My garden in August

Last month there was plenty of blooms and gardening activity, this month less of that but more of moving pots about and some changes to our garden furniture too. But first, let me share the flowering succulent in all its glory…

It’s great isn’t it? But that’s not all - look at how blue the flowering globe thistles got. Hopefully there’ll be plenty more flowers on this one next year.

August was also the month I finally tackled the new pot and the new olive tree. It’s a big pot, and the olive tree isn’t so big - I mean, it will grow, slowly and will eventually adapt to its new home. It was very reasonably priced at £32 - we looked at many olive trees, and many had much higher price tags.

I was keen to get the pot feet stuck on the pot before we started to put anything inside it. These silicone pot feet are great, but even with fairly big pots they do move a bit, and I didn’t want that to happen with this one, so out came the glue. The other thing I was keen to do before we filled the pot was to check it’s position was right.

And check things like, could MOH cut and edge the grass without moving the pot; what did it look like from inside the house, and obviously from the patio, as well as other key points in the garden. We got there, slower than MOH would like, but this pot is going to be heavy when it’s full and we aren’t going to be moving it much!

I’ll share another post on planting up the olive tree - but we took a couple of days to fill the pot too, as I was keen to see if the levels changed as the compost settled in. It didn’t really, but we didn’t know that.

There’s been a few new additions to the garden this month, including these vintage metal storage boxes which we picked up from the Rutland Flower Show. Even MOH liked them, which is something - slowly I’m winning him over to the mix of new and vintage items! The plan is for these to provide functional but attractive storage in the greenhouse, yes the one I don’t yet have!

I also picked up these Victorian terracotta pots at the Rutland Flower Show. These are bigger than the small flower pot type ones I already have, but not as big as those I use elsewhere in the garden, so size-wise they’re a good addition to my stock. They don’t necessarily help solve my pot crisis, but as they say every little helps.

This month we also said goodbye to our much loved and much used in London but not here sun loungers. They’ve had a good life with us, and we’ve enjoyed having them in our lives but it was time to let them go via the local Facebook group to another family who will I’m sure enjoy them too.

We realised that we were unlikely to use them in this garden, and that they also took up more space than we wanted to allocate them in the garage. Their departure was helped by the fact I saw the garden furniture I swooned over at Grand Designs Live back in May in the sale, and reduced by a third. So that was promptly ordered, and has since arrived - and I suspect that may have contributed a little to the change in weather we’ve seen at the start of September, so sorry about that!

Elsewhere in the garden the little crab apple tree remains laden with apples - it looks so weighed down, that I imagine it will be pleased to shed its load when the apples are picked. I’m debating when the best time to pick them is, but I feel it could be imminent as I’ve seen a recipe for crab apple and chilli jelly which sounds right up my street.

The sweet pepper plant - another purchase from the Rutland Flower Show, a bargain at £5 - is producing more peppers and ripening those it already has. We’ve picked six now, and eaten most of them already. I’m hoping that there’ll still be time for the smaller ones to grow and ripen before the weather changes for good.

You’ll have seen in my This August update that our new kitchen sofa arrived, which meant it was time for the garden sofa which we’ve used in the conservatory in our old house and in the kitchen here, to move into the garden. And it’s been a very welcome addition, as it offers a much more relaxed seating option.

Though it did need more than just moving to the garden. MOH rightly pointed out that initially it looked as if we’d just dumped it there before moving it to the tip, which clearly isn’t the case. When the cushions are out, it’s fine, it looks like it belongs but without them, he did have a point.

So cue some softening with plants - the astrantia and santolini one end, and my Gertrude Jekyll rose the other. It works I think, and has helped ground the sofa and make it look as if it really belongs.

Moving those pots led onto moving more pots. We’ve not really been able to enjoy our plants so much this year as they suffered early on and were in the relative shelter of our heat pump trellis. That changed though with this group of cottage garden type plants moving to the end of the garden close to the crab apple tree.

And with this group of plants moving alongside the back wall. I wanted to try them out in parts of the garden where I think they will end up growing, admittedly not in this exact formation or as close together, but for now as groups of pots. I haven’t moved them yet, so so far the master plan in my head hasn’t failed me.

