October and its all about the Chrysanthemums

I am lucky enough to have had a wonderful holiday in Florida in the last couple of weeks. Before I went, the weather was ok but it seemed that the garden was running out of steam. There were lots of buds but I was not expecting much to happen. 

How wrong was I, very early this year, I actually thought about making sure I had flowers to cover all of the year if possible, and after a bit of research decided Chrysanthemums were the flower for me. Despite the fact that they are a supermarket staple, I still like them, always cheery and colourful. I found a great supplier and bought a lovely selection of late flowering plants. They have been pretty scruffy all summer and very straggly, I didn't hold out much hope for them. 

Wrong again. They are now flowering and they are glorious. 

I particularly like this one, its called Dance Pearl and is a very unusual shape

This one is called Chempak Rose

There is still one more very exotic one to flower, it has buds so I am hopeful I will certainly be buying more in the spring to fill the bed. If you are interested I got them from www.chrysanthemumsdirect.co.uk .

Elsewhere a lot of the old favourites are still flowering away

Looks like I will be cutting for a while yet. And finally in other news my friend has recently got a new puppy.  She is very sweet and named Fable but is not exactly your usual ball of fluff as you would expect with a 12 week old dog. She is huge... in fact already as tall as Gibson. Its going to be amazing and slightly scary watching her grow as she is a Deer Hound and will end up standing about three feet at her shoulder.

Have a great day

The uncut cutting patch

If you are regular reader of my blog, you will know that over time, my garden has evolved from a huge veg patch to a space that is now full of beds planted with flowers, specifically for cutting. 

Several years after starting the patch I realised that it was actually a lot of very hard work, digging spuds and saving everything else from slugs, snail, caterpillars and various other crawly things . My garden evolved and even more so this year as I removed all the original raised beds and replaced them with new smaller ones. I also planted lots of perennial plants to make life easier again. Its not that I am lazy, far from it, but I have managed to hurt my back  and now find it hard to spend a full day outside doing heavy work. Flowers are the way ahead.

As the summer started we were hit with cold wet weather and the plants were not growing well. I was struggling to cut 3 or vases a week and the garden looked empty. Things started to look up in late July and there were more flowers coming into the house and going to neighbours, but the patch still looked a bit empty and colourless. Thats the trouble with cutting, there is nothing left outside. 

I need not of worried for long. We went on holiday at the beginning of August and I left the care of the tomatoes in the greenhouse to my neighbour, and the flower beds to the automatic sprinkler system. 

When we came home the patch had come to life, its actually quite beautiful and now I am left wandering if perhaps I should not cut everything but leave some behind. What do you think?  this is what it looks like today in the glorious south coast sunshine.

No too shabby

Below are Zinnia (top left) Dahlia (top right) Scabious (bottom left and something beginning with H whose name I cannot remember (bottom right). 

A lot of these are new flowers to me, that I have not grown before and also perennial so they will come year after year. I have though, realised that some are in completely the wrong place so there will be a bit of plant moving over the winter. I bought quite a few unusual chrysanthemums (top left), and these are just starting to flower, along with rudbeckia (bottom left) and echinacia (top right). I am also now totally in love with Astrantia (bottom right) and have 3 different colours. 

I don't think I needed to have worried. 

I am not going to stop cutting flowers for the house, but might leave a lot more to enjoy outside as well . Here are selection of posies made with flowers cut from the garden yesterday. 

I hope you love the flowers as much as I do.

I am trying a new look for the blog so would be interested to hear what you think. 

The flowers are back

I have been picking the odd posy for the last few weeks but today I managed two buckets full with more ready tomorrow. My first rose of the season and my first ever Helichrysum. 

Lots more to come in the next few weeks and also courgettes  are on the way along with tomato's .

The weather seems to finally be sorting itself out so hope you all have a wonderful week and enjoy the lovely warm long days . 

My Garden Right Now

Last week was the Chelsea flower show, I am sure if you were anywhere near a TV you would have seen all the show gardens and displays in the huge marquee. As a gardener I know it has a benefit to us all in getting new people involved and introducing us all to lovely new plants and gadgets we can use. I though, prefer real gardens, not show ones, built with a huge budget and moved on somewhere else after the show is over. 

Earlier this year a fellow blogger Michelle Chapman had a one day project where she invited people to take a picture of their own garden, or something in it, and post it on social media using the hashtags #mygardenrightnow . It was a huge success and Michelle was encouraged to enlarge the project and register it as a Chelsea Fringe event. 

So today here is my entry for the Chelsea Fringe 2017 my garden right now.

And just to prove it was me here are my feet :)