REAL readers’ gardens!
Flowers, fruit and feathered friends!
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The cold start in the garden meant potatoes took five weeks to surface from an Easter weekend planting, but they’ve taken off at last. Rows of the second early ‘Charlotte’ are on course for end of June digging! Most of the other outdoor, drillsown vegetables are emerging, and cell trays of leaf lettuce hold plug plants ready to join them in the open garden. Protective netting is on standby for the batches of summer cabbages and winter greens raised individually in pots – cabbage white butterflies are coming. We’re watering greenhouse residents daily and constantly removing tomato and grape vine sideshoots.
Apple blossom was outstanding and the weather encouraged pollinators so the fruits show lots of potential. Hopefully, a good number will survive the ‘June drop’! There are six varieties in the strawberry bed –we and the blackbirds are both on the alert! Netting time…
There’s so much colour. Yellow brooms (cytisus), pink-flowered weigela ‘Florida’ with variegated foliage, fragrant white blooms of Choisya ternata and a stately tree peony ‘Canary Bird’… beautiful! We love growing plants with a story behind them, like Isatis tinctoria (woad), used for blue dye by the ancient Brits. It was introduced to our garden years ago and has self sown ever since.
We retain the patches of blue cornflowers for two goldfinches that nest here every year and love the seed heads. There’s also a pair of blue tits in a nesting box, clearly visible from the sitting room and feeding a brood with aphids and small larvae – the benefit of encouraging insectivores!
Getting the most from my favourite time of year
When it’s sunny, David and I go in the garden for hours.
He’s repaired our two water features so we have the beautiful sound they make. Pigeons were feasting on new shoots and flapping around the bird feeders, so he also made a pigeon-proof cover for them.
Now the little birds can feast!
Slugs and snails have nibbled most of my new perennials despite protective barrier rings. Garlic spray and rubbing garlic around pots hasn’t worked so I’ll sell them in my charity plant sale. I’ve laid coir matting from an old hanging basket around the base of my super-sized hosta, to some success – and my cat Maude likes to snooze under its canopy!
I’ve plan