For this post though, I’ll leave you with two views from inside - both from the same window - of the Gertrude Jekyll rose, and the newly planted olive tree.

It really feels like things are starting to come together, and that we’re starting to claim and make the garden our own.

This August...

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was writing last month’s update, and it’s hard to believe that it’s September tomorrow isn’t it?

August here has been a sunny, relaxing month with plenty going on in real life but not too much going on online, and that in itself has been good. We’ve had lunches out in the sunshine, including our favourite Newark cafe enjoying gyros in the market square’s sunshine while also spending some time people watching!

I’ve had a series of massages, and now I’m feeling so much more ‘less wonky’ and with a very slight tweak in my car seat I think (hope) I’ve identified and resolved what’s been causing me the problem.

We watched the Community Shield which featured both of our teams, with mine - Crystal Palace - winning out over his - Liverpool. There’s more cycling on the tv too, so just when you think you were safe from the Tour de France, along comes Spain’s La Vuelta.

Around the house, or more precisely the garage, we’ve made great strides in sorting out the space; passing on many of our moving boxes, and ordering four racks, with two of them assembled already. We’ve given away our old folding sun loungers, and are waiting on the delivery of some garden ‘arm chairs’ which hopefully will be here soon. This project is a bit like one of those games where you move everything round until it gets in the right place, and we’re still in that phase, but we’ll get there and we’ll have a much tidier and usable space at the end, if we do it right.

I don’t yet have the shelves in my craft room cupboard but I do have my weaving work in progress and some pictures on the wall, in what I’m dubbing ‘colourful corner’ so there is progress. I’ve even taken my Vogue pictures in for framing, as I was right when I suspected they weren’t a standard size.

I loved my first visit to the Festival of Quilts at Birmingham’s NEC - I’ve never seen so many quilts in one place, and I wish we had more time to admire them. It felt as if my SIL and I were strolling past them quite blasé, giving them the briefest of glances when their makers had most likely poured their hearts and soul into them. I have many, many photos which I’ve yet to even think about editing, but when I do I’ll be sharing my favourites here (and I already know there’s a lot of favourites!)

My purse also took a bit of a quilt-related bashing, and so I’ve one or two projects already lined up for the new year - I knew you wouldn’t be surprised, I wasn’t either! I’ve only started to do some high level planning for one of the projects, mainly to make sure I have enough of what I need, and I think I do - and I think I can make it work, so that’s now on the back burner while I get myself through some of the projects I already have on the go!

Our new sofa arrived, on the same day as the local ‘air show’ which was ideal as we knew we’d be in. It’s a velvet mustard sofa, so quite the change from the grey garden sofa that had been in its place previously. The garden sofa has moved outside, in fact just the other side of the wall, and now has plant pots around it as MOH pointed out one morning that it was looking quite sad, and if we’d just left it there before moving it someplace else!

It’s so different to what we had before that to start with it almost made me jump each time it caught my eye. As you can see I’ve spent some time testing out cushions - the chevrons are staying for now, but I also quite like the tropical outdoor cushions on it too.

In the garden I finally potted up the new olive tree in the new large pot, and it’s looking great - in fact our garden, with the addition of the sofa, is starting to take on its own identity and I’ve been moving some pots around to try the plants in potential longer term homes.

We’re ending the month with a visit to a new-to-us garden, and one that’s opening as part of the National Garden Scheme. It’s a tropical garden so that should be fun, and I’m hoping full of inspiration for another section of our garden here.

There’s been plenty of family time this month and a trip from Buckinghamshire to Norfolk, which was thankfully relatively traffic-free, but did result in us helping my dad to manoeuvre a three metre worktop out of their house through one of their windows. Had anyone spotted us, I’m sure they would have been most amused!

We also had a hot and sunny day out at the inaugural Rutland Flower Show, and I’m hoping it returns next year as there was plenty to see and a fair bit of inspiration too. I left with a couple of vintage pots, some metal storage containers, a few leads to follow up on and this fantastic sweet pepper plant, which is already ripening more of its tasty peppers.

So it’s been a busy month all in all, and I’m sure September will be no different.

If you want to read my previous monthly updates in my ‘This is’ series you’re very welcome.

