August 2016

The front garden, on its first summer since I dug up the weedy lawn:

I am very pleased with how it's turned up. Even now when it's mostly brown it still looks like a tapestry of colours and textures - so much more interesting than just boring green(ish) grass.

The back, also looking much neater every year:

That border on the right is still work in progress... 

Strawberries in a bed of bark mulch (Mara des Bois, planted this year and I've already eaten a handful)

And finally a closer look at the raised beds, with the automatic irrigation system I've just installed: the yellow hose pipes leading off the water butt, attached to soaker hoses, and a timer; the idea is to fill the butt once in a while and let the timer do the rest.

This weekend's results

After a couple of relatively sunny weekends, I managed to finish most of the post-winter clearing and tidying, and I got started on a few new projects for this year:

The hyacinths by the kitchen door have been a total success. They smell divine!

The daffodils are almost over, but the bed looks pretty enough and full of plants yet to flower - nigellas, poached egg plants, and of course the shrubs (viburnum, lilac, philadelphus and a rose). This year I'm planning to add a few dahlias, red chard and kale (currently trying to grow them in the greenhouse).

The bed around the pond got a bit of a makeover. I've cleared some bigger plants and made room for the sedums and alpines. I think it looks more balanced now, with smaller-scale plants, and I like the mulches. You can see the stones better now.

The side of the patio now has a nice step down, a new blueberry and a fern.

The main changes are happening in the front garden. I've been growing plugs of kniphofia that I bought online and now it was finally time to dig up the old weedy lawn and plant them up.

The bulbs I planted in September are coming up very nicely. But I still have a weedy lawn to dig up, and top up the mulches, so this is very much a work in progress. I plan to use bark chips along the paths, where the stepping stoves are, and gravel among the smaller plants. 

Autumn colours 2015

Here are some autumn colours today in the garden, starting with our patio pots:

Colores de otoño en el jardin, empezando por las macetas de la terraza:

The trees are turning too. Los arboles tambien cambian de color:

Sedum spectabilis and calendula in the front garden, which I'm in the process of redesigning - out with the lawn, in with the plants that don't need watering and remind us of Cape Town:

Sedums y calendula en el frente. Estoy rediseñando este jardin, poco a poco sustituyendo el cesped por plantas que no necesitan riego y nos recuerdan un poco a Ciudad del Cabo.

Summer bedding 2015: the reckoning

So, my pots have been planted with summer bedding for about two months now and are generally looking very good, but here is an analysis of what has worked best and what hasn't. Hopefully I'll remember to read this next year while replanting!

The pots are all in the patio outside the kitchen, the biggest group are on one side and get a few hours of shade in the morning, plus one big pot on one side of the kitchen door. And then there are two more big pots by the other side of the kitchen door that get the most sun. I want to keep watering to a minimum and I've watered this lot only two or three times this summer.

The shadier pot by the door has done really well. These are almost the only targetes that haven't dried out or been eaten by slugs. The other plants are petunias, cineraria and helychrum petiolare.

The osteospermums have also done very well, and the purple and the orange calibrachoas in the semi-shady group too. And so have the pelargoniums. The night stock that I sowed in spring is flowering and petunias look happy in this spot (but hated an earlier shadier place where I put them first).

I love the orange diascias. But I'm not sure about the trailing silver leaved plant (forgot the name already), it grows too long and looks untidy. I've been mearning to trim it for ages!

The silver plant is another helichrysum petiolare, I think. It looks great but it's quite vigorous. I should have planted it on its own, maybe. It's dwarfed the other plants in its pot (I do love it though).

But the pots in more sun have struggled. A chalibrachoa and some targetes have almost disappeared. The mesembryanthemums flower very nicely, but the foliage/stems are not that pretty - I think next year I should mix them with some pelargoniums, which are the toughest of them all in heat and drought.

The pelargoniums by the front door were only watered when I planted them and haven't stopped flowering since!

New pond wildlife

A frog has decided to colonise our pond! I discovered it today, here he is:

Por fin tenemos una rana en el charco!

And the water snails have reproduced. I bought ten big ones in spring and now there's quite a few small ones all over the pond weeds:

Los caracoles de agua se han reproducido. Compre diez grandes en primavera y ahora hay muchos pequeñitos. 

This is what the pond looks like now, with lots of green stuff around and in the water - so the frog and the hedgehog that visits us feel safe when they come to drink.

