflowers don’t seem like they’d be particularly attractive to bees but they fight over it. There were loads on it when I was measuring them earlier.
I grew up next to a house that had a giant lilac bush in its garden. I loved how it was full of wildlife in the summer, so picked up two of my own. Pictures!





They’re quite similar, though the one which is a deeper red is probably the prettiest. I don’t know which one is most attractive to wildlife, the bees seem to prefer the sunflowers so far. They’ll require strict control or else they’ll try and take over the whole garden. Lilacs are quite “growy”.

I grew some other flowers indoors for planting out. There were two types of poppies, the traditional WW1 types, which won’t flower until next springtime, and some fluffy pink ones which have turned up in the last week.



They’re a bit rubbish these poppies, if they catch the slightest breeze they lose every single petal. They also look like this on the packet…



I think I’ve been swizzed. Maybe I can get some opium out of them. *eats poppy head*

There are other flowers in the side bed with all the above, here are some.

A couple of little Campanulas, struggling for life around bigger plants.



Some begonias off Hannah’s dad that are just starting to flower. Annoyingly they’re beating up a different Campanula which I’ve planted but which hasn’t flowered yet.



I quite like this Delphinium which is quite popular with bees. It says that it’ll grow up to 5ft but it’s only small so far. Maybe it needs to grow a bit bigger yet. Is it a perennial? It appears so.



There are some plants which haven’t fully developed yet. The aforementioned Campanula is one, but there are some Amaranthus which should make an impressive display in a couple of weeks. I’ll put some pictures up then, but it’d better hurry up as we’re running out of summertime.