We have got leaf-cutter bees. I thought they were Willoughby’s LCBs but they might be Patchwork ones – and the Wildlife Trust reassures me that they are very difficult to tell apart.
They nest in the bee house we picked up in the street. I cleaned it last year and there was one that had died still in there. We drilled holes in some logs and they nest in those too, but they need to be sunny. There are 2 bees in the picture at the bottom. One coming out, and one inside the hole to the left of it.
The Herb Robert on top of the shed is bright red. I think it is because it is stressed by shade, but it still sets seed which grows up red the next year. I don’t see why something this beautiful is a weed.
I started planting this a couple of weeks ago. It has rained almost all the time ever since, so it has started off really well.
There are already some nice fruit trees, a big buddleia and some bits of veg left over from before (onions, jerusalem artichokes etc).
I planted perennials at the end of the L, that will hopefully get better every year. The long bit of the L is mostly annuals, so in the beneficiaries can take it over again when they’re ready – or the Turkish centre can use it to grow veg in. (I like flowers more, we’ve got lots of veg already but….). It’s got Sweet Peas in it, and then lots of chard and some purple sprouting broccoli I got from Sian. (I know this is veg but I’m growing it for ornament). Also the Rose, some crocosmia, lots of herbs, more flowers.
There are also pots holding down the gazebos – but they are in the shade nearly all the time – so hard to make very bright. This one gets the most sun.
It’s really fun to do, and it’s a nice way to talk to people when they’re packing up their parcels. There are lots of butterflies already and people seem to like it.
I think there’s lots more I should do but I don’t have much time – I underestimated how much time it needs to keep going but maybe that will slowly sort itself out. If it was one’s proper garden, there are all sorts of bit that need sorting – like the sheds and greenhouse and the pots, but at the moment, we will all have to squint and only see the bits that are beautiful.
This is what the pest control man said when he came to get rid of the dead rat in the cellar. He suggested clearing away the “overgrown” bits of the garden and when I baulked he said “if you garden for wildlife, you don’t get to chose the wildlife you get.”
We have got ANTS everywhere. I don’t mind ants, tho I believe the aren’t great in pots because the plant roots can come into contact with too much air not soil. But they are now under everything, in the lawn and inside the hammock. I guess it is so wet, any time there is a hint of dryness, they make a nest.
There are also a lot of skinny foxes around at the moment and every night they poo in the garden. I could do without them. Yesterday I saw a mouse run across the bit by the backdoor and I was VERY BRAVE about it but I don’t like that either. And I read that amongst other things, the toad will eat froglets if it gets the chance. I don’t want this, but I do want the toad and I guess it is the circle of life.
This is a shady, skanky bit of the garden, at the top of the back passage where it meets the main bit. At the moment it is one of my favourite parts of the garden. This is partly because I saw a toad (THE toad?) there the last time I looked and it glowered at me and plodded off.
It’s partly because it’s made out of old bits of weeds that seems to be beautiful and to have come from I-don’t-know-where.
Marion gave me a ceramic bread bin which broke, so I planted it up as a pot. It’s been there for years, and this year, all the cultivated plants had died or got too big. So it just had wild flowers left. I wanted it for the kids for some of the things I got from Core (I LOVE buying things from the Core garden) so I emptied out what was left alive into the skanky bit of the garden and gave it one water and it just got on with it.
I think there is self-heal, and Lady’s bedstraw (or a kind of bedstraw?) and Good King Henry and Herb Robert. And I love it.
I have a rose I don’t much like and can’t grow very well. A couple of years ago, it had a sucker, which is explained succinctly here. I didn’t realise it wouldn’t flower and kept it to see what would happen. This is what happened. Every year, these guys turn up…
The best thing about them – which you can’t see in a photo – is that they freeze when they think you’re looking at them. They curve up and pretend to be twigs. They hold the pose and you feel like you can hear them muttering to each other “has she gone yet?”
That picture above was last week. Now they look bigger and fatter and more insanely coloured, and most of the rose is completely stripped of leaves.
I feel very happy about this. I get caterpillars, I get butterflies, I don’t “pay” any price because every year, the only plant they eat is the sucker – they don’t eat the real rose, they don’t seem to eat anything around them. I feel even smug about this.
I still can’t get the angles in the photos right but it has been looking fab. It makes me smile when I go past. It has a lot of Turkish sage in it, which I wouldn’t have in my own garden but is looking pretty good – and it is holding on. It is nice that it has moved through the season and still looks nice but in a different way,
Some beds in the Olympic park this year are a tiny bit more impressive than mine.
I love the window boxes outside our bedroom. They are a wildflower mix. They’re very delicate and look like something properly wild. They sway in the wind and cast beautiful shadows on window film (I’m quite pleased with the windows too but they cost A LOT more than the window boxes).
