BBC Gardener's World Live and Paeonia's

BBC Gardener's World Live
After a busy few weeks, it was nice to be able to get away and visit BBC Gardener's World Live for the first time. I was brought tickets by my girlfriend, who decided that she would come with me (despite not being a fan of gardening yet). I was amazed by all the different varieties of plants on show, especially within the floral marquee. Some of my particular favourites are shown below.

This is Dahlia Onesta, a pink dahlia which I will be looking out for in the future to add to my garden.

This is part of the Gladiolus family, nanus gladiolus Robinetta. I feel as though despite being somewhat unpopular amongst gardeners, Gladioli are a plant that I want to have more of. They seem to come in a large variety of colours and are comfortable growing most places.





Past
So last week I introduced the orchard part of the garden, which leads from the vegetable growing area to the pond. The pond is a natural looking fish pond, which has been planted up with a variety of pond plants including water lillies, bog beans and marsh marigolds. The pond itself is around 6m by 6m to a depth of about 1m30. This allows the fish to survive the occasional harsh winters we get in the midlands. I have added a bog area at the back, which is at the lowest point allowing a different type of plants to grow.

Present
Continuing from the pond is one main border, which eventually will have large swathes of colour, ranging from pinks and reds to yellows and oranges, with all colours in between. This is where the paeonia's come in. I ordered four paeonia's from crocus a few weeks ago, and these will form a significant part of this border. the intention is to start with light pinks at the start, and move up through dark pinks to red. The varieties ordered were: Paeonia lactiflora 'Duchesse de Nemours', Paeonia lactiflora 'Bowl of Beauty', Paeonia lactiflora 'Jan van Leeuwen' and Paeonia lactiflora 'Monsieur Jules Elie'. I will look to add some different plants to these which flower later in the summer and into the autumn in order to prolong seasonal interest. 


I will leave you once again, and hope that my blog is interesting and starting to take shape. Again I appreciate any comments or feedback or any potential plants that you find interesting to grow or look at.


CG

The Start of a new chapter and Days away from the Garden

I have been meaning to begin a blog for a number of months, but just have not got down to actually starting it. I have been making regular scribbles in a note book though. Over the next few posts I will try to detail what I have done so far within the garden and what I am planning on doing next.

Past
My garden is just under half an acre in size, which in a previous life was home to cattle and sheep. This has meant that the ground is fairly fertile, although I do try to add compost whenever I plant new things to help get them established. The garden itself is a flat field, with few mature trees. Over the past year or so, I have added 4 apple trees and a pear to the orchard part of the garden, with the overall aim of creating a walk through the trees. There was already an apple, a cherry, a pear and a plum tree meaning that I now have 9 fruit trees. Below is a picture of what this area looks like at the moment.

This path leads to a pond that was put in 2 years ago and has established nicely. The plan is to add lots of spring bulbs to contrast with the winter border of japanese dogwoods that I have planted. 

Present
I decided that I would take my girlfriend away for a few days for her birthday, the only problem being that this meant leaving the garden and in particular the vegetables alone. No worries, the weather forecast looked poor meaning that my plants were not going to suffer drought (more like drown). Anyway I got home and went straight for the garden. The first thing that I noticed was the amount of growth that everything had put on (i was expecting little change due to a lack of heat), with all the winter veg starting to shoot skywards. The recent weather has meant that the lettuce sown a few weeks back has established nicely, however the damp has meant a lot of slugs. I have been reading Charles Dowding's books on the subject of No-Dig gardening, and have ordered his book on vegetable growing which hopefully will arrive soon. I have decided that I will try and garden this way as much as I can as I feel that everything is worth trying.

Anyway I shall leave you now, I hope my first entry is not boring and that over the next few months we will get to know each other. I appreciate any comments or feedback that you may want to give.

CG