Oof, only managed 5 minutes because using the hedge trimmer is FULL ONNNN. Still: 5 minutes' progress means the worst stuff is roughly cut back for about the first ⅓ of the garage length. And that means I can access the next bit, the next time I've got 5 minutes in me. #garden #LHBTS
Did some really sterling work in the pergola. Got the huge grasses cut right back (thank you, cheap Argos cordless hedge trimmer), and I've begun the task of tidying it/interfering with the ivy.
No sign of nesting robins this year, which is good as it means I can use it. #garden #LHBTS
Ten minutes in the #garden and I've taken the wildly overgrown juniper back by about a fifth or a quarter, and in the process got absolutely covered in juniper pollen, as it's That Time Of Year. It smells amazing.
Project Reclaim The Garage I Haven't Touched In 3+ Years: COMMENCE. #LHBTS
A shot across black, shadowed rooftops of a slice of the sea, which is marked by stark bars of black and white. Above that, the middle third of the picture is a bland, pale grey sky with the gentlest, fluffiest clouds, barely visible. The top third of the picture shows the clouds closer to us & directly above the sea: dramatic, dark grey and bright, and textured like candyfloss being pulled apart.
This place, istg
#LHBTS
5 minutes in the #garden, most productive.
It's nice to be out early in the year like this. I fed/mulched the roses, since I did them a great violence yesterday. One of them bit me in return, but that's only natural.
#LHBTS
Anyway, look, the sun is shining. I'm going to spend another 5 minutes in the garden today. I took my roses back very hard yesterday (🤞🙏) and today it would be nice to start to get the front tidied up.
A reminder: you can achieve miracles, by taking 5 minute pecks at your #garden. #LHBTS
Top left: Queen of Sweden, middle left Dame Judi Dench, bottom left Scepter'd Isle. Top right: The Lark Ascending, bottom right, Boscobel, all from David Austin.
Last year was trees, this year is roses. The new bed I created in the side garden last year is getting this lot. #LHBTS #Garden
A white eggcup bath against a wall tiled in different turquoises, with no visible grout. On the floor are tiles that look like grey wooden boards.
This is a wall, showing the grey wooden tiles now laid in a chevron pattern. On the wall is a round mirror and in it we can see the turquoise tiles of the wall opposite.
The wall with the loo & sink/vanity on it, showing the transition between the straight "floorboard" style wooden looking tiles, to the chevron pattern on the wall. The sink has blue film on it as it has just been installed.
Hastings Pier, showing the straight boards on the floor of the pier, and the amazing chevron boards on the verticals of the raised deck.
Ignore the blue film on things in these pics, they were taken the day it was installed & I'd not removed it yet!
I used dRMM's fantastic Hastings Pier design as the inspo for the bathroom. The bath is a boat. The turquoise zellige tiles are the sea. The boards mimic the pier boards. #LHBTS
My own bed. Oh goddddd. Little house by the sea, I love you. *snuggles down* #LHBTS
About an 8 metre long, 2-4m deep flowerbed featuring helenium Moerheim; acanthus; a tiny red acer that's all but lost in the foliage; fennel, lavender, thyme, verbena Bampton, verbena hasta rosea; salvia Guanajuato; penstemon garnet; sumac, and one hidden artichoke.
There was nothing here, this spring. I'm SO HAPPY with it.
#garden #LHBTS
Verbena hastata rosea, mad pink flowers that look like a lit fuse
No, you are not having a stroke, this is how it looks.
#garden #LHBTS
Tall, acid-yellow fennel flowering in front of the deep shade of a laden apple tree. Burnt orange helenium flowers, lower down, and lower still a fizz of pale pink/purple verbena Bampton flowers.
I made this happen, and sometimes I look up, and the light is just right and it's so beautiful I kind of pop out of my body.
#LHBTS, I love you.
#garden
As described: two pairs of secateurs/snips on a wooden top. Both need a good clean. Both have a red ribbon looped through the eye of their spring.
My small cutting tools, in their jesses, awaiting a clean.
I wear them across my body, like bandoliers. #LHBTS #garden
The glaucous massive leaves of the artichoke against my pale lilac wall, with bright orange flowers of hemerocallis.
A big fat bee on a blue, globe shaped echinops flower.
Orange heleniums with deep aubergine salvia nachtvlinder.
The apple tree, which did not come to play, this year. It's FULL of apples.
An artichoke in flower. It's like a spiky study in architectural shapes.
This is what it's all about. Early this morning when I did some rather foolish watering, there were bees getting into fist fights over this. And I don't blame them one little bit. #LHBTS #garden
A flowerbed containing acanthus mollis (tall foxglove-like spires of white and deep burgundy flowers); fennel (tall, airy, with really fine foliage that ranges from lime green to blue-green), a very young red acer tree with fine foliage in a deep brine burgundy; and furthest away from us, tall helenium Moerheim with vividly burnt orange flowers, visible through the fennel. In the background, a tall dark hedge and an apple tree.
From inside the house, I'm so enjoying this bed. For the first time it's a complete thing, doing what I hoped it would. The repeating burgundy ending in that vivid orange. The very finely cut acer & fennel foliage. The height & forms. It's just giving me joy.
