Notes from my garden

To use a phrase I first heard from the lips of Saint Jamie Oliver, I'm really into herbage, and really quite dedicated to making useful things incorporating the power of plants.


So just because:

• Chelsea Flower Show week, where we were being regaled by weird and very wonderful garden designs has just finished
• Whoosh, summer is here and all my recent efforts are bursting forth

I thought it was time to take you on a quick tour of my garden and check out how my powerful plants are coming along.

We inherited this slightly shady, brick-edged bed and it's the perfect place for many herbs as well as this mini Bacchus statue. Check out the alchemilla mollis, various mints, marjoram, the alliums and chives.

We love to lounge around in our garden. A gap in a bed was bench-shaped so in it went. Last week I was clearing out an old shed in preparation for a new potting shed this autumn and I found this mirror which I hung on the silver birch behind it. 


When we had those lousy winters, I thought I had lost all the cordyline Australis - but no -  they started springing up at the bases so I chopped the dead tops off and on this one glued an old candle lantern.


There was always a strange circle in our lawn when we cut the grass, until I started to dig and found what I maybe whimsically now describe as a filled-in well.Some cobbles and an ever-changing planted pot and it's a bit of a feature nowadays.

For the Mediterranean herbs of course I needed a really dry, sunny spot. At the moment we're having sage with everything because of the success of this one.

Finally, for so many reasons we had to have a pond. It's full of newts although we had hoped for frogs to eat the slugs ... great how nature always makes its own mind up!
A fantastic spot for a bout of gentle contemplation.

More notes from my garden coming soon, please drop by again!