All bases covered.

I came across this article of the best 100 plants yesterday via Help save bees on twitter. I love the fact that it covers all the seasons, as during the autumn and winter my patch seems to fall short of interest.

Hmmm I can see a shopping list coming on......

Step away from the spade

This is not my garden but if it was I could live with it.(Image via google images)


I love this time of year, you know being a stone through away from autumn, I don't even really mind the fact that our summer seems to be over and done with. What I don't like about this time of year is the fact my garden looks rubbish.
Late summer gardens can look stunning and there is still lots of beautiful plants yet to shine, but mine just looks a mess.
All my planting mistakes in spring show up and I think "why did I plant that there?" or "I didn't stake that well enough" or "that's a lot bigger than I thought it would be".
It doesn't help that my little patch is bordered by wild countryside and even though this year I thought i was more on the ball with keeping back the wilds I'm having battles with brambles and bracken taking over my hedges and fences and my bank that separates the chickens from the flower garden is over run with brambles and field maple saplings, tansy and bracken. It looks amazing in the spring with bluebells, primroses and violets.

I really think I'm more of a spring gardener than a summer/autumn gardener. I was so pleased with how everything looked a few months ago but now it looks shaggy and over grown. Maybe I'm being a bit hard on myself but I always seem to be a bit lack-lustre in the garden after July. The problem is I'm itching to get started on dividing,moving,and planting. I'm trying to plan a overhaul and now is a really good time to take stock of what doesn't work or look right. I really have so much work to do and I'm dying to get started but I need to wait at least until the asters and chrysanth's have had there turn.

Hello my name is Jess and I'm a plantaholic!

I love plant shopping in particular buying them from small family run nurseries, garden gates and village fetes. Last week I went to one of my favourite fetes where without a doubt is the best plant stall I've ever seen. About 5 tables laden with plants that have started life as cuttings and seedlings from peoples gardens. I think the lovely lady who runs the stall actually provides all the plants herself. It always has a real eclectic mix of things some of which you'd be hard pressed to find in some of the big garden centre chains.

Now sorry but I neglected to take a photo of the stall before the fete started(wished I had) because the act of buying is planned like a military operation.
So we get to the fete about 1/2 hour before it starts and eat our picnic on the village green while keeping an eye on whats being put on the table, then we (me mum and the kids) wonder over to the tables and cast a closer eye over the plants making a mental list of what we want. As soon as the fete is declared open I position my niece and nephew at strategic points and start putting the things I want by their feet, mum will keep shouting over to me saying "whats this", "how big will this get" or "can i plant this with such and such". When I'm happy I got what I want I add up my total and hand over my pennies (all proceeds go to the village hall and church).

Now the reason for the organised operation is the fact that it can turn into a bit of a scrum and fights have been known to break out (mainly between my mother and me) so planning (and small children) is key. Husband then takes my babies back to the car rolling his eyes and muttering. I do of course go back a few more times to check I haven't missed anything.

So this is my haul



So I think this is pretty modest for me. If you interested I bought:
Verbascum, persicara, sweet cicley, saxifraga, 3 different hardy geraniums, acanthus and a houseplant but I lost the label. All off that cost me under 8 pounds.
These little chaps will have to sit around till the autumn when I dig up my herbaceous border and give it a major overhaul. But I'll keep them well watered and fed and I'm pretty sure there will be more plants joining them waiting for planting soon.

Cottage gardens (part 1)

I've spent the last few hours browsing pictures of cottage gardens on the net trying to find one that appeals to me most, because I think everyone has an image in their mind of that quintessentially English rural cottage garden. Its been difficult to find one that ticks all my boxes, I can't even use a picture of my own (I'm having issues that I'll save for another day). Cottage gardens can be one of the most difficult gardens to get right. I think it stems from what we imagine them to look like, they have a real nostalgia, a romantic glimpse of an age that's disappeared and trying to recreate one that fits that image in our minds (and hearts) can be difficult to pull together (or maybe that's just me).
So I've decided to not show a picture of a cottage garden.

The original true cottage gardens were more about function than form. They were productive patches growing vegetables, herbs, fruit and livestock. Flowers weren't really high on the agenda. The local gentry had the flowery gardens, seed from these would creep in to the cottagers plots on the wind or by birds. Its the wealthy landowners gardens that our idea of the cottage garden comes from.
There was a brief trend in the 18th century for aristocrats to create cottage ornees (fake cottages) so they could sample the quaint country life of their hard up tenants.

Cottage gardens were revived in the late 19th century by the arts and crafts movement probably as a back lash to the formal styles of the Victorians with their love of huge displays of bright carpet bedding.
One of the most influential designers was the incredible Gertrude Jekyll who teamed up with the architect Edwin Lutyens to create some of the most beautiful planting schemes ever seen.

