Looking ahead to Gardeners' World Live

* I have been invited to the press preview of Gardeners’ World Live and provided with a pair of tickets to visit the show once it opens, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

Last year was my first time attending the press preview event and I loved it, so when I was invited again this year there was only one answer, and that was of course yes! This year though we’re obviously not travelling to Birmingham from London, but from Nottinghamshire - and while I contemplated driving, mainly so I could fill the car with garden goodies, we have decided to go on the train instead. It’s a bit more cross country this time rather than inter city, but it’ll be fine and will most likely be quite the adventure. We loved the place we stayed at last year in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter (paid for, not gifted) so are returning there too.

As ever the Gardeners’ World team have an amazing line up planned for this year’s show, and my plan is to see as much of it as I can - but I know I need a plan so we can cram as much as we can into what will be an action packed couple of days.

1 Adam Frost’s Show Garden - The Chef’s Table

Adam Frost’s garden is at the top of my list - he’s a bit of a favourite of mine on the show. The garden promises ‘a large walk-through garden full of vibrant home-grown produce, a rustic outdoor cooking and eating space’ and a daily programme of conversations and demos, hosted by Adam. I’m hoping that we’ll also get a chance to catch one of those celebrity guests as James Martin and Glynn Purnell are at the show on the same day.

2 Urban Gardening Showcase Gardens

While I can no longer claim that my garden is urban, I can still admire the design skills and implementation of this space which is all about ‘inspiring town and city gardeners’ - and sponsors Blue Diamond will showcase their top 25 plants essential for any urban garden. All of these plants will be available to buy at the show, so urban garden or not it’s probably just as well I’m not taking the car!

3 ‘The Good Life’ Show Gardens

The Show Gardens are always my highlight, and this year their theme is ‘The Good Life’ - I’m already wondering how many of them will take that literally and include their take on the 1970s sitcom, and how many Tom & Barbaras and Gerry & Margots we’ll spot! I’ll be very disappointed if that tally is none.

4 Beautiful Borders

The beautiful borders are always a busy part of the show, and with good reason. It’s amazing how much these garden designers can pack into a small space, and how much inspiration there is which can be adapted. I’ve shared many of the Beautiful Borders from previous shows, and you can expect to see much more of the same in the coming months too.

5 The wheelbarrows!

I love these - and often spend way too little time admiring the work put in by local school children, so I plan to change that this year. Previous year’s themes have included the ‘Meal in a Barrow’ in 2018 and last year’s competition focused on climate change and its impact on food production around the globe.

This year the theme once again has a ‘food and climate change’ theme, so it’ll be interesting to see what is on offer this year - and I’m sure it will be as hard as always to decide on which ones to vote for.

And finally,

My Gardeners’ World Live visit wouldn’t be complete without a scout around the BBC Good Food Show - it’s a cacophony of noise, smells and tastes, and I wouldn’t miss this part at all, in fact it usually ‘fuels’ our journey home.

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, I’m looking forward to seeing this year’s show.

My garden in May

If April was about the promise of new growth, then this month has been about nurturing that and seeing how far things have come. Unsurprisingly it’s our first May in this garden, and so I’ve been watching new things flower and have realised that we have three young mock oranges, rather than the single and very old one we had in our previous garden. I’m amazed at how many plants we had there, we have here - and without even trying, though of course they are much younger plants than those we had.

But anyway, let’s see what’s been going on in my garden in May.

The lupins we bought at the Newark Garden Show paired up with some bluebells from dad on the edge of the patio, replacing the tulips and before them the daffodils. I’m enjoying having a burst of colour here, though it’ll be interesting to see how and if I can keep this going throughout the summer, especially when the patio space is more in demand!

I’d intended to plant out the bluebells, which dad had planted into an old hanging basket for easy transportation, into our outer beds - but what with life and the weather I hadn’t gotten around to it, and so they flowered where they were planted. As a stroke of genius I realised the hanging basket could perch on the top of the pot, and in fact that worked so well I’m now wondering if this could be a more permanent arrangement. We’ll see.

Elsewhere in the garden there were more signs of life, with an early ceanothus flower just visible if you looked hard enough - though the hellebores were also still in flower - isn’t it great when the seasonal blooms mix and merge like this?

Whilst weeding the gravel - it is an never ending job - I found a larger than the weeds but still small lavender plant, and while we have five or six lavender bushes, I never sniff at free plants so was quick to pot this one up to see if it would survive - and it has so far. The gravel has been a great place for seedlings as along with the weeds I’ve also found many, many small buddleias, some lady’s mantle and towards the end of the month we’ve also had some flowering red poppies.

One of the lupins surprised me by producing a double headed flower, which looks more like bunny ears than a lupin. It’s since flowered and was thankfully the only one that split this way - with more normal looking flowers greeting us when we got back from our trip to Italy. I’d moved them into a more shaded part of the garden before we went and this helped them cope unaided I think.

Just before we went away MOH spotted some small furry fruits on the nectarine tree which I planned to grow against the old brick farm wall - I was grateful that my longer term plan looked as if it would come to fruition (sorry!), though not really sure if they would last for long. And while there were fewer when we returned, there were still definitely some on the plant, and they were larger, so who knows, at some point this summer MOH and I may share a small nectarine, or two if we’re lucky.

