Ist Open day of the Year

Far from the madding crowds ? Not likely, in the thick of it I'd say. Had absolutely lovely weather, despite the forcast all week suggesting heavy showers on Sunday. Auntie Sue arranged the teas, in aid of raising money for her boys to cycle from Lands End to John O'Groats, in order to raise money for Ty Hafen, a Welsh Childrens Hospice. They are part of a party of 12, hers are 13, and 16. Good luck to them all...
Child no 3 volunteered to man the gates with some help (?) from the younger members of the household. This is the car park at about 11am (We'd just opened). As we opened at 11am it was a nice steady pace until about 1.30/2pm when we suddenly seemed to have another 200 arrive. Perhaps most gardens open at 2pm and people get used to going then. In total we had about 320 people visit ( + about 15 older persons sneaked in apparantly), but raised over £700 which was brilliant.
As you can see the gravel area outside the makeshift tearooms was rather busy at times !!




The garden suddenly came together on the Saturday, I gave one final mow and edged all the grass, which takes hours and kills my useless arms at the best of times, but to have to do the front and back was agony...but it had to be done. The weeks of weeding seems to have paid off too, I only finshed some bits the day before and I think there were still quite a few in the bottom corner, but you do get to the stage where you don't actually care anymore. The tulips were stunning especially in the red beds by the steps.




I thought I'd best add some pictures of the secret shed for those of you who's spouses/partners/children do not like gardening. This amusement kept many a child/parent busy whilst the other was free to look around the garden in as long a time as possible. There were a few tears (mainly from the adults) when it was time to go...and t'spouse has promised some young children that he'll try and get the dalek finished by the next open day....

A bit more progress.

The pergola is finally up and finished, just have to put some climbers in. I've got a Wisteria 'Amethyst', an Actinidia, and a Trachelospermum jasminoides, not sure what else to plant, I would prefer not to put anything in with thorns, and I'd prefer that it doesn't really need to be cut back too much, and gives a good canopy of shade during the summer months.
The back circle has greened up very well, I was a bit concerned that it would struggle, but it seems to be growing as fast as the rest of the grass in the garden, good job spring has lasted so long.

Hope in the hills, of it ever being finished ?

Better late than never, the grass has suddenly started to green up and grow. The hyacinths are in full bloom and have grown very tall this year, and have survived outside ok for 3 years now. The two new areas have been planted, but it still looks very sparse at present, I'm sure in the course of the year I will be able to fill these beds to overflowing..
Movement in the dining area too. After buying a pergola 5 years ago (It was a bargain, so I had to have it.) We have finally managed to start putting it up. We've had to replace some of the screws with bolts because Met-posts are notoriously difficult to put in straight, but using the bolts everything seems to be squaring up ok.




In the back garden the circle area is finally finished !!! The new chainsaw seemed more up to the job than the previous one. The daffodils all seem to have transplanted ok and are in full flower. I have planted some foxgloves around the lower edges of the circle, which hopefully will look quite dramatic when they flower. I've also filled in the higher edge of the circle, so we have 3 levels, which makes quite a difference. M'spouse has made a bench that is within the retaining logs, but isn't quite finished so will post a picture when it is.



A have a few Magnolia's just about to flower, and was very pleased to find that one of my £1 bargains could in fact be 'Leonard Messel', one I've wanted for a while, 2 others that I got un-named as bargains are going to flower this year too. I'm slowly progressing with the digging out of beds, my arms are groaning with the sheer amount of digging and wheel barrowing, but it is getting their, trouble is the front garden is being neglected so I need to spend some time in there too.

A promise of things to come..

We've had quite a few reasonable days over the last week, so we've managed to get on a bit more. I've started laying the turf cut by the turf-cutter, but as some has been rolled for quite some time now it has started to go yellow, I'm sure with a week or so of light it will recover in time for summer! With the chainsaw down we have got a bit behind and with it being the school holidays, have not been able to spend as much time as we'd have liked working...but we can't have everything...




I seem to have been digging for ever in these beds and moving turf around to fill up gaps. The idea was to make a long winding path around the beds, rather that being able to walk around them, this was because nobody knew which ones to go down and it ended up that you missed half the garden, hopefully this will sort it out, once you start you can't get out until the end.....I'll probably have to end up putting stepping stones across flower beds to let people escape..



