| Posted on Tuesday, June 27, 2006 - 06:25 pm: |   
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I'm a latecomer to gardening, both in years and in the time its taken for me to start enjoying the garden at this house...we've been here almost ten years but the house repairs took first priority! I started tidying the garden as a preliminary to selling the house but the more I've done to it the less incentive I have to sell. So, the garden is not huge, we have a handkerchief of lawn and flower borders at the front. Down the side of the house is a utility area and washing green and I have my little plastic greenhouse there too. At the back there is a central path dividing the lawn with a patio area next to the house and another in the sun at the end of the garden. The garden is north facing and the soil is thick clay. We have a dog who makes it his mission to eat a bit of every plant to test it out. He then sticks to the ones that make him really sick like bluebells. He also pees on any heathers I plant and kills them! So what are we growing... well hardy geraniums grow well as do cherry and lilac trees.Choisya, buddelia and fuschia bushes do well too.In spring we have hundreds of tulips, my favourite flower but the bulbs don;t survive well in the clay soil so have to be dug up and dried each year. Michaelmas daisies grow and lavender grows in the front garden but not the back.The gardens are surrounded by privet hedging which I hate mainly because it takes so long to cut and so soon looks scruffy again.
In my little greenhouse I have peppers, cherry tomatoes, salad greens and a tiny lemon tree grown from a seed. I've moved the courgettes out into big terracotta pots on the patio as they were taking over! We get lots of bees visiting, I'd love to have beehives, and plenty of birds, much to the dog's annoyance. |
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