#garden #LHBTS
Yeah my top garden soil here is, in areas, not topsoil at all, I'm pretty certain, but something dredged from the bowels of the earth when the #LHBTS was constructed.
In areas of the front and side gardens I can't do down two spits without hitting literal solid bedrock.
Artichokes, growing
More artichokes
Everything I read about artichokes told me not to expect much, if anything, this year. 14 heads - and counting.
#garden #LHBTS
As described in post
Giant oat grass (stipa gigantea) flower - a very delicate golden grass head.
#garden #LHBTS
As described in the post.
The new jasmine - a golden variety with foliage the colour of an unripe lemon - has taken right away, and starts to flower. #garden #LHBTS
Deep burnt orange helenium flowers - like a very big daisy with a prominent centre, and behind that, the dark garnet foliage of an acer.
The heleniums open and the planting starts to make a little sense. #garden #LHBTS
Acanthus (tall foxglove-like spires of cat spiky flowers with a burgundy tinge), fennel (ferny, very fine green foliage) & acer (burgundy foliage) in golden evening light.
The area between the pergola and the top lawn. A steep slope with boulders and every kind of weed and trip hazard known to man.
The area between the pergola and the top lawn from a different angle (the pergola is now visible behind it). A steep slope with boulders and every kind of weed and trip hazard known to man. In the foreground, on part of it, are some rather sad self seeded cerinthes.
The same area again (pergola still visible behind it) with a few neat little stepping stones and if you squint you can make out the little lavender plants put in to the right of these stones. There are still visible boulders. I bought a crowbar. They're coming out.
Same area today (pergola visible behind it). Lavender to the right of the stepping stones & beyond them (hard to make out) verbena bampton, which has dark bronze foliage; to the left of them, stipa gigantea grass, verbena hastata, vivid magenta penstemon, salvia Guanajuato, a sumac. Down near the pergola is a lemon yellow elder and a tuft of pampas grass, which I've always longed to grow. To the right of the stepping stones: helenium Moerheim (which will be burnt orange when the flowers fully open; another stipa, a small red acer, tall, feathery, fragrant fennel, and bear's breeches.
Evolution.
It just needs edging, now.
#LongBed #TheMankyEnd #Garden #LHBTS
Roses in the front garden, quite likely older than I am. In this picture, two bigger blowsy pink/slightly apricot roses in full bloom against a brick wall.
Another front garden rose, this one's highly fragrant & smells rather like lemon sherbet. The colour is an intense, hot pink. The old guy who owned this house before I did was obviously camp af. This is a bus, just opening.
One I planted, Morning Mist - a single coral/pink/apricot rose that flowers like someone's loaded a Gatling gun with roses, all summer until the frosts.
Same variety as the second pic, in full bloom. Very very hot pink, big big fragrance.
Roses.
I only plant pinks, apricots and corals here. Weirdly, so did everyone (well, the 2 people that gardened) who lived here before me.
#garden #LHBTS
It's amazing to water your beds & come back an hour later to find everything looks like you just bought it from the garden centre.
Not a bad little garden peck today: much bindweed pulled, front & side gardens drenched, and only ONE quite deep gash and a mass bee attack.
#garden #lhbts
A tall picture of my top garden Long Bed. In it you can see artichokes, foxgloves, orange geums, blue hardy geranium, vivid magenta lychnis. It's dense and green.
It has been so worthwhile to get this back. And half the stuff in here is still small/new, this is still a baby bed. #garden #LHBTS
Photographed from above ish, a mulched flower bed with tiny dots of green where the new plants are.
Photographed from the front, a mulched flower bed with tiny dots of green where the new plants are.
Well it's not edged yet, but it's mulched and I'm very pleased with the progress of the plants in there.
2 acers, one Italian artichoke, quite a lot of echinops, white cosmos, white verb. hastata, hot pink erigeron, ammi visnaga. Should look rather romantic. #garden #LHBTS
A very tall silver, spiky leafed globe artichoke plant, and in the centre of the tallest leaves is a spiky little flower head, about the size of a pool ball. The very tips of its spiky crown are tinged plum. Above is a blue sky with thin clouds.
Lavender Hidcote just coming into bloom with beautiful deep purple/blue flower buds
Salvia nachtvlinder flowers, deepest plum, shown against the silver leaves of an artichoke.
Spotted from the kitchen sink this morning: my first artichoke flower; Hidcote lavender turning out to be exactly the colour I had hoped for (leaning blue, no rosy or grey note); the salvia nachtvlinder being absolutely perfect.
#LHBTS #Garden
An Italian artichoke and a lemon-coloured elder for structure, softening & drama. Echinops around the elder to bring the blue of the artichoke down the bed. Between them, hot pink penstemons fade into salvias caradonna & guanajuato. At the top, a stipa gigantea will sparkle. #garden #LHBTS
Echinops: a kind of benign thistle with gorgeous green foliage and completely spherical blue flower heads that the bees go wild for.
A painting of a woman dying in bed EXACTLY LIKE ME, but she's not wearing pyjamas with tigers on, which I think is a pretty massive oversight on her part. No wonder she looks sad.
HAY! Guess which dickhead went out in the rain & planted those final echinops, and is now lying on the bed dying?
Go on I bet you can't guess.
Oh. You got it right away.
#garden #LHBTS
