Another beautiful day!

Miss Bluebell was back in one of her favourite spots again yesterday, still hoping that the birds wouldn't notice her!  After a while she moved further along the border and relaxed in the sunshine.  Not so much of that today, unfortunately, but at least I was able to make a good start on the front wall border yesterday whilst it was still warm and sunny.

Even piling up all my gardening stuff in front of the border couldn't disguise the mess it was in!

Like the side border, we made this one in three sections to follow the slope of the garden.  It's been such a long time since I did anything in the border that I couldn't remember what, if anything, I'd planted in there apart from the shrubs😏

It was full of dead bluebell stems, the dreaded dandelions, and various other weeds.  

It took me all morning to clear it out but the end result was very satisfying.  Once I'd pulled out all the weeds (and dug up as much of the dandelion roots that I could) I could see that actually there wasn't much of anything planted apart from the shrubs 😄 Hopefully I'll be able to find a home along here for some of the smaller plants, at least, that will have to be dug out of the path border in due course. 

I got around half of the work done yesterday, leaving this section to be tackled for another day.  Something to look forward to, eh 😉

This is the back view of the humungous fuchsia that's currently crowding out the tiny nature pool over in the kitchen garden.  The girls are hopefully coming over next weekend to help us tackle it!

And to finish off, I thought I'd show you what's happening in the wooden tubs.  The three roses have settled down very nicely; they've all put out some new growth and two of them have also had some blooms.

 Considering how badly I've neglected them the sweet peas are, rather amazingly, still flowering 😳 I really do want to get the two dwarf buddleja I recently bought planted in the tubs, so sadly they will have to be pulled out soon.  I've got one or two other jobs I want to get done first, though, so I can enjoy their pretty flowers for a little while longer at least 😊

A beautiful day

It was surprisingly warm in the front garden yesterday, which made the task of finishing off the side hedge border much more pleasant than it might otherwise have been 😉  I apologise in advance, by the way, that these photos I have taken with my phone camera are really rather crappy!

I started on the border last week, with the section to the left of this photo which is relatively short.  I thought that this next section, which is much longer, would take more time to work through but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself moving along at a good pace.  Mind you if I hadn't had to cut back the prickly stuff growing over the wall from next door, I would have got through the whole bloody border much more quickly than I ultimately did 😒

I had feared that because it's been so neglected I might have lost some of the new shrubs I planted, but thankfully so far only one hasn't made it ~ hence the gap.  I have a couple of holly bushes that I want to move, so I'm going to put them here.

All three of the border sections have creeping jenny (lysimachia nummularia) plants at the back, and this middle area has fox and cubs (pilosella aurantiaca) along the front.  The latter grows very vigorously and needs a firm hand to keep it in check!  It's a lovely plant, though, with clusters of cheerful orange flowers rising up from the clumps of leaves.  I gave it a severe trim to stop it from escaping into the path and beyond!  Creeping jenny is another plant that is usually pretty vigorous and although it is in the other two sections of the border, it's much less so here in the middle. 

The third section is shorter than the middle, but a little longer than the first.  The weeding didn't take long at all here but I did have to spend some time trimming back the three shrubs in the centre to give them all a little more breathing space.  

This section has sweet woodruff (galium odoratum), which has pretty little white flowers, along the front.  It was looking a tad untidy so I have given it a bit of a haircut!  I had to thin out quite a lot of the creeping jenny along the back, too.  

The escallonia in the corner marks both the end of the side border and the start of the front wall border.  I just had a somewhat cursory tidy up here as it's a tad difficult to get to very easily, so I'm happy to leave a tiny area to go a little "wild" 😉

And here's another crappy (!) photo of the whole border.  At least I can see where I've been 😊

I believe the front edging in the first section, by the way, may be London Pride (saxifraga x urbium).  There was a lot of it already in the garden when we bought the house, and I've gradually been moving it to different places.  This section was choked up with buttercups and a few of the London Pride plants just couldn't compete, so I'll be moving some more from the path border at some point to fill in the gaps.

I'm hoping that the weather tomorrow stays true to the forecast, which at the moment is predicting another sunny day, so that I can at least make a good start on the rest of the front wall border.

And to round off this post, here's Miss Bluebell trying to be inconspicuous whilst she watches the birds 😄 (I took the photo through the dining room window, so at least I have a bit of an excuse for the poor quality of this one!)

Little words of wisdom