My wife is the gardener in our household. She loves being out in the garden. She loves to see plants and flowers growing as the result of her efforts. She works hard and I am lazy. I am her labourer when she can't manage the heavier digging required to move things around as they outgrow the particular spot she first planted them. To me, the garden is a pleasant place to sit and relax, when you aren't barbecueing!

But I can see the attraction in helping make things grow and blossom and flower. I do appreciate the beauty of the natural surroundings in which we are fortunate enough to live and I do quite like taking the occasional cutting, sticking it in a bit of rooting compound and seeing if I can get it to grow - absolutely free! (The free part I love!)

Our garden backs on to a local school, close to heath and woodland and beyond the very back of our garden is a protected area (some 11 acres) of woodland, which is home to many badgers. They occasionally visit the garden, but we haven't taken to feeding them yet, as we are told they tend to root out bulbs and we've seen the evidence of their hunting for worms in the dug up patches of my (only seeded last year) lawn. The woodland is also home to deer. I don't know what varieties, but some are I guess small pony size and others are not much bigger than a family cat. We'd seen them a few times in neighbours gardens and on the drive, usually scattering quite quickly when we drove up. They are such beautifully graceful creatures. They seem to glide rather than walk and can be stood almost invisible just yards away...

We moved into the house six years ago now, and it took us about two years to begin making inroads into the thick and very high laurels bordering the garden on the school side. For those of you that don't know, laurels (so I am told) tend to grow in kind of loops, where they grow up and then at a certain age the lower spreading branches seem to dive into the ground and almost form a fresh plant - still attached to the original. The process (again so I am told) takes about ten years per loop. We had three loops between us and the school and at their highest, I would guess they were maybe 25 to 30 feet high. I cut back between one and two loops to enlarge the flower bed and give the whole garden substantially more light. Some levelling work was needed and then my wife got on with planting out lots of pots on the enlarged patio, as well as planting in some roses and lillies in the flower beds.

That summer (2005 I think it was) late June early July, possibly a little later, my wife had the garden a mass of colour. We had lillies (bright yellow and orange) a mass of roses both in the pots and in the flower beds, as well as some hibiscus shrubs which were nicely budding.We sat out on the patio one evening and looked around us and I suppose we felt we had arrived. The garden was "tamed" and all we could see around us was bright beautiful colours. I think my mother in law had even contributed a couple of sturdy rose bushes which were also already in flower. Bright yellow and perfectly formed flowers - although not much scent. It seems that's the price you pay for a pretty shape - they don't smell much. The rough looking ones with odd shaped heads and masses of disorganised petals - now they smell!

Page 1 of 4 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 3 4 | Next