It’s always a thing for me to check on the garden when we’re back after a holiday, and it’s no different in this garden. It’s interesting to see what’s grown and appeared in that time and often it’s more pronounced as you’ve been away. I did have a small smile when I spotted this pale yellow antirhinnum in flower - it clearly planted itself in one of the pots we brought with us, as did the taller toad flax (which if it hangs around with be a purple cone of flowers)

I’d brought the two potted peonies further into the border and away from their winter shelter spots and was pleased to see that each had a bud, just the one but that’s more than I thought I might get after disrupting them ahead of our house move. Whilst walking through the now overgrown shrubs I realised I was brushing past an in flower mock orange - I recognise that smell anywhere. When I looked more closely we have two further small bushes, so that was a really great discovery.

The rowan tree has filled out, and the local bird population has been feasting on some of the berries already; the buddleias has also shot up from my rather brutal prune earlier this month - it’s easily back to where it was before, and ready to flower. My discovery here when clearing some of the lower branches is that this was intentionally planted, rather than self seeded as I thought. I know this because on its main stem it has a paper label, and not many self seeded plants have those!

It’s growth is so vigorous though it was crowding out a smaller hebe, now it’s cut back again in part I’m hoping that there’s enough light and space for the smaller plant to come through.

The lettuces survived snuggled down in one of the trugs, as did the gravel lavender and lady’s mantle. One of the lettuces looks almost ready to eat, and the others could probably benefit from a slightly larger pot - so that’s something to add to my to do list.

Another thing on that list, apart from regular checks on the nectarines, is to sort out these herbs. I’ve finally realised where I can put them - and it’s in one of these trugs, so it wasn’t a huge departure from their temporary home - but my plan is to relocate the planter so it’s easy to access from the kitchen - more on that next month, hopefully.

The crab apples have also come on and small apples have formed where once there was blossom - this year I’m determined to use them, and not to leave them on the tree so long. I’m not sure yet whether I’ll use them in the kitchen or on a wreath, but use them I will.

And like any garden there’s still much to do, and much to learn - but I’ll leave you with a fully flowering ceanothus bush, whose flowers always remind me of those blue bobbly liquorice allsorts, though in all honesty, I much prefer the flowers! (Though just to be clear, I’m happy to eat most other liquorice allsorts).

Sunflower watch: sowing seeds into Wool Pots

I was given a free sample of these Wool Pots - an alternative to plastic plant pots - to try for myself, and so I’m marking this post as an ad, as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

It’s been a fair while since I’ve sown some seeds, and far too long really. There’s been a number of reasons why I haven’t, but one of the big factors was the lack of success the last time I tried - well, not with the seeds, but with the actual growing on. That was a lot to do with the lack of light in our old garden given the tree canopy, which because of lockdown was way behind its usual pollarding schedule.

And then we decided to put our house on the market, and our priorities were to sell the house, and naively I thought it would be relatively quick, so I wanted to avoid moving more plants than we needed to - and no, I wasn’t planning on leaving them for the new owners! All in all moving house ran over two growing seasons, and so when we arrived here in July planting seeds couldn’t have been further from my mind.

I don’t have a greenhouse here (yet), so it’s not ideal for sowing seeds but I was keen to get growing again. Dad also gave me some seeds for a multi-headed sunflower and so with seeds, wool pots and the will to get sowing, what could go wrong?

And yes, the wool pots are well named - they are made of wool, and are pots!

They are knitted from washed wool… and while knitting plant pots sounds strange but the makers assure that Wool Pots are strong, naturally biodegradable, environmentally friendly and plants love them. The company aims to raise the awareness of the plastic problem in horticulture and let people know there is an alternative, and show them a solution. Wool pots are also proud members of the Campaign for Wool and are thrilled to be helping farmers find a new market for their wool.

Rather than bring the seeds indoors, which is an obvious way of giving them some heat, I kept them in the garage opting to use my heated propagator, and bring them out into the sun during the day, which was a fair bit of faffing but it did result in a majority germination - with five out of eight pots producing seedlings, though some were slower to germinate than others.

As the days went on, the seedlings started to grow their true leaves, not just the seedling leaves. It’s worth noting that the wool pots should have space between them to prevent the roots merging into each other - the space enables ‘air pruning’ and will make it easier to plant them on when the time comes.

But my biggest concern now that they’d germinated was when to leave them outside, but thankfully the weather decided to improve to help with that. With the seedlings nestled down in one of my currently half-empty pots, and in a more sheltered part of the garden I braved it, and they all survived!

In fact they’re all doing really well, with more leaves developing and getting taller too. Now instead of bringing them out of and into the garage each day, I’m checking that they’re not growing into each other - and so far so good.

I’m sure it won’t be long before I need to work out where to plant them so that they can grow to their full potential. And the best bit, is you can pot on the whole wool pot - I’ll share how I get on when the time comes.

* With thanks to Wool Pots for providing a sample of their innovative project for me to try.