Tag Archives: my garden

Autumn garden in Fife

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Ceanothus, fuchsia

We’re well into autumn now but there’s still quite a bit of colour and blossom in my garden. The ceanothus has just decided to flower for the second time and the fuchsia Ricartonii has been very late, the frost will probably get them soon.

berry tree, my garden

The mystery berry tree  (possibly a cotoneaster) is very bright but I’m cutting it back to make it a bush rather than a tree as there are too many trees growing out of hand in my garden.

The dogwood (cornus) leaves are just about to drop, but they’re also contributing to the colour in my autumn garden.
heather, dogwood, my garden

autumn garden

Spring or autumn – the acers are my favourites.

autumn acer

acer, lemon scented conifer

autumn garden

There are still a few roses around, and the geranium leaves die off so cheerily.

rose, autumn garden

acers, garden

I bought some marigolds in early summer, different varieties and the one below has been great so I’m saving seeds from it to grow next summer. It’s in an old chimney pot.

marigold, garden

It was a damp day when I took the photo below, from the guest bedroom window.

garden

The smirry rain (very fine like low cloud almost) gives a hazy effect but I hope you can see some of the autumn colour in the trees.

autumn garden

It has been remarkably windless recently which is strange for this area and will no doubt account for the days and days of rain that we’ve had, but I suspect that the leaves won’t be hanging on for much longer now.

My garden in Fife, Scotland

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I took these photos of my garden on the 5th of August.

my garden , Fife, Scotland

The combination of a few hot days followed by some really terribly wet days has resulted in a lot of lush growth. You know what British summers are often like – two hot days followed by a thunder storm. Just a few days after I took these photos we had the worst thunder and lightning storm in the east of Scotland that anyone could ever remember, it lasted for at least twelve hours and towards the end of it our house actually shook, it was more than a wee bit disconcerting. Remarkably my garden survived unscathed.

my garden, Fife, Scotland

August is traditionally a bit of a slack period where flowers are concerned, often the mid summer blooms have gone over and the late summer plants haven’t got going yet, but my garden still has quite a lot of colour within it.

my garden, Fife, Scotland

If you look at the tree in the top right of the photo below you might be able to see some apples growing. This tree had been sheltered by a large native honeysuckle at the time of the May air frost which killed off the pear and plum buds. Failing to cut plants back sometimes ends up being an advantage!

my garden, Fife, Scotland

The perennial sweet pea which is flowering in the photo below is becoming more thuggish each year. I really should pull it out, but I know that I’ll never get rid of it all. I like the flowers but sadly they have no scent, unlike the annual sweet peas, and I have a feeling that the plant is choking anything else that’s growing near it.

my garden, Fife, Scotland

At the moment our garden waste bin men aren’t coming as regularly as they used to, so whenever the bin has been emptied by them it’s no time at all before it’s full up again. This has been curtailing my garden tidying somewhat – well that’s my excuse! I must admit though that if I hadn’t had a garden to potter around in during the lockdown I suspect that my mental health would have suffered. There’s something about the combination of exercise and the thought processes that you go through when gardening that are just perfect for balancing life out somehow.

My garden in Fife, Scotland

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Last week we had a couple of lovely blue sky sunny and hot days – hot by our standards anyway. Then of course the thunder and monsoon-like rain followed, and it’s still with us, well maybe not quite monsoon proportions but very damp indeed. I knew we would pay for all that gorgeous sunshine we had back in May!

my garden, Fife

But while the sun shone I took a few photos of my garden. Actually it looks a bit different now as it has been tidied up or redded up as we sometimes say in Scotland. I had to wait for my brown garden waste bin to be emptied as it was stuffed to the gunnels.

my garden

I got quite excited when I got an email from the Scottish National Trust telling me that some of their gardens will be opening on Friday. After the long Covid-19 lockdown a historic garden visit sounded perfect to me, especially as we’ve only been allowed to travel no further than 5 miles, unless it’s for essential shopping such as for food. The garden at nearby Falkland Palace or even Branklyn in Perth beckoned to me in my mind, but having seen the weather forecast for Friday I doubt if a garden visit will be on the cards. I live in hope!