I've been most impressed this year with the hellebores in the front garden, some of them have had about 100 flowers on, and they have made this area really colourful. The grass seems to be recovering from being dug up and moved in the front garden, the stone on the lawn is the one from the hole, we finally got it out with much difficulty and laughter.
I've started filling in this new area with some existing plants and a couple I've got from my bargin corner selection, a lot of the original plants in the borders need splitting anyway so its a chance to change things around.

Some progress ??

At last it has stopped raining for a few hours, enabling us to actually get in the back garden and try and reinstate some order and correct the damage we have done! M'spouse has been busy building a retaining wall around the new round grass area, this has envolved moving soil from some of the newly un-turfed areas.

I seem to have been moving barrowloads of turf and soil to this area. We have put black weedmatting behind the logs so that any grass that has been used to fill in does not start sprouting out of the sides...M'spouse has ruined our chainsaw too, we had the piston replaced and 2 days later its gone again, this was a stihl model which we were ill-advised about, we should have had a much tougher model or a new husband - the chainsaw guy suggested !

I've had to transplant all the shrubs and daffodils, hellebores from the bed covered now by this grass area, down to the lower area. I feel it looks much better now, and you get a nice view from the house with all the yellow, it'll be really nice when all the rhododendrons and azaleas are out in May (hopefully).

I've started digging over some of the beds that I've started rearranging. I'm making them much longer, joining some together and turfing over some parts of others, hopefully it will come together before long and the first open day.

Oh my God, what have I done???

Just as I was getting the garden sorted, I had a brainwave (luckily I don't have them very often), I sat and drew a new plan for the back garden. Originally I just stuck beds in where there was a space, as long as they had a path between them (as the children requested) it didn't matter. But looking out of our bedroom window I knew something wasn't quite right with the whole area. So I started designing again, keeping some of the old features and planting and moving others.
What I'd done before was cut beds out of the lawn, this time I decided to leave lawn and cut beds around them to make some more secluded areas, obviously it will take some time for them to become hidden, but I think the design will work better. (Eventually)(& if it stops raining). So off to the hire shop for a turf cutter, it was a sunny day when I woke up, so decided yesterday was the day to start. As usual I didn't prepare anything, although had my plan, so whilst M'spouse was busy removing the fence where the chickens had been, I started cutting the turf....With today’s heavy rain I now realise it is going to be an enormous job to get this finished and sorted by our first opening in 6 weeks time.......help !!!



I then decided there was something missing from the front garden, so decided drastic action was needed down the long border. I bravely removed the turf by the aviary, cutting off the way around the bottom of the garden, so now you have to go around the sunken bed, through the rose arbour and then down around the aviary to a small circular hidden lawn. At the moment we have a huge stone stuck in a pool of muddy water. No wonder plants didn't thrive in this part, I had moved a gunnera there last summer as I'd noticed it was squelchy, but didn't realise it was this bad (this is after 1 night of rain).I'm going to place lots of small stones in this hole, once we get the big stone out, in the hope that it will drain quickly and the grass can grow reasonably well over it.



Whilst cutting out the turf I noticed that loads of branches from one of the trees overhanging the beds were littering the lawn (or what’s left of it), on further investigation found that the electricity board contractors had been in the wood and cut down loads of trees that were growing close to the main electric cables. (They had discussed this several weeks ago, and I'd said to cut down what was needed especially the big one that bends towards the cable. Of course they didn't cut down that one just trimmed it, so with the next big wind I'm sure it will fall and break the cable...oh well.) Anyway I was rather shocked at the destruction, as I hadn't expected all the other trees to be felled, but then decided how brilliant it was because now I can make a proper woodland garden........................when I've finished the rest....!

More snow in Wales

Even more snow!!! I know it was forcast, but that could mean anything these days. Its quite a lot deeper this time, and more is due tomorrow I've been told. The bamboo has been reduced to 3' by the weight of the snow, and I know I should be out shaking the snow off the branches, but it looks so nice as it is, i'll wait (and regret it later).
The children are having a fun time making giant snowballs, I hope school is open tomorrow.......