Aquilegia for woodland gardens

So I did a wee bit of research on the plants I've already planted.  On hindsight I should have done the research before doing the planting but I got excited and it wouldn't be a "let's see what happens" garden if I'd planned it all in advance!

You'll get more information from these websites:
http://www.saga.co.uk/lifestyle/gardening/plant-portrait/aquilegias.aspx
http://www.gardenersworld.com/plants/aquilegia-alpina/3237.html
http://plantsforshade.co.uk/acatalog/Aquilegia.html

Aquilegia is best suited for woodland gardens and tolerate shade.  However, they can also cope with a lot of sunshine so this seems like a good all-rounder and perfect for the first-time gardener.  My flower bed in the back garden (where the Aquilegia are planted) gets full sun from about 9am to 6pm but it seems they would cope in the front garden too which is in shade till about 3pm.  Aquilegia is good for attracting bees and can resist garden pests well.

They've done really well in my flower bed (despite being trampled during the Easter Egg Hunt) and some flowers have bloomed!  My first flowers in my new garden grown all by myself.  The sense of achievement is immense and I didn't even do much work with these guys.  Minimal fuss to plant and minimal attention to grow.  The only worry I have is that they seem to self-sow quite easily so I'll need to de-seed them after the blooms have died off to prevent any runaways!  

I would definitely get these ones again but I think next time I'll line them up at the back of the flower bed to create a border or put them in a pot at the front of the house to add a bit of colour there (and prevent an Aquilegia take-over).  

A pretty purple and white flower:

Pink and yellow flowers:

Frosty Forecast

It appears I've planted everything way too early.  Forecast is for frost at the end of the week and even a clueless gardener like me knows that's not good!

I'm trying to prepare for this so that I don't lose my whole garden at the first hurdle.  The pots can go in the garage at night and I'll take them out again in the morning.  It's a pain in the backside - I have a lot of pots - but at least I have a chance of saving the plants.

The strawberry plant, on the other hand, is in the round so it's not possible to put that in the garage.  As part of a moving in present, gran gave me a sort of net umbrella for covering food when we're eating outside.  So I think i'll use that to cover the strawberry at night and can then take it off in the morning to let the sun get at it.

I'm not sure about the rest of the plants in the flower bed,  I'll just have to hope for the best and see what happens.

I don't think I'm the only one who has made the rooky error of planting out at the first glimmer of sunshine!  Grandpa never planted anything until mid May and even then it was only the hardiest of plants.  Must resist next year!

The flower bed and Patio Pots

I was desperate to get some lovely flowers into the flower bed so on Tuesday I went on an adventure to B&Q!

With absolutely no clue about what I was doing, I bought 6 Granny's Bonnet plants which are also known as Aquilegia. I marched off home to put them in the ground but managed to stop myself in the nick of time. I didn't have any compost! I realised then I was getting a bit ahead of myself so I phoned mum! She had been doing a bit of shopping around for the best priced compost. You can pick some up for cheap at Ayr dump and Asda were doing 3 for £10.  So we grabbed mums compost bags and headed to the dump (she also gave me a load of garden pots she's not using anymore). We ended up getting a huge bag of compost for free (I have a suspicion it was because we're female... Not that I'm complaining!) but decided to get some shop bought stuff as well just in case.

So I tootled back to my garden armed with 2 different types of compost and 6 Aquilegia plants.  I pulled my trusty spade out of the garage along with a trowel and a watering can.  My mum had donated a pair of pink gardening gloves!  As I had already turned the mud a few days before, mixing in the compost was easy. I decided to use the dump compost as a general soil improver and the shop bought stuff as a supplement.

I should take a moment to explain that the flower bed is quite large but there's a fair amount of rhubarb on one side and a wild mental patch of heather on the other side. The rhubarb is staying and I quite like the heather so I've left it there for now and will probably promote myself to a bigger patch of flower bed next year!

After giving the Aquilegia a good watering, I followed the instructions on the packet by digging a hole deep enough so that the top of the plant's pot was level with the ground, took the plant out its pot, stuck it in the hole and filled the hole (adding a handful of shop bought compost for good measure). I pressed it all down and, after repeating 6 times, stood back to admire my handiwork. That was all fine but I wanted more! There was still some space left in the flower bed and I had about 8 patio pots to fill.

Back at B&Q they were doing 4 trays of plants for £10 so I got Trailing Lobelia (I've seen these in mum and dads pots and they're stunning wee flowers), Begonia Semperflorens, Sylvia and Dianthus. I chose these ones for no other reason than I liked the pictures of them on the front of the trays! I was heading back to the check out when I spied a Scotch Bonnet chilli plant.  They were doing 6 "Grow Your Own" plants for £5 so I got the Scotch Bonnet chilli, Hungarian Hot Wax chilli, Red Pepper, Chives, Parsley and Mange Tout peas.

When I got home I set about completing the flower bed and filling the pots. I have added some pictures so that I can record how well the plants are doing (or otherwise!).

This first picture shows my flower bed with the Granny's Bonnets at the back, a mixture of dianthus and sylvia at the front with a wee begonia on the right (the purple one).  I completely forgot about the margueritte daisy on the left and the strawberry plant in front of it!  The mange Tout peas are in the planter at the back.

This is my patio pot of begonia and dianthus at the back (you can see the rhubarb bidding for world domination in the top right of the picture but I'll blog about that another day).  The pot at the front holds the 2 chilli plants and a wee lobelia.

Chives and parsley with another random Lobelia 

Red pepper plant (with a christmassy leaf that I found at the back of the garden!).

A rather sad looking mint plant and another parsley plant.  I don't have a passion for parsley, i thought I had bought Coriander!  I put the mint in a wee pot of its own because I've heard that it spreads like a weed given half the chance.

A new house with a garden!

2 months ago hubby and I moved into a new home which came with a grassy back garden and stony front garden. My initial feeling was that it would be de-weeded and trimmed when necessary but next door would be bitterly disappointed if they thought they had a Best Garden competition on their hands!

Every morning I looked out our bedroom window and thought "must dig up that weedy flower bed". And so last Saturday when it was sunny and fairly warm (unusual for April!), I donned the wellies, lifted the spade and set about digging up the weeds and turning the mud. I didn't know for what purpose I was turning the mud but I'd seen my grandpa do it when I was wee so guessed it was the right thing to do!

Thoroughly exhausted, I stood back and looked at what I'd done. This patch of garden looked good and I felt incredibly proud of myself. I suddenly wanted to do more. I wanted the flower bed to be full of pretty flowers!

And so started a very unexpected passion for gardening. I think it must be in the genes. My grandpa was a gardener by trade and both my dad and mum enjoy pottering around with flowers and the odd strawberry. However I'm a complete novice and so I'm heavily reliant on google and other peoples' experiences. I decided to write a blog, mainly because I need to use something to remind me of what I've learned but also to help other people with their unexpected love for tinkering among the bedding plants. Maybe someone will learn something from me one day!

I don't have any pictures of my garden before I ventured into the unknown because I didn't expect it to look much different! But I have plenty of "afters" and once I've figured out how to add pictures you won't be able to stop me!