A few years ago on the blog, I used to write a post about the garden each month, what was growing, flowering and any plans we had. During the lockdown, I’ve been able to stop the rush of life, and we’ve lived outside basically! This has been my view for the past few weeks, and I know how lucky I am to have a space like this to enjoy during the lockdown.
Whilst sitting here you really take in what’s in the garden, and see it growing each day. It’s something I’m going to make time for once life gets back to normal, as it has given me great pleasure during this time. Made me smile on days I’ve really not wanted to smile on.
So What Plans Do We Have?
Extending The Patio
We started to extend the patio after the building work. They removed a large piece of concrete that ran along the back of the house.
We had the original patio running up to this. Luckily I managed to grab the last 6 patio tiles from Tile Moutain to match up. They’ve now discontinued them…..I knew it was the last ones as we ordered 8 and they only had 6. How lucky was that?!
We’re going to fill up the edge between the patio and house with the matching stones like the other side. It gives a soakaway for the rain to run off into.
We also still need to do the other side of the door, replacing the broken one during the build and fill around the base of the water butt with stones.
BBQ Area
I’m thinking of creating a little gravel area next to this patio area where this new grass is growing (didn’t think of it before the seed went on! It will give the BBQ somewhere to sit, and next year I think we will get a new dining seating set for this patio up here. Hopefully, this bit of grass seed will grow nicely by next month too!
Planting Out Flowers We’ve Grown
This is the first year I’ve grown flowers from seed, and I’m pretty proud of them! I’ve been looking after them on the window sill, watering daily and turning them so they all get some direct sunlight.
I started them our in egg boxes as I didn’t have lots of little pots for them. It worked really well and I just potted them up when they got bigger.
These ones didn’t do so well though, Asters. But I have since planted them up into bigger pots, hoping that I get just one survive!
Fruit Trees
Whilst watching one of the gardening programmes they told you how to grow your apple trees. We’ve not trained ours whilst it’s been growing, and this year it is pretty wild and growing very high. I know once the apples start getting heavier, they are going to drop down.
It’s only meant to be a dwarf apple tree, so won’t grow massive, but I must be braver on pruning it back. So we had a go at bringing the branches down and training them along the fence line. The fruit grows better if it grows this way apparently!
It has lots of apples on it, so will lovely to see how they do this year.
The pear tree is next to it, and that has some little pears growing too. The kids love seeing these!
Roses
I love Roses, they’re one of my favourite flowers. They flower all summer, giving you months of colour and interest to your garden. There are so many different varieties, there is bound to be a perfect one for your garden.
I’m currently growing one up the shed, it’s a shade loving climber and it should cover my shed side, so we can’t see so much wood. It’s just reached the wire I’ve put on, so let’s see how far it has got next month!
I purchased this Obilsk last year for this little rose to grow up. It was really cheap from Amazon but is great for what I want. This Rose is lovely, it was here when we moved in and was growing over a large arch. I loved the different colours of the flowers, and how dainty it was. I’m slowly training it up it, as it will look so lovely once covered in flowers.
This Rose was a present from my builder as he dug up some of my Roses from the front garden!!
Pergola
We have some plans to add a pergola or screening to the garden, and we’re thinking it would be good to have one over the hot tub area. We’ve been looking at one of the best hedging nurseries in Hampshire at their options for hedging, screening and living wall options. It would create privacy from over the fence out the front, shading for the hot tub and create a more living edging to the garden. We’re looking at making it ourselves, but I wanted to get the plants this year. They can spend this year getting their roots established, and next year it will cover the pergola well.
This is one of the Roses that arrived, a tiny little pink Rose that grows really quickly. Annoyingly the other two plants haven’t turned up yet after 5 weeks of ordering them.
Flowers That Are Growing In The Garden
I love purple plants in the garden, they work nicely with the grey/blue fence panels and pink flowers. I think these are all different types of Salvias, they are quite happy in my sunny garden and seem to do well with the heat.
This one smells of Vanilla! I think it is only meant to last a year and I got it as I couldn’t believe how yummy it smelt! But this is the 3rd year now, so it must be happy and sheltered.
These get everywhere! Aqualigelus or Granny Bonnets. These self seed each year themselves, and I used to have loads. But in the spring as the leaf is growing I would pull them up thinking they are weeds! I have since learnt now they’re not, so hopefully I will get more next year!!