What's new this summer

I have been away from the blog for a while, but not away from the garden! These are some new things that have kept me busy this year:

The main addition to the garden has been the greenhouse - yes! I've got my own greenhouse at last! I use it for propagation only, as it's too small for growing crops inside. But it's working very well for seedlings and cuttings. I've become slightly obsessed with cuttings, I've taken LOADS, let's see what grows by the end of the summer!

El invernadero es el cambio mayor desde la ultima vez que escribi aqui. Lo uso sobre todo para semilleros y esquejes - tengo un monton de esquejes, a ver que prende!

The flower bed around the pond in the middle of the garden has grown to it's final size. I'm still tweaking the planting, but it's got some of my favourite plants that I've been waiting for years to have, such as verbena bonariensis, kniphophia, pink achillea, and most recently a cistus - in the top part I've gone for a dry garden plant combination. So I'm very pleased.

En el medio del jardin esta el charquito, y alrededor hay varias zonas para plantas. En la parte de arriba he puesto plantas de clima mas o menos arido: verbena bonariensis, kniphophia, achillea y mi ultima adquisicion, que llevo años esperando: una jara (cistus). Al fondo se ven las flores blancas de unas margaritas, que desde que las transplante a esa parte en semisombra se dan mucho mejor (no las tengo que regar).

 

Since I moved the daisies to this shadier part of the garden they're a lot happier, I never have to water them and I love the way they glow when in shade.

End of winter and plans for the year in the back garden

This is how the back garden is looking right now, and what plans I've got for the rest of the year.  As you step out of the kitchen and do a full turn on the spot:

Los geranios al lado de la puerta de la cocina al jardin. Y resto es lo que ves segun sales y das un giro completo:

Yellow daffodils planted last autumn and the pink blossom of a prunus and the neighbour's quince overhanging from the right. The showiest corner at the moment.  The new compost "station" is going to be build by the fence (under the quince), and when I can afford it a proper glass greenhouse is going to be between the prunus and the shed.

Los narcisos amarillos que plante en septiembre han brotado, y el prunus y el membrillo de la vecina (a la derecha) estan en flor, es mi rincon favorito en este momento.  Debajo del membrillo, junto a la valla, va a ir el nuevo recinto para el compost, y mas adelante entre el prunus de las flores rosas y la caseta pondre un invernadero.

The compost currently in a builders bag while we build a new compost area, it kind of spoils the look. The planting bed around the pond is getting bigger too (what a surprise).

El compost esta en ese saco blanco mientras construimos un recinto nuevo. Y alrededor del estanque/charco estoy poniendo mas plantas (que raro).

Donde estan esas bolsas va a ir un banco de madera nuevo. El de metal blanco da el pego de lejos pero no se puede ni sentar uno!

A new bench will go where those bags are, the white metal one is broken!

The lovely new grass by the patio looks even lovelier now that it's been mowed. I plan to put new hanging baskets by the doors and a few more pot flowers this spring and summer.

Este verano voy a prestar mas atencion a las macetas de la terraza, y colgar un par de cestas a ambos lados de las puertas, que es algo muy ingles pero que queda bonito.

Y por ultimo justo delante de la cocina tengo mi zona de hierbas aromaticas y otras plantas similares. Esta zona alta del jardin junto a la casa es donde mas da el sol.

And back to where we started. The top part of the garden near the house gets the most sun, it's where I've got my Mediterranean herbs.

The "woodland garden" at the front of the house is coming along nicely. It snowed a little today, which makes it look even more wintery. 

Here's a tiny hellebore with two flowers:

And here's some primroses next to a sarcococca, both in flower. The sarcococca smells divine! And right next to the front door. I enjoy every day without having to walk on snowy grass in the dark:

En la foto primera un helleboro, y en la segunda unas primulas a la izquierda y a las derecha un arbusto que se llama sarcococca. Las flores son muy pequeñas ¡pero huelen de maravilla! Esta justo al lado de la puerta asi que lo disfruto todos los dias con comodidad.

Pond

We woke up this morning to a little bit of snowfall, and I like the way it's falling on the frozen pond surface:

Making it took a few weeks of digging last summer. I started by marking out the shape, it doesn't show in the photo but the ground slopes down quite a bit so it took a while to find a curve that fitted:

It's about half a metre at the deepest point. At the downhill end I dug a separate pit for a bog garden, so that when the water overflows it falls into the bog:

I bought the plastic lining online. In the bog side I put some off-cuts and cut some holes in the lining so that some of the water drains away. Then I filled the the pond side with water and the bog with soil:

I left a rather big "shelf" that I want to fill in with more marginal plants this year. At the moment there are some if my favourite: marsh marigold, creeping jenny, yellow flag and a native lilly. 