Other notable (really really good) examples of gardeners and gardens include Vita Sackville-west at Sissinghurst, Beth Chatto and the late great Christopher Lloyds Great Dixter

So, history lesson over.


Oh go on here's a picture


This is the Chelsea Pensioners Garden From RHS Chelsea 2005 (the year I was there)

Garden heroines

Gardening especially vegetable growing can often seem to be a male dominated world, images of old men in waistcoats, smoking pipes up the allotment, discussing spuds and tomato plants is often how a lot of first time female gardeners can perceive it to be.
Gardening legends such as Percy Thrower, Geoff Hamilton and the housewives favourite Alan Titchmarsh are all amazing champions of the green thumb but there are some wonderful garden ladies out there.

last night I was watching the coverage of Chelsea and saw the lovely Christine Walkden, I absolutely love her. She's such a no-nonsense plants women, she has an amazingly infectious passion for plants. A few years back now she had a TV show called Christine'garden and it was so lovely and refreshing, her garden is just stacked with plants, she doesn't appear to be interested in design or planting combinations so much, as just planting her garden full of everything she loves. It made me laugh how during the winter months she turns her dining room table over to all her tender plants, to keep them protected from the cold. I just love her enthusiasm, I find it so inspiring.

Another favourite of mine is Rachel de Thame, totally chalk and cheese with Christine. I love her for different reasons entirely, She's such a glamour-puss and I love that about her. She got quite a bit of stick when she presented Gardeners world, for being seen to be too pretty, and wearing gloves and not getting her hands dirty. But she has a real passion for beautiful plants and made a stunning garden last year at Chelsea.

Carol klein, (I really think she was robbed, she should have been the main presenter of Gardeners world) is an another wonderfully enthusiastic plants women, I adore her love of growing and nurturing plants. I really need to take a trip down to her nursery Glebe Cottage, I think she has a few open days left with the NGS. (I also love Carol because she looks a bit like my mum)

Another Gardeners world presenter again. Alys Fowler. I think Alys is great because she's young (and she has a love of vintage clothes like me). I think she's really accessible for younger women (and girls) to relate to, and that's important to make gardening a cool hobby to get into and not just something older folks with time and money can do. Gardening can be seen as a old fashioned dull pastime, but its not and I really feel Alys is promoting that.

Finally Gertrude Jekyll, who for me is one of the most important women to ever pick up a trowel. Without her influence and use of colour and texture maybe todays gardens wouldn't be as beautiful.

Just don't mention that charlie dimmock.

Chelsea girl

My love affair with Chelsea began 4 years ago,
I've always been passionate about plants,from when I was a tiny little thing I've know the names of most wildflowers and trees and I've been gardening since I was in my teens, a window box here a hanging basket there, borrowing a small corner of a neighbours allotment and pottering about in my mums garden.
But it was 4 years ago that it become more than just a hobby. At the time I was working for a company who were sponsoring a show garden (along with the wildlife trust).My head office department thought it would be a good P.R thing to send a few shop staff up to the showground to "help out" with the gardens construction the week before Chelsea opened. My manager knowing I had a bit of green finger put my name down and off I went to London.

I think all the other staff that had turned up over the week had hung about for an hour or so, had a few photos taken holding a spade and then, disappeared to go shopping on the kings road. I on the other hand fell in love as soon as I arrived I just found the whole thing incredible, the plants, the people, the whole atmosphere. I got stuck in straight away chatting to all the builders, quizzing the designer about everything, swooning over all the plants. I was in heaven.
After proving my mettle I was given a 2ft by 2ft corner to finish planting all on my own, helped clean out the pond and helped to lay turf in the meadow area. I ended up staying on till 10pm (I was meant to go home at 4pm) and had one of the best days of my life.

I think it was when I was standing knee deep in sludgy water helping to drain the pond for the second time that I realized this was exactly what I wanted to do with my life.
I wanted to be a gardener.

So within a few days after my Chelsea Epiphany, I'd enrolled at college and began devouring every Plant, garden and design book our local library stocked. I went out to the scrappy backyard behind my little flat and pulled up all the weeds and designed and created my very first attempt at a cottage garden all of my own.

And now here I am 4 years later working as a horticulturist, living the good life in the country with my dream (still work in progress)cottage garden and still being madly and passionately in love with plants and gardens.

So the Chelsea flower show has an important place in my heart, and one day you'll see me there with my own show garden.

(my garden 2005 image via giles landscaping)

Live life off the wall

Vertical gardening has been around for a while now and is a brilliant way to garden if you don't have any space or if you want to cover a big expanse of wall or fencing.
I recently came across the work of Flora Grubb and have fallen in love with her use of succulents and air plants


(image via Flora Grubb gardens)

I'd love to find a way of replicating this in my garden, although my style is more along the lines of cottagey, and all the walls and fences have climbers on them already.

Hmmmmmm