Tag Archives: my garden

My garden in Fife

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Amazingly it was a blue sky day on Wednesday and we had absolutely no rain at all, but that east wind was still blowing, and a friend told me that she had had to scrape ice off her windscreen in the morning, when I was sensibly still in bed.

Anyway, I went out to take some photos of the back garden. Things are beginning to green up.

my Garden, Scotland

 

my Garden , Scotland

 

my Garden , Scotland

 

my Garden , Scotland

 

my Garden, Scotland

That big shrub to the left of centre in the photo above is going to have to be moved as it blocks my view from the kitchen window of nicer things, such as the pieris, I did not think it was going to grow so large and is not amenable to pruning. Such is life.

My phone tells me that tomorrow it will be four degrees celsius colder than it was today so it’ll be 8 celsius tomorrow, that’s 46.6 F,  colder with the wind no doubt. It’s a very slow start to Spring.

My garden, Fife, Scotland

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Whenever it has been a bit drier (not often) I’ve gone out to take some photos of what’s flowering in my garden. Thankfully the primroses, primula, cowslips are always colourful and happily seed themselves around.

primroses, primulas, garden

I tried to take a close up of the white snake’s head fritillary below with my phone, but I was just too close, if you look closely there’s a purple one which is closer to being ‘over’, to the left of the white flower’s stalk. These are also happy to multiply in any damp areas, and let’s face it, the whole garden is damp after the constant rain, there’s more moss than anything else.

fritillary, my garden

More purple fritillaries at various stages of flowering. Sadly only one white flower has come up this year. Charles Rennie Mackintosh did a lovely painting of this type of fritillary, the chequerboard markings on the flower really suited his designs. The actual  flowers look like they have been painted in reality.

snake's head fritillary, my garden

I have no idea what these daffodils below are, possibly Paperwhite. I planted the bulbs ages ago in a pretty bowl, planning to give them away at Christmas, but by then nothing much was happening to them. They were supposed to be a miniature variety, but eventually they just grew and grew, then flopped all over the place with not much sign of ever flowering. I dug a home for them in the garden and they flowered as normal in the spring. Definitely not miniature, which thinking about it I should have realised because the bulbs weren’t small. I think that some plant nurseries must be quite chaotic because plants and bulbs are often wrongly named. Anyway, hopefully these ones will flower again next year, if all the rain doesn’t rot the bulbs!

daffodils, my garden

The first tulips are appearing, but I’m sure I planted more than these ones below in that area.

flowers, my garden

The pulmonaria/lungwort with its spotted leaves below is always one of the first to flower, after the snowdrops, and it goes on for quite a long time, I think that’s why it’s one of my favourites. It was used as a cure  for lung problems in days gone by, but I don’t think it was very effective.

pulmonaria, lungwor, my garden

I was watching Gardeners’ World on TV tonight and a tulip expert was explaining what you should do to tulips after they have flowered. Dig them up after feeding them, clean them, dry them and plant again next year. I’ve always just left them to get on with it on their own underground, maybe if I gave them some tlc they would respond better, they usually die out with me. I’m not planting them deep enough either, at least four inches apparently.

tulips, my garden

Anyway, that’s some of the flowers that are blooming in my garden in Fife, it has been a long wet summer, autumn and winter. It’s amazing how resilient plants can be. I don’t think any of my shrubs have actually died, and I know that other gardeners haven’t been as lucky.

My garden – a few weeks ago

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We were away in the Netherlands for three weeks last month. People there have always been able to watch the BBC there so every day we could see from the weather forecasts that as soon as we left Scotland the temperatures soared to crazy heights, as high as 30 Celsius some days. Typically until we left the UK the weather in Fife had been really cold and wet – luckily we were also experiencing good weather in NL too, but I was realy worried about my garden getting totally frazzled. but when we got home everything was fine, if untidy and overgrown, it looked like the place had exploded!

My Garden in June

June Garden

June 2023, My Garden

 

My Snowy Garden

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Snowy Garden

The temperature in Fife hasn’t got above freezing for days now and we’ve had snow all week, which wouldn’t be so bad on its own but when all the ruts and footprints ice over it makes for an interesting walk for the Guardian in the morning! The garden looks quite pretty though.

Next week it’s supposed to be very mild for the time of year again, but it does mean that I should be able to get to some far-flung shops, something I really need to do.

My garden in Fife

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I took the photos below a couple of weeks ago so my garden is looking much lusher now.

I have two apple trees in my garden and they both blossomed well, I live in hope of a crop of some sort.

apple Blossom, my garden

apple Blossom, my garden

The clematis alpina below is actually far daintier than it looks in the photos.

clematis alpina, my garden

clematis alpina, , my garden

Sorbus fruticosa, viburnum and various heathers are growing into each other in the photo below, at some point I’ll have to prune them I suppose, but I hate doing it.

garden shrubs, my garden

And if you don’t believe that I hate cutting back growth the proof is below, I really need to prune back the red leaved shrub (mind gone blank!) so that the beautiful yellow flowers of the Kerria japonica aren’t so obscured.

shrubs, my garden

The primulas below have been really good this year, if you look closely at the photo you’ll see strawberry leaves in amongst them. I dig them out every year as I never get any strawberries from them, they just keep throwing out baby plants and taking up good planting space, they’re a pain in the neck really and when I heard one of the presenters on the BBC RHS Chelsea Flower Show programme recommend planting strawberries in amongst other plants I didn’t half roll my eyes!

