08.03. Next door garden

Hello, guess what, I got a phone call today from the owner of the house next door, and she gave me the thumbs-up for taking over the garden :-) It’s been an eyesore for years, so whatever’s being done to it will be an improvement; I just want a bigger garden to play with so I am really happy, even if it is next door! She asked if I needed some money for plants, which I had not expected at all, so I promptly asked for compost, bark, pea gravel and stain for the garden fence. She said yes to all of it, will get it delivered over the week-end..and would I like £50 for some plants too?!  It sounds like an excellent start to what I hope will be a
long and prosperous partnership :-) 

Here is a picture of the project, my garden to the left, if you were at all in doubt! The first job is to clear all the brambles and see what can be rescued. There are some plants and bulbs under all that debris, and I intend to save what can be saved for now, and possibly throw things for composting later in the summer if they are not fit for purpose. It’s going to be interesting to see whether the foxes still have a sleeping place in the garden; they used to be in the top right corner, where the debris is at its thickest. Mind you, I haven’t seen any foxes since January, so they might have moved on for all I know. One thing is for sure, when this garden is finished, it won’t be so attractive to any foxes, newcomers or already resident. When the garden is finished it will be just as tidy as mine is, so there won’t be anywhere to hide during the day. However, that didn’t seem to bother the foxes that congregated in my garden, they were strewn across my lawn as if they were sunbathing on a beach and made no attempt to hide at all! That was last summer; and the first summer I have experienced that – lets hope it was a one-off!

Here is another picture from the garden; you can really get an impression here what a task I have in front of me before there is any point in buying a single plant! And all this is to be done by muscle power alone; I have no machines to turn the soil. Fortunately, there is no deadline for this, and I did tell the owner that I probably would spend most of this year doing up the garden, just so she wouldn’t expect the garden to be finished next week or something like that! But an hour here and an hour there, and progress will be made. I will post photos when there is something to show :-)

Oh, and remember the daffodil that I had a photo of here the other day? It wasn’t properly sprung out yet back then, but yesterday it looked so gorgeous that I had to take a photo of it, so here it is, the first one to open. The rest of the daffodils are not far behind, but these are in a container so they are the earliest. The daffodils open in my garden any time between late January and late March, which is quite a difference from the earliest to the latest time. It’s all to do with the overall temperature during the winter, and not just the temperature the last few days before they open the flowers. In a very mild winter, the daffodils emerge earlier, grows faster and therefore also flower earlier – like they did in the winter 2006/2007, when they emerged in early December and flowered late January!

You can see more photos from my garden on my web-site; here is a direct link to THE GARDEN SECTION where you can see how my garden has evolved over the last 7 years.

That’s it for tonight, I’ve got some plant catalogues to go through...although I won’t be ordering any plants yet...but I can always start making a wish list, right? Till next time, take care.