More from my Garden

alpine strawberries

I allow these alpine strawberries to grow in amongst the other plants in my garden, rather than having them in rows together. It’s more natural looking that way and the birds seem to leave them alone. Sometimes I stumble across a strawberry plant which I didn’t even know was there whilst I’m weeding. They’ve sort of gone a bit wild, they may be really wee but to me they taste really delicious, especially compared with the big fat strawberries which you get in most supermarkets. They look sumptuous but they’re often such a disappointment as they’re pretty tasteless.

dogwood, holly and golden hop

As you can see, I try to squeeze as much into my garden as possible, I’m also not very good at cutting things back. I get into a terrible mess sometimes, well the plants do because I say to myself – I’ll prune it after it flowers, and then when it flowers I’m saying I’ll just let the birds have the berries.

There are several shrubs shoehorned in, the bright yellow climbing one is a golden hop. The original plant doesn’t seem to have survived the winter but several bits of it have ‘hopped’ elsewhere, and they are doing fine.

sweet-pea, lamb's lugs and cranesbill

The perenial sweet peas have been in the garden since we moved here over 23 years ago and they are a bit of a menace because they pop up all over the place like goose-grass and unfortunately this is the only colour that they come up in. The yellow flowering plant was a teeny wee bit of root which was given to me and I don’t know what it is but it’s very vigorous too and I’ve been trying to get rid of most of it because I think it’s strangling some plants.

foxglove

I got my love of gardening from my dad and I think he probably wouldn’t have given my foxgloves space in his garden. He would almost certainly have regarded them as weeds but I love them and more importantly the bees adore them, so I just leave them to seed themselves, which they’re very happy to do.

Well that’s the latest meander around my garden over. I hope you enjoyed the wee stroll!

foxglove and pyracantha

More garden flowers

At this time of the year just about the first thing I do in the morning when I get downstairs is go out for a walk around my wee garden to see what has happened overnight.

The first day lily of the year opened up yesterday, this is another flower which is in my herb patch but they don’t take up much room and although each flower only lasts for a day there are so many of them that it doesn’t really matter as there is always another one ready to come out.

A day lily

Another peony rose with an aquilegia or columbine as Shakespeare called it. They self-seed all over the place and they come up all different colours, so they’re always a nice surprise.

Peony rose and aquilegia

This is a variation of the broom which flowers all over hillsides in Britain at this time of the year. The broom plant or planta genista as it is in Latin was the emblem of the Plantagenets, hence their name.

Broom?Plantagenista

The Cranesbill geranium is another prolific self-seeder and they’re promiscuous too so they pop up in different variations. When I was a youngster a geranium was a very different plant but for some reason they keep changing plant names and what used to be geraniums are now called pelargoniums.

Cranesbill - geraniums

Can you see the bee in the poppy? The bees just adore them but they move so fast that it’s really difficult to snap them.

Poppy and bee

As you can see the poppies are spreading out quite a bit now and taking up a lot of room in the herb patch but I’ve tried moving them and they just come back even bigger.

Poppy and bee

I took this one because I thought it might be of interest to anyone who hasn’t seen how a poppy seed head forms. As you can see, the bees have had their way with this flower and it’s beginning to fall apart. It shows quite well what an exotic and lush texture the flower has. It always amazes me that it grows so well in our cold climate.

a collapsing poppy

The first rose flowered yesterday but it’s a climbing one and I’m going to have to get the ladders out to get close to it. Maybe tomorrow!