Yellow and red primulas

If you’re interested in the Chelsea Flower Show you might like the You Tube video below. I must admit that I watched all of the programmes this week.

My garden in Fife, Scotland

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With the weather warming up here my garden has been coming to life, over a couple of days last week I took the photos below. Since then the weather has been even better, this week has felt almost like summer, however for next week the forecasters are saying it will be much colder with wintry showers – I really hope that doesn’t mean snow!

crocuses
crocuses

pulmonaria
pulmonaria

miniature daffodils
miniature daffodils

primula
primula

quince
Quince

snowdrops
snowdrops

viburnum
viburnum

pansies
pansies

garden
my garden

garden
my garden

Since taking the photos I’ve been out doing some weeding and general clearing up after the winter, and more things are in bloom now. There have been an amazing amount of really big fat bumble bees around so I hope that the predicted bad weather for next week won’t be too bad for them!

My garden in Fife, Scotland

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Just a couple of days after I did my previous garden post, when I had a bit of a moan about the lack of colour in the garden – things started to flower. The irises below must be happy where they are as they’re multiplying.
Irises, my garden

The Olearia shrub below is an evergreen with tough leaves but at this time of the year it produces very delicate looking daisy-like flowers.
Olearia, evergreen shrub, daisy flowers

The white foxglove planted itself there, as did the fern I think, but if you look closely between the fern fronds there’s a plant with a very delicate blue flower, I can’t remember its name but I bought it at the Logan Botanical Garden in the south of Scotland and it seems to be surviving well. I’ll have to look out its label
Foxgloves, fern, my garden

The London’s Pride below is a nice frothy pink but it doesn’t show up well in the photograph, it is however doing its best to take over the ‘rockery’ area.

London's Pride, my garden

My dad had big daisies in his garden which he called Shasta daisies, and I bought the ones below as a reminder of him and his garden, he started me off in gardening when I was a wee girl. Sadly he’s been dead for 40 years now. I went back to my childhood home a few years ago and walked up the lane which skirted the garden and peered through the hedge, but there was no garden left – only grass and a garden shed. THEY do say that we shouldn’t go back to places!

flowers, my garden

The roses are doing well now, Firecracker below is indeed a cracker although it doesn’t have much in the way of scent, it flowers for a long time so I don’t suppose we can have everything.

Firecracker rose, garden,flowers

Firecracker rose, garden, flowers

My garden – in Fife, Scotland

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I took these photos of my garden just a few days ago using my phone, it’s fair to say that it’s all a bit ’40 shades of green-ish’.

My Garden , Fife

my Garden, Fife

It’s that awkward time of the year when the spring flowers and tree blossom are over, but the summer blooms haven’t started yet.

my Garden , Fife

The Japanese maple below is colourful though.

my Garden, Fife

The foxgloves have started to flower.

my Garden, foxgloves

Just a few days after I took these photos the roses started to bloom, but I’ll keep those photos for another post.

my Garden

Spring blossom, my garden, Fife.

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The Amelanchier tree below is also known as a serviceberry apparently. It’s really pretty and delicate and has lovely leaf colour too. I’m trimming the height of this tree so it doesn’t get out of hand. That has the advantage of making it bush out at the lower trunk so it will look more like a shrub which is what I want.

Amelanchiar Tree

Amelanchier Tree , my garden

Below is a plum tree which has loads of blossom on it, but it was the same last year. I had very high hopes for a great crop of plums, then came a May frost and it turned the blossom and buds black. As his April had the most nights of below freezing temperatures – I think since records began, I am not being too optimistic this time.

Plum Tree, garden

Below is the same tree again, but in the background you can see a bright red quince and there’s a pink blossomed apple tree against the fence, behind the plum tree.

Plum Tree, my garden

I’m still waiting for my pear tree and a Bramley apple tree, both of which should flower later this month. I didn’t get one pear last year due to frosts but the Bramley apple tree gave me a fairly decent crop for its first time, about six big apples as I recall. I live in hope!

My snowy garden

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This morning I woke up to a snowy garden, about four inches had accumulated overnight. This is the first snow of the winter, which is very late for us, sometimes it appears in October.

Snow Garden

There was actually thundersnow which woke Jack up but I slept through it.

Garden in Snow

It does look pretty and I’m glad that I thought to take some photos of the garden as it started to rain heavily this evening and it has all been washed away now. Luckily I managed to get my fuchsias under cover just yesterday afternoon, I must have known it was going to snow!

Snowy Garden