My garden in July

Thankfully this month has been a lot kinder to my roses, they’ve continued to flower and just as the last (the fourth of the summer) arrived I was contemplating moving them back out from their shelter. Needless to say, that’s been postponed for a little bit - but it’s very different to the last few months where they’ve been a bit crispy and then bombarded with pests. They’re resilient plants aren’t they?

July was all about flowering succulents, many tiny apples and ripening the tomatoes from the two plants we had. There’s been more flowers blooming too, but it’s the succulents that have really held my attention this month. I’m not sure I’ve ever had one that’s flowered before, but it has been a complete joy ever since I spotted the first signs that something might be happening…

The flowers are dying off now, and I’m continuing to observe the plant to see what happens to it next - hopefully it won’t mean the end of my plant, but I suspect it won’t flower again next year though I’d be happy to be proven wrong. It has been a year of succulents, as I seem to have gained quite a few more at this year’s Gardener’s World Live - and more impressively have found pots for all of them.

Finding pots for my new plants has been a bit of a challenge, and I’d completely forgotten about the painted pot that the aeonium is in, even though it was right in front of me in the garage. Luckily though the small crab apple tree doesn’t require any kind of pot, though it is fully laden with apples this year, and would no doubt be grateful for some help supporting its weight.

I did need to give some of the branches a quick trim as they were growing over the fence and into, then up the wall. As the month has progressed and the sun has shone they’re turning a delicate shade of blush. It’s currently looking like there’ll be plenty to make crab apple jelly, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to use some of the fully laden branches in an autumn wreath, but we’ll see.

I bought two tomato plants from the garden centre this year and they’ve happily been growing away. I like to grow varieties that you generally don’t see in the shops, and this year I’ve had this black fruit and a smaller but very sweet red tomato. After picking the first of the black varieties we learnt they weren’t quite ready to eat, but they soon ripened indoors. The tops of the black tomatoes turn a vibrant red when they’re ripe, and they taste much better that way too.

They have found a new spot in the garden too, a slightly less salubrious location close to the bins and the sick bay inhabited by the bay trees (which by the way have made a remarkable recovery and are now green again and growing new leaves). It’s a sunny spot though and I think the plants there - both the bay trees and the tomatoes - have benefitted from this.

I’ve picked all our tomatoes and brought them indoors to fully ripen. The remaining plants have been composted and the soil has been reused in the new and rather large olive pot - more on that in another post, and of course this also means I’ve two more pots at my disposal for any new plants…

The daisies that I thought might not make it flowered, which was a relief, though they’re back to not looking too healthy at the moment, so I’ll continue to keep my fingers crossed for these longer term.

My astrantias flowered for the first time - yay! - and the globe thistles which I bought earlier this year at the Newark Flower Show also flowered starting with the palest of blues. I’m hoping their colour will develop further, and they too, along with the roses, will move to somewhere where we can see and enjoy them!

In the borders by the garage the plants have continued to thrive, a little too much while we were away if I’m honest, and I’m still catching up with taming them. It’s a case of thinning and taking off some of the height as while the bushes would give us some privacy from the road, they also stop us seeing what’s going on!

It was great to catch the sun on these two, and the bonus of a web on the achillea too.

I’ve also added a santolini to my growing number of pots this year - we’ve seen this many times on holiday in both France and Italy, so it’s nice to have a tiny bit of that in our own garden. I brought home two peonies from my dad’s garden (he gave them to me, honest) and in my pot shortage I’ve needed to reuse some rose pots, but the peonies seem to be doing well which is a relief.

I’m joking about the pot shortage, but at times it’s been quite the thing. I know that the big way to solve this is to get on and get the garden design sorted, but the fear is real. I mean it’s great to have a blank canvas, and while I have quite a few plants to add to the new beds I suspect they won’t go as far as I think, there is the pressure (from myself mainly!) to get the layout right. It’s likely that we’ll get someone in to help transform my ideas into real plans, but that’s as tricky as getting started myself.

And in the meantime I’ll be keeping an eye out for the female stag beetle that wandered across the patio and onto the gravel for a bit of mountaineering to see if she, or anymore stag beetles make a return. So far this year there’s been 14,081 spotted in the UK, including ours. We used to see them in our last garden, usually earlier in the summer, but this is the first time we’ve seen one here though hopefully not the last.