Today we are able to sit and do nothing, our garden was open last weekend 12/13th June for the N.G.S. and was a great success raising almost £600. The weather couldn’t have been better, lots of lovely people came and made such wonderful comments about the garden, the plants, the atmosphere and the cakes! I think the most used words to describe the garden and flowers were “dreamy”, “wonderful”, “romantic”, “to die for”, “magical” this made all the hard work worthwhile.
The mole is still busy making more molehills, one even appeared each morning of the opening. This morning when I was having my usual 6am walk round the garden (with mug of tea) I met our hedgehog who seemed very surprised to see me! While people were having their tea and cakes when they visited us, they were amazed at how tame the birds were. Our tame robin thoroughly enjoyed all the cake crumbs that he was given, a young great spotted woodpecker carried on feeding from the bird feeder only a few feet away from where everyone was enjoying their tea and a buzzard put on a lovely display until it was chased away by 2 crows. They said it was a Nature Reserve as well as a lovely garden.
Everyone was amazed at the size of the Hostas here and the fact that the leaves have no holes in them. My advice was to encourage the blackbirds and thrushes into the garden along with a hedgehog then they shouldn’t have a problem, the slugs and snails should soon be eaten up.
The roses, clematis, peony, oriental poppies and iris all looked wonderful, from now on I will just have to keep up with the dead-heading and remove any weeds that dare to appear.
A couple of areas have been earmarked for improvement, we had been waiting until after our opening, so now we can remove a couple of shrubs and a tree that are getting too big and can then extend a small woodland area round to join on to the more boggy area. I can visualise drifts of candelabra primulas, ferns, hostas, meconopsis and astilbe, can’t wait to get started!!
