My Cutting Garden

 I am really lucky to have a largeish garden which is split into the "main garden" and the "veg patch/wildlife zone". We have lived in our home for four years now and I have started to make good inroads into transforming the main garden from weedy bramble patch to pretty English country garden.  However...  With the exception of my gorgeous selection of David Austin repeat roses and Hydrangea 'Annabelle', I find myself unable to deplete the plants in the main garden to cut flowers for vases and I absolutely love having pretty flowers around the house during the summer.

Cut flowers with visiting butterfly

The veg patch was a good idea in theory. It's surrounded by my wilderness bits of garden to encourage wildlife into the same area and it has a couple of permanent beds (asparagus and raspberries) and then several 8x4 foot beds for seasonal crops.  All sounded great during the design stage but out of sight meant out of mind and for the last couple of years I have miserably failed to harvest most of the veg I was growing on time! So in May I took the decision to jack in my vegetable patch, to move courgette, tomato, salad, etc. production into large pots / small beds nearer the kitchen back door and use this space to start off a cutting garden instead.

To kick myself off, I bought a handful of perennials from the garden centre (mainly to trial them as cutting flowers) and popped them into the ground.  I then bought some packs of seeds from the absolutely fantastic Higgledy Garden, made some lines with string and filled up most of my space.  And then I waited a bit and weeded between the rows a bit.  As ever with annuals, it feels like nothing could ever grow fast enough to pick this year but from around 4 weeks ago I have had non-stop flowers to pick.

The photo I have posted at the top is from last week and everything I've used in those vases are keepers. What I love most is that they are also (mostly) really insect friendly and as you can see a butterfly popped by to have a snack whilst I was taking my picture.  So far my favourites from my trials have been:

Annuals:

• Calendula 'Art Shades' & 'Indian Prince'.
• Cornflower 'Black Ball'
• Cerinthe Major Purpurascens (such a snappy name!)
• Cosmos 'Purity'
• Sunflower 'Vanilla Ice'

Perennials:

• Echinacea Purpurea
• Rudbeckia 'Marmalade'
• Rudbeckia Hirta 'Prairie Sun' & 'Autumn Colours' (these have been really great performers)
• Lathyrus latifolius (Everlasting Sweet Pea)
• Leucanthemum 'Broadway Lights'

I also have some perennials I hope to trial properly next year as I sowed the seeds in this which include a couple of the Aquilegia Barlow family, mixed Delphiniums and Knautia 'Melton Pastels'.  I sowed some (very late!) Sweet Peas that are just coming into flower.  Unfortunately the marker pen I used has proven not to be as waterproof as advertised so I have absolutely no idea what the gorgeous varieties  now emerging are but they are great to mix in with the flowers from the very prolific everlasting variety which is sadly scentless.

(some of) today's flowers

All of the above favourites are definite keepers for next year (I must be ruthless, I must be ruthless) but I realised when I started picking that my most prolific plants are mostly yellows so I definitely need to add more variety including some greens!!  Having said that at the moment I am getting some nice paler mixes too (see second pic) and luckily I have some self-seeded dill in the veg patch that I've been able to use. I do have the vibrant green establishing Alchemilla Mollis plants in the main garden but think I need to move some up into the cutting patch so I remember to pick more green!

Even though the Summer is not over, I'm already thinking about the changes I want to make so next year I'm also going to trial:

Annuals: Ammi Majus, Ammi Visage, Bupleurum Griffithii, Celosia 'Flamingo Feather' & Dill Mammoth which should have more impact than the bog standard version I had this year. I'm also thinking about possibly adding some Larkspur as I might feel less guilty about picking them than I do about my mixed Delphiniums!

Perennials: Echinacea Primadonna White, Echinops 'Ritro', a long stemmed Lavender and mixed Scabiosa too.

I also need to think about how I extend the life of my picking season.  I'm really lucky in that the "wilderness" part of my garden is absolutely filled with bluebells in spring - so many that I can happily cut them for a few weeks.  I also have several large clumps of chives which I used as early flowers along with a few daffodils that I allowed myself to pick very sparingly from the main garden.

Overall, I am really pleased with the transition from veg patch to cutting garden and am already looking forward to Version 2.0 in 2015!

"I Aten't Dead"

Just a little note to say, in the words of the indomitable Granny Weatherwax, "I Aten't Dead".

In May this year we moved house to a very English thatched cottage in the country. Three and a bit months on and it still feels as if we are staying in a holiday rental and I can't quite believe that this is actually our home now! It took soooo long to get our internet connection sorted (vile, vile BT) that I just got out of the habit of blogging.

Once I'd caught up on my reader feeds, we'd unpacked, painted, started a veggie patch (look! I grew peas!) and settled in, it just didn't seem as though I had time to to write about the books I read as well as read them! Or maybe it's just not a priority.

So anyway. I'm still here. I'm still reading, I'm still following blogs, and at some point I might start writing on this one again. Or start a blog called "101 ways to eat a home grown courgette..." Seriously.

My Wildlife Garden

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A couple of weeks ago I chanced upon an episode of the BBC's Wild About Your Garden... What a fabulously inspirational programme it is. The basic premise is that presenter Nick Knowles, garden designer Chris Beardshaw and wildlife specialist Ellie Harrison transfer ordinary garden's into wildlife havens and so far they've managed to attract water voles, badgers and red squirrels. Although I am pretty sure that our garden is not in an area where it will attract much more than birds and insects, I've found the series so far really useful. There are six episodes in total and the BBC seem to be cycling them on a permanent rotation so it should be easy to catch them if you are interested.

Reading through some reference materials online, I've been amazed at the difference adding in some really easy to obtain plants are and will be implementing several of the suggestions I've seen. I've added a short list of the sites I have found most useful at the bottom but I am sure there are plenty more out there. I have plans for adding a(t least one) small native tree to our terraced garden as well as planting some shrubs/climbers specifically to provide a food source for insects which will, I hope, entice more birds in my direction. I'm really excited about this as I was wondering what to do as the garden was due a refresh this spring following some building work leaving a couple of muddy patches that need filling.

Useful Links:
BBC Breathing Places -They've got a range of really simple ideas that would make a huge difference to even the smallest space.
RSPB's A-Z of a Wildlife Garden - This was the most useful site I found in terms of identifying specific plants to support bird and insect life.
My Wildlife Friendly Garden - This site really inspired me as Sheila has a courtyard that's even smaller than my garden yet manages to attract a great range of wildlife into her space.
Natural England - They provide (free) useful pdf documents on a range of topics. They also provide a massive online database of creatures and the plants they rely on that helped to narrow down my list of plants!

Now that I am the proud possessor of every type of bird food and dispenser known to (wo)man, I await delivery of a copy of Collins Complete Guide to British Wildlife and the arrival of some more little friends...

RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Every year I mean to make it down to the Chelsea Flower Show and every year I fail. Although, thanks to extensive coverage on the BBC, I probably get a better feel for the show than I would if I went in person! The Summer Solstice garden is my favourite this year - perhaps because it's just what I'd like to have myself. One day, one day!

In the meantime, here are some pictures from my own garden that I took yesterday - for some reason it won't load in blogger as a decent sized image but it does if you click on it. Could be user error though!