The bog area is already full with a hosta, a couple of astilbes and a meadowsweet. I put in some fritillary bulbs, hopefully they'll come up this spring!

The last thing I built was the drier top bit. Several trips to the garden centre to buy rocks and gravel, and I finally planted my grasses there. I don't have a lot of space elsewhere for grasses, and this bit in the middle is quite sunny so I've decided to group them all together. It's mostly grasses of different leaf colours, verbena bonariensis, crocosmia and a red hot poker - like my mini version of a prairie-style garden.

First frost!

I saw the first frost of the season this morning, it looked beautiful:

The green of the grass changed color, I love it with this pale grey frosting color.

Hoy por primera vez en la temporada habia escarcha:

November primroses

The primroses are flowering in our front garden. These are not recently bought (I'm sure they treat them to flower early), I planted them last spring when we moved in so I'm very pleased they are already looking this good. They're not supposed to flower until spring, but with the mild autumn we've had so far we get this extra wave of flowers.

Las primulas se supone que no florecen hasta la primavera, pero el otoño esta siendo tan suave que las nuestras estan dando flor. Estas las plante en primavera cuando nos mudamos, no son recien compradas. Debe ser que les gusta su nueva casa!

October surprises

This year October has surprised me: there's a lot more flowers and colour in the garden than I expected. And I think it's all down to not being squashed between houses any more, there's a lot more light here than I had in London, and it shows. The tagetes I sowed in spring are really coming into their own now, but only the ones plants in the ground, the ones in pots dried up a month ago:

Este jardin tiene mucha mas luz que el de Londres, y hay algunas plantas se han dado tan bien en octubre que no me lo esperaba. Por ejemplo, los tagetes que sembre en primavera, pero solo los que estan en suelo directo, los de macetas se secaron hace un mes.

The strawberry tree has grown and improved so much now it's not in a pot any more. It's full of flowers, I've been eating the fruits as a when they turn red, and the leaves look a lot healthier.

El madroño esta mucho mas contento en suelo directo que estaba en maceta. Las frutas maduran de una en una y estan riquisimas, esta lleno de flores para el año que viene, y las hojas mucho mas sanas. 

The nasturtiums and the alyssum that I sowed in spring made fantastic ground cover, and it's been going for months (and the alyssum smells lovely!). You can see the las of the Californian poppies too, fantastic orange flowers that have been going for months, good for cutting (small) and beautiful foliage too.

Todas estas plantas las sembre en primavera y llevan meses dando flores. Las amarillas de hojas redondas son nasturtiums, las pequeñitas blancas son alyssum, y aun quedan algunas amapolas naranjas.

The tomatoes in pots in the summer were a disaster, so I had empty pots to plant some autumn and winter bedding plants - violas, ornamental cabbages and wallflowers for spring. It looks a lot neater now.

Los tomates en macetas fueron un desastre, asi que los quite y puse flores que duraran (en teoria) todo el otoño e invierno (pensamientos y alelhies para la primavera).

The veg patch is all "finished" now. We bought more soil to raise the level and it's deep enough now to grow anything. I have: spinach under the plastic cover, purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflowers, leeks, and one bed where I planted garlic and peas together. I put some sticks for the peas to grow up in the spring, and to hopefully stop birds from eating the shoots in the winter. The idea is that the peas will fruit in the spring, I can  then cut then to make more light for the maturing garlic but leave the roots that are full of nutrients in the soil. It is an experiment.

La huerta por fin ya tiene mas tierra (compramos mas) y ya tiene profunfidad suficiente. Debajo del plastico tengo espinacas, bajo red de plastico tengo brecol y coliflores, una fila de puerros, y donde estan los palos he plantado ajos y guisantes. Es un experimento: los guisantes salen antes y dan fruto en primavera, luego los cortas a ras de tierra para que los ajos tengan mas luz en los ultimos meses, y las raices de los guisantes fertilizan el suelo. A ver si funciona.

Y por ultimo plante estas macetas grandes con rucula, cebollinos, sorrel y las ultimas de las lechugas. Casi todas son perennes.

These big pots have rocket, sorrel, chives and the lady of the lettuces. Most are perennial and ready to survive the winter.