The Garden

A long weekend. And the only one in May I spend at home. Saturday is beautiful and sunny, I could do anything, go for a big walk to see the last of the bluebells in the woods or see masses of cow parsley. But not. I’d rather stay and home and make the most of this special weekend.

The garden is my happy place, it makes me switch off fully. My outdoor meditation. I spend the day outside, first, taking some pictures with the first light, then having my first coffee while enjoying (very much) my new book, then changing into my gardening jeans, picking up my gloves and off I go. I always start my dahlias in pots (it’s good I did as 3 tubers don’t show any sign of life) and time has come for those to be put in their final place. I take some cuttings to have a few extra plants (replacing those 3 that don’t seem to live). Then I plan the order of the dahlias. To my surprise, most of the colours are shades of orange, funny how one’s taste can change. Noticing my orange tulips too.

Then I sort out my plant nursery, which isn’t a nursery at all, just a small area by the shed where I keep plants that will go out in the garden soon. Either I grew them from seeds or plants I was gifted or plants I bought. I cherish them all the same way. When all the forget-me-nots are over and their absence reveal all the empty space, I can fill that with these plants. I remove bulbs that flowered, the bulbs go in the shed and the pots are filled with plants especially from this plant nursery stock. I also refresh the pots outside the front door. We eat lunch. Outside. In the sunshine. I wouldn’t want to be walking in the woods seeing the last of blubells. It’s absolutely perfect here.

After lunch, I tackle the perennial border that runs the long of the first part of the garden. Ground elder likes creeping in and I always try to keep this area free of that agressive weed (yes, weed). Time flies. Cold drinks arrive and I start to slow down. And when the sun starts to drop, the camera comes out again. I steal a moment here and there when the light is right.

On Sunday, a new camera arrives (should have come on Saturday but hey), a different one to the ones I’ve been used to so I spend quite some time learning about it (reading the manual, yes, that is a thing) and just experimenting with it as I’m planning to take it to an exciting shoot on a sunny island this weekend.

I hope you’ve all had a lovely long weekend. My weekends at home are now over for the foreseeable so I really wanted to make the most of these days.

PS - the cherry on the cake was a misty Tuesday morning.

Dahlia

It has been a very good year for dahlias. It wasn’t the best though for the ones I left in the ground but those have been in there for at least 3 years so I figure I should now lift and divide them. Anyway, the ones that are good just keep on giving. I cut them every day and either give them to friends or bring them in the house.
One of the main reasons I like growing them is because they are easy to grow and won’t stop giving you flowers well into Autumn.

These above are a mix of ones growing in my garden but some I picked at Green and Gorgeous. I have too many orange-Autumn colour ones and so Sweet Nathalie (or Café au Lait) stand out a bit. I’m definitely going to mix in more colours next year. This is the best time of the year seeing all the beautiful varieties growing out there i.e. writing a dahlia shopping list.

I love displaying dahlias in a rather simple way, putting them in these vintage stoneware jars - Victorian ink bottles. You can esily find these on etsy or car boot sales.

I grow most of my dahlias at the very back of the garden. This area looked like this - below - when we moved here 7 years ago but we cleared it a lot. We’re only renting so there’s ony so much work we want or can do but I’m quite happy with the current state.

So yes. Dahlias. Such a colourful (sometimes even a bit too much for my liking) and easy to grow flower, do grow them if you can.

Crab apple

There are four crab apple trees on one of my favourite bridlepath. I love seeing these in all season but they are always my favourite when the trees lose their leaves and only the apples hang on like baubles. A few days ago, a big branch from one of these trees broke off so I saved a few bits and brought them home. I love crab apples trees a lot. I love their wildness, their imperfect shape and as they grow old, their mossy branches. They also say Autumn is not far now..

Meanwhile my crab apple:

It’s a Comtesse de Paris that I planted in February and is enjoying the company of Ammi Majus growing all around it. I chose this one for its apples that turn orange in the Autumn. Although I really liked its simple, single flowers in the Spring too.

The first posy

There will be flowers now in the garden until the end of the year. This is the first posy from the garden and oh it feels so nice picking these colourful little Spring flowers. The garden I’m currently custodian of - since we’re only renting but we can do whatever we want to the garden, seriously, we have the best landlords - so this garden once belonged to a gardener. How I love this thought. In the Spring, it’s full of all the flowers you see here. I added lots of hellebores myself and there are no narcissi growing in the garden but I always grow them in pots. One day, in my own garden, these flowers will grow too, in the orchard where I’ll leave the grass long..

There will be flowers now in the garden until the end of the year. And around me, outside the garden too, so many beautiful ones. This year I’m photographing two books with two wonderful flower growers. I feel extremely lucky for calling this my work but also because I know I’ll learn so much from them. The only thing though I cannot seem to learn at all is making bouquets. So I’m going to stick to these little posies. I always find it easy to arrange them in a vase and then take them out from the vase and voilà, the posy is done.

There will be flowers now in the garden until the end of the year. It’s sometimes hard work but most of the time just pure happiness. Nothing relaxes me more than working in the garden (oh! or taking pictures in the/a garden) and I do love brining in flowers, branches, green leaves, anything. But I also love brining home bits from my walks. I came across this beautiful cherry plum tree yesterday..

There will be flowers now in the garden until the end of the year. I’m planning to make a posy every month and also very regurarly photograph the garden. I promise.

April in the garden - ii

So our garden is not particularly big and it’s not particularly exciting for many, I’m aware of that. This garden has seen someone coming here and saying to me, I don’t like your gardening style. Oh well, that’s absolutely fine, of course. We’re renting here so there’s only so much you can (and want) to do to this garden but our landlords are the best and let us do anything we like. This garden had been neglected for a long time before we moved in six years ago but then as we slowly started to work on it (and with it), we discovered so many wonderful cottage garden plants and many traces from a garden that it once was. The garden is quite long and not too wide. When we came, I started to dig up a border on the sunny side, there was a lot of fight with ivy and ground elder but that long bed is now absolutely managable. Many parts of the garden are still ruled by the aforementioned plants.

April has been blue, forget-me-nots all over the garden. I love the cottagegardenness of this garden. Geraniums everywhere and the aquilegia has started to flower too. The tulips are slowly gone but my peasant eye narcissus has just started to flower, I forgot to photograph that but I’ll add it next time. With Salomon’s seal. And cow parsley.

But until then, these are the things I’ve recently captured in the garden.

April in the garden - i

I’ll be sharing with you little details from my garden here as long as I can. I finally have time to really observe every tiny bit of the garden through my lens. I hope you enjoy it.

English cottage garden

English cottage garden

Forget me nots growing under old garden bench

English cottage garden

Yellow tulips and forget-me-nots