Here I am with my friend and fellow garden writer Sue on Chelsea Press Day, our fab photo kindly taken by another friend and photographer Ian Thwaites, who's given his permission for me to use it in this post. Thanks Ian!*
'Oi, stand aside,' I hear you say… 'we want to see the garden you've been telling us about for months!' Well, here it is...
...almost exactly the same view, but without us!
I'm also rather fond of this photo looking the other way, despite it being shot into the light. I think it gives it a slightly mystical feeling, especially as I mentally called the tree on the left 'the whomping willow' whenever I saw it.
Weren't we lucky with the weather!
The reaction to The Flood Resilient Garden on the day, on the Chelsea TV coverage, and in the press was immense. Naomi and her co-designer Ed certainly caught the zeitgeist after our miserable rainy winter and spring. Joanna Lumley said she adored it.
Here are a few more scenes from the garden in collage form:
In the top right photo you have the garden's designer — and my friend — Naomi Slade with her daughter Holly on the right. Holly was a star on the build who worked like a trojan and bought her floristry skills to the fore to ensure beautiful plant combinations throughout the garden. As she said afterwards: «It's floristry with soil!» Have a look at her yummy designs over on Insta.
In the photo below them you have TV weather girls Laura Tobin and Elizabeth Rizzini. Laura's long been a champion of the garden's sponsor FloodRe and it was great to see she spent most of her day at Chelsea enthusing about the garden and what it represents, backed up with plenty of science and knowledge. Not your usual kind of celeb on Press Day!
The website greengrove.cc is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.
Please be assured that the title is not intended to reflect how I feel about the vase, but more of an acknowledgment that a pink and white combination always makes me think of ‘coconut ice’, and I am very partial to coconut in cakes and confectionery although not in things like coconut water or any other drink, alcoholic or otherwise. Coconut ice, if you haven’t heard of it, is an old-fashioned confection made from coconut, sugar and milk, one half coloured pink, the other remaining white, and no doubt far too sweet for my taste these days.
As well as what could be classed as ‘projects’, there is a tendency for minor editing at this time of year and, on the whole, I feel the borders generally have been improving in recent years because of this. I daresay I will never be completely happy with them and inevitably there will always be changes to be made, but at least there seems to be more cohesion to them these days and I don’t have an issue with removing plants that no longer bring pleasure. The bold borders have certainly come a step closer in their boldness, although some editing is still required in the one to the left of the gate (above), where an over-exuberant geranium has been swamping the new Geum ‘Totally Tangerine ‘ in front of it (below); moving the geranium further back in the border will be a first step.
The garden is definitely on the turn, but there are still treasures to be found. Helichrysum ‘Bright Rose’, for example, has flowered prolifically this year but, with all the other material, I had not cut it very often and the plants were covered in blooms that were not quite buds but didn’t look like spent flowers**. With little rain in August, it wasn’t as if they had ‘balled’ either but, whatever their status, I took advantage of their numbers and used them as a starting point for today’s Vase on Monday.
I clocked up 46 hours in the garden in August this year, up from 34 the year before, so I have clearly been busy one way or another. I don’t include things like preserve making in this total, but nevertheless found time this week to make my first batch of tomato chutney (recipe here). This time last year I had already made 3 batches and had enough tomatoes to make a fourth batch, which is perhaps as well as I may not have enough ripened tomatoes to make the minimum of three batches I need to keep me going till the next tomato season. Not only have they been very much later to establish and ripen than most years, but the beefsteak tomato ‘Burlesque’, that I grow to make things easier for the chutney-making process, is less than half its usual size, either not maturing as normal, or not the correct variety in the first place.
I have unashamedly but apologetically ‘borrowed’ the idea for today’s vase from last week’s contribution by Jenny of Zone Three Garden (sorry Jenny, and thanks!), in which she placed several stems of rudbeckia in a clear glass vase, held in place by aquarium pebbles. It made such a striking arrangement, the bare stems serving to emphasise its elegance.
With a little bit of planning ahead now, you can work toward ensuring a larger harvest in your fruit or vegetable garden next year all by following one simple trick: letting fruits and vegetables grow larger and longer and then saving their seeds.
It has been busy in the garden recently, although perhaps it always is, juggling the less exciting seasonal maintenance with more gratifying tweaks and improvements. A number of new plants have been ordered, although where possible I have moved plants from elsewhere or used leftovers from those grown for sale. Meanwhile, the garden ticks over by itself, albeit slowing down but bringing joy with every new bloom, like a fresh flush of roses on ‘Strawberry Hill’ (above), currently awaiting a new structure to support its abundance of blooms during the season, now likely to be a winter project.
Pressed flower art is a craft that utilizes flattened and dried flower blooms to create designs and decorations. It is pretty easy to do and won’t cost much! So why not show off your creativity by making your own pressed flower crafts, which are shared in this article?
My original thoughts for a post title ( ‘As Easy As…’) were thwarted when I realised the blue and white alphabet mug I planned to use as a vase was too small; several other similarly coloured vases were rejected for various reasons before I settled on this clear glass jar with its integral ‘cage’. A miniature bird cage, no doubt intended for a doll’s house, now serves as a satisfactory prop – someone must have left the cage open though, as the bird has flown…
While I’m always sad to see the longer, lazier days of summer go away, I’m also a lifelong fan of that new school-year feeling. Although I might not enjoy my fresh box of crayons and brand-new book bag anymore, I do have two kiddos who do.