Spring is here..

The snowdrops are in full bloom now, with last years hellebores just starting to open their flowers.

The new thingy joining the two beds, the beds are still well defined, although the stream bed is looking a tad untidy.

The base of the summerhouse still here waiting, the bulbs in the surrounding bed are starting to emerge, I've planted nearly 3,000 bulbs this spring (some of them were tiny)(Oh and my mum did help)so I'm really looking forward to May time with all the tulips.

The start of the long awaited polytunnel - my new home - well th'spouse has his pinball shed. Still got to clear some ground for a flat-ish base. Should have a lot of seeds this year, only hope I have the energy and room to plant them.

One of the many euphorbias in the garden, one day I may have a national collection but then will have to try and remember all their names, I don't think that is possible.

The delphiniums are up and sprouting already, I was unsure how they would overwinter, whilst we have very sandy loam here, where some are planted it has a very high water table and the ground does stay wet in the summer, but they all seem to have made a start, I've also got a few hundred seeds just sown waiting to go in the polytunnel.

More Work

As the road into Abergavenny was closed due to flooding and I couldn't nip into town for a cooked breakfast, th'spouse very kindly found something for me to do lest I should suffer unduly from boredom. With her help I put up the new wooden structure you can see on the right, despite what seemed like endless interruptions including the man from customs and excise turning up. She tells me the technical term for this lump of wood is a "pergola type abory thingummy" though personally I think she's making it up as she goes along.

Rejected!

If th'spouse doesn't post for a few days then the likelihood is that she is too depressed after her entry to The RHS/Anthony Nolan Trust Garden competition didn't win. The rejection letter arrived Saturday morning but we are all trying not to mention it as we tiptoe around the house.

Hellebores at Ashwood

What a great day out, I went with Nanny up to Ashwood Nurseries and met Grannie & Grandad up there for the open day. We had a tour of the nursery, we tried unsuccsesfully to smuggle one of their breeding plants out - they were huge - and then had a look in the polytunnels with all their for sale hellebores. Grannie spent over £400 but she got some amazing plants a load of doubles which she hadn't seen before, she was after the elusive apricot hellebore, but the closest we could get was one of the pink and yellow crosses which looks apricot (a bit). She also got a black star shaped double flower which she has left me in her will, and I can have some babies next year from the plant if it produces them.
I got a white picotee and primrose picotee and a black, I think my favorite this year is the picotee they are just so different. I took one of the flowers into college and performed crossing acts with the hellebores in the walled garden.

What snow, where?

Wet and cold today, I love going out into the garden to see what is new, the snowdrops don't seem to have been affected by the cold and the piddly bit of snowy stuff we had here. My poor hellebores still seem droopy, they may pick up if the temp rises. Last year at this time the garden looked very bare, but there are a few more evergreens this year, I decided to increase the winter garden with my bargin buys.

The shape of all the beds is well defined in the winter - could be all the manure- I must remember this autumn to give the grass a weed and feed, apparantly it's more important that the spring one. Will probably do both for an excellent lawn next year. Note - the base of the summerhouse is resting on the surface - hopefully m'spouse will survive without breaking yet another shoulder (he nearly went flying on a huge puddle of ice in town today) and be able to finish before the garden club come on their visit.

The Henry Moore statue (a present for t'spouse at Christmas)surrounded by helleborus niger(christmas rose) well in flower at the begining of December this year. This is placed at the end of the long grass avenue as an obligatory 'focal point', most people don't notice it until they're on top of it though.

A lovely group of Galanthus, don't know which one I relocated several from the river bank opposite the other year and they seem to be multiplying very well. At Bridgemere the other week I did buy a couple of posh ones and put them in the dolphin bed.

No Snow!

I've been waiting to take some photos of the garden covered in the 5 inches of snow we have been promised all week, but the nearest we got was this slight covering in the distance on the slopes of the Sugar Loaf.

As you can see the garden is quite bare at the moment but I daren't take any close-up pictures in case I inadvertantly show you any weeds Elaine is trying to hide, so you will have to make do with this longshot from the house. This picture highlights my next job, which is to build a support for climbing plants along the top of the far wall, in order to hide the road, at least from the garden if not from this angle.

Most of the limited time I have spent in the garden this week has been spent here, sawing and chopping wood in preparation for the big freeze. You may have noticed that one of my other outstanding jobs is to finish painting the shed.

When we first got here we arbitrarily divided up the garden, Elaine got the front and you can see how much she has already done there, I got the back (for the time being) and this picture shows that instead of gardening I spend most of my time nurturing websites, pinball machines, and children (in that order).

About the nearest thing to gardening I have done in the back garden is the erection of the decking and polytunnel around the above-ground swimming pool. Mind you, I think the only thing preventing Elaine from filling the tunnel with seedlings is the possibility of chlorine damage to the plants. If this clear bright weather continues for much longer I shall have to hoover out the pool ready for the kids to use. Last year they were sunbathing in the polytunnel at the beginning of March.

Competition Entry

This is part of my recent entry for the Anthony Nolan Trust Garden at this years RHS Show at Hampton Court. Hopefully I will at least win a Blue Peter Badge.