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.