I planted this as a tiny plug plant last year, I had quite a few cheap on Groupon, and I think I should have let them grow bigger first before planting them as I lost lots of them.
A large white Campanula, this was last years purchase and it seems quite happy this year.
Centaurea Montana is flowering, although I’ve just found out you can prune it after flowering and it will keep on flowering. See I’m learning as I go along!!
This Hydrangea is getting ready to flower! It’s a white one I think, my Mum gave it to me years and years ago and it kept getting moved. It’s been sat here for a couple of years so happy now!
Foxgloves! I used to have loads of these in my garden, but over the years they’ve thinned out. It’s lovely to see this one back flowering and I will leave it to self seed once it stops flowering. Then next year I will have even more.
The Bee’s LOVE them!
My friend picked me up some of these Stachys byzantina or Lamb’s Ears last year as I was struggling to find them myself. She found them on a table sale at a sporting event she was at with her children! They feel so lovely to touch, super soft and the kids love them. They will produce purple flowers soon.
I’m patiently waiting for the bamboo to grow! We purchased this as privacy hedging but got it small and cheap…..not worth it!! It’s taken two years to get to this stage and has not given us the privacy we wanted! I don’t think we watered it enough, so it’s getting lots of attention now and it’s shooting really well. If only I had done that in the first place!
Feeding The Birds
Another thing I’ve taken a lot of pleasure from is when I’m sat in the garden drinking my tea is watching the birds coming down to feed on the bird feeder.
Once the building work started they didn’t want to come anywhere near and even once it was quiet again, it took them ages to come back into the garden. But during the lockdown, they’ve come back!
And even a family has come into the garden to feed together.
The babies sit there waiting for their parent to feed them, flapping their wings and opening their beaks. It’s SO cute and I was so happy to see them all back. I wrote a post on what food scraps you can feed the birds if it’s helpful
They’ve even started to use my birdbath for the first year!
So I hope you liked a little look around the garden and what’s going on. I think gardens are constanly changing, so see you next month!
26 Comments
Your garden is gorgeous! My brother and dad decide to repave the patio during lockdown which was okay until it got too hot for them to carry on doing it!!
Yeah Kev had a hot couple of days out in the garden laying more patio slabs, it’s hard going!!
Your garden is just stunning, I wish I had more space to be able to do more things like this
Ah thank you, it was a big reason why we love this house
I love your seating area and your garden looks very similar to mine except lots more plants!!
I don’t really know what I’m doing with the plants though! I’m trying to learn how to car for them
Lovely flowers you have and I love your cushions.
Thank you so much, nice bit of colour isn’t it
What a fantastic looking garden. Definitely game me some useful ideas to add to our garden as well
Thank you!
You have a wonderful garden, for which I envy you. We live in a rented house and we have two dogs running without thinking about the poor plants. I’m glad I found out what the flowers we have in the garden are called – Foxgloves.
Ah you have some foxgloves! They’re poisonous though so don’t let the dogs eat them!
Your garden is beautiful! The whole space is! I hope we get a long summer so you can enjoy it some more!
Fingers crossed!!
I absolutely love your garden furniture! Such a lovely place to sit and enjoy the garden!
It’s my happy place, super peaceful there
Great photos, your garden looks amazing. We don’t have a garden but I am lucky that my husband is a school caretaker and he does gardening there and the school have allowed us to plant some seeds.
Ah that will be lovely, nice for things to grow at the school too
Granny bonnets! They’re a blast from my childhood that I’d forgotten about! We were supposed to be completing on our new build at the start of lockdown, and have been on hold since then waiting for things to be allowed to proceed again, so I’ve been low key planning our garden. I absolutely need to incorporate some of these into our garden! Thanks for nudging out some of my favourite childhood memories!
Super cute aren’t they! Glad I’ve brought out a Childhood memory!
Beautiful photos! Your garden looks lovely. I’m so enjoying mine and love finding more inspiration.
I think we’ve been able to appreciate our gardens much more this year haven’t we
Your garden is beyond beautiful, and I’m very jealous of those amazing folding doors! I can only imagine how incredible they are during the summer! I wish my garden looked as good as yours xo
Ah thank you, this is the first summer with them and I love them so much
Your garden is beautiful Steph! Love the flowers (especially the Foxglove) and very impressed you grew flowers from seeds. I can barely feed the kids let alone the flowers!
I can’t believe my seeds grew!! Fingers crossed they now flower as I’ve planted them outside!