my garden, Fife

My garden in Fife

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I took a few photos of my garden last week when we were having a very long dry spell, since then we have had some much needed rain. Below is a photo of a blue clematis alpina which is against the fence, it’s my favourite clematis, of the ones I have anyway. There’s also an acer/Japanese maple on the right just coming into leaf.

acer, clamatis alpina, Garden 5

The patch below is the first area to come into flower as it’s where I have most of my snowdrops, but the narcissus, primulas, cherry blossom and heathers are flowering now.

heathers, cherry blossom, primulaGarden 1

I feed the birds all winter but will be removing the last of the feeders when this one below is empty. The birds don’t need supplements over the summer. The tree the feeder is hanging on is a pear tree, very late in showing signs of growth but it has since begun to blossom.

pieris, pear tree, amelanchier, primulas

The photo below would have been quite nice if I hadn’t inadvertently left my weed bucket in view! On the far right is the remains of what was a giant cherry tree that I planted just a couple of years ago, it grew about 20 feet inside a few years, you wouldn’t think it was possible. Anyway, I realised it was going to be far too big for our garden so it has been reduced and the bark cut all around it as it was impossible to move it. I plan to keep the skeleton of the tree to grow my rambling rose Rambling Rector over it. It also produced loads of suckers from the roots. Whoever thought it was a good tree to sell to the general public was off their head. Very few gardens can accommodate a tree which apparently grows to 100 feet, something that the sellers kept quiet about! You live and learn. There are far too may trees in this garden, which I knew was a mistake, but I wanted them all, sheer greed. They are mainly small fruit trees though – apples, pear and plum. Fingers crossed we don’t get a late frost as we did last year and all the buds turned black and fell off.

my garden, silver birch, euphorbia, acer

I had to trace the tree roots and pull them up where possible, that made a complete mess of the chips at the path and around the table which is to the left and out of view below. I thought it might settle down itself but it hasn’t, so that’ll be next on the agenda for needing attention. Since taking these photos the garden has been cleaned up and my brown bin is full of garden waste, but there’s yet more to do. A garden is always a work in progress!

my Garden

My sink garden

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I had an old Belfast/butler’s sink in my old garden but I had to leave it behind when we moved so when I saw another old one in a particularly eclectic shop that I enjoy having a rake around in I just had to buy it. It was a bargain too!
Belfast sink

I sited it close to the bench/pergola so that you can either rest your weary feet on it or rest your cup/glass on the handy soap indentations. The photo above was taken in early April 2017 when I started this project. I’ve filled the sink with some sedums, miniature viola, thrift, a miniature willow is in the top right hand corner and a miniature cotoneaster to the left.

Belfast sink

The photo above was taken a week or so later when I had more or less finished planting it up.

The photo below is how it looked in August 2017 I think.

Belfast sink

This week I’ve been working hard in the garden digging up the grass around the sink, it’s very difficult to mow around it, so I’m busy putting a tile edging around the area and plan to fill it with small hardy plants and slate shards. I’ve actually planted some box plants around the bottom of the sink, eventually it’ll look like a box of box I hope, when I get around to clipping it all.

I plan to get the ground around it sorted out next week – weather permitting.

Garden – before and after

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A wee while ago someone asked me for some before and after photos of my garden, we moved to our new place in 2014 and the garden was just a sea of very weedy grass. There’s an awful lot less grass now, but what is left is still pretty weedy. I’m still cutting into the turf to gain planting space though, I’m a bit of a plantaholic I suppose. The photos are all of the area where we situated the summerhouse, mainly because the previous owners of the house took their summerhouse with them and we couldn’t shift the concrete blocks that they had used as a base.

Here you go then, that area of the garden from 2014 when we moved in, to 2017.

New Garden

And a few months later

summerhouse (gazebo)

March 2016
my garden

August 2017
garden path

July 2015
garden Summer house

July 2016

garden 3

Sadly although the summerhouse (posh garden shed) looks nice it has turned out not to be fit for purpose. I had intended to keep lots of my books in there and did have three bookcases full of them in it. Then I realised that during the winter the glass was full of condensation – not good for books. I had to run out there and fill my clothes basket with the books – several trips, and find space in the house for them.

It’s particularly annoying because the summerhouse in the old house was just a cheap one from B&Q and I had no trouble at all with it. This new one cost more than double the previous one, so it just shows you that the most expensive is not always the best!