Yesterday I saw finches eating the cornflowers seeds. I love this!
This year, all my sweet peas are grown from seed gathered from plants I bought from Sarah Raven last year. There were 3 kinds and they’ve grown in 3 ways:
They are a mixed bag. The ones that grew by themselves are the strongest. I thought they might be wild everlasting sweet peas when they came up as they were so robust in the winter but one has purple and blue flowers and one blue.
Some are doing okay. They’re not AS good as Sarah Raven grown ones, but they’re not a disaster.
Some are spindly and weedy and totally failing to thrive. I don’t know why. I’ve fed and watered them. Some don’t get much sun (as they are so small – lots of sun higher up) but some do. The internet suggests it’s pretty hard to fail with sweet peas and has no ideas.
I don’t seem to have any of the red ones. And not many of the blue. I wonder if the spindly ones are red ones? Or if the spindly ones are across all types but lacking something? More thought needed.
Be not proud! One week after my “14 foxglove” post, we’re down to 7.
Some got rained on so hard they broke; Luke, Ezra and Vincent fell a hammock on a few; Chris’s friend James hit some with his bike (or Chris did) and you always lose a couple to particularly fine cricket shots.
After it rained when I was away, it was very dry for a couple of days, so some appear weirdly to have completely dried out before setting seed (is this a virus or just dryness?).
I wonder what affect this will have on how many foxgloves we have in 2023. Maybe we won’t have any or the ones left will just have more offspring?
The ones with lots of of spikes are still doing well so I’m putting this picture in again just to make me happy.
It’s getting better. But it’s still not right. I have been following the advice from the helpful people at Hotbin – and it does smell nice at the top and is proper hot and getting through the waste. But at the bottom, it’s still compacted solid and oozy and a bit smelly.
I thought it was less smelly but my friend Jane came round while I was emptying it and said it reminded her of being in India. So maybe I am just getting accustomed to the smell. I’m still getting lots of fluid and not getting usable compost. Though I think I could use some of this as mulch.
I think this time round, I think I have added enough cardboard but not mixed it in properly. I still have a problem with bulking agent. It’s hard to add enough to stop it compacting, but still have compost (not sticks) at the end.
But on the bright side, Pickle says at least I have a mulch-generator, and looking at the earlier pictures (below from Jan) it is getting better.
NB: those potato starch bags (“just POP them in your food recycling bin”) DON’T break down. Don’t pop them in.
We got these about 4 days ago. You can’t really see because they look like tiny droplets but there are frogs in all these pictures!
It’s easy but dangerous to undervalue the ones that haven’t got legs once you’ve got ones that have so here’s a pic of one of those.
In the last week, we’ve gone from a few tadpoles with legs to everybody having them. Some of them have got tiny arms too I think but it’s hard to spot. Jade – who loves her pond even more than me – has got baby froglets with no tails at all.
The most advanced ones hang out in the shallow bit that gets the most sun. Is this because the ones that like the warmest bit, grow quicker? Or is it that the quick growing ones grab the best spots?
With legs comes consciousness. When they’re plain tadpoles, they don’t shy from anything. You can stick your fingers in the pond and they just wiggle round you. But the more like frogs they get, the more they notice movement and dash away when you approach. So it’s harder to take pictures but I will.
There is campanula growing all round the garden. It’s in the front yard too – and once it even grew up through the floorboards in the sitting room.
This year, it is looking very lovely growing up through the fern by the backdoor. It’s never done this before but has put up long flowers through the foliage.
This is a window box full of it too. This used to be planted with bedding plants but the campanula crept in and took over.
PS these are very beautiful dark bits of the garden – shady corner and back passage
The fox gloves are doing well. We’ve got about 14, white and purple. Some of them have been hit by hammocks and footballs and aren’t doing brilliantly. But some have grown other spikes, when the king spike got taken out. And others are just thriving, though they don’t like the really hot weather.
We can’t work out where all the foxgloves in this post are. But we have found this one:
Edie shown for reference. She’s about 4 feet high. Both spikes have flowered but we don’t know which is the biggest, the old or the new.
I particularly like this one, with lots going on in one pot.
Edith Rose took these photos of the Paul’s Scarlet Climber. She likes them because they’re really red!
I had these for several years and then last year, they flowered! I was surprised! This year, they have again. They don’t last long but they are beautiful.
They don’t know how to use them! (As ZZ Top sort of said). But they’ve got legs. They are WIERD looking animals.
This year, we seem to have a lot of big buff-tailed bumble-bees. Not as many hoverflies as last year but I think that is the very wet Spring. When we sat in the kitchen at night with the doors open and the lights on, we got a reassuring number of insects on the ceiling. Will try again later in this summer to see how it’s going.
My Garden 