It’s been a while since my last garden blog! The weather in the UK has been very rainy and windy of late, and we’ve been pretty busy, so I’ve not been spending much time out there.
That doesn’t mean the plants haven’t been growing though! A few weeks ago planted most of the annual bedding plants I bought into containers and there coming on well. The perennials I put in the beds in May are also having a growth spurt. The rudbeckia is rapidly spreading at the moment!
I had a trip to the garden centre a few weeks ago to get some shade tolerant plants for under the conifer. Those are now starting to flower!
The bad news is I also have aphids everywhere, and they’ve almost killed my beloved bellis daisies. I’ve been wiping them off periodically but not enough. They’re really looking a state now!
I’ve also found aphids on the new camelia but so far they’ve not done too much damage to that and it’s a lot easier to spot and a scrape them off those leaves. I’m keeping an eye on it, I might have to do some kind of soap treatment.
We have 4 hydrangea in another bed under the apple trees. That whole area is currently a mess – I forgot to prune the trees and now they’re overgrown – but the hydrangea are flowering! This is exciting because they didn’t at all last year, and now they’re coming through quite a deep pink.. except one that’s white! They’re getting bigger now, and I’m getting better at remembering to fertilize them!
The sunflowers my Mum gifted me are looking healthy! Though I’m wondering what variety they are and if they’ll grow tall enough for where I put them! I guess we’ll see.
There are a lot of weeds in the middle section of the beds now. The usual easy to pull up ones, but also a lot of Mares Tail and grass! I hate grass, it looks and mess and it’s almost impossible to dig out.
There is loads of it under the rhododendron, I tried to get out what I could but I definitely didn’t get all the roots out. The weather is a lot drier now and the soil harder to work.
In the back corner I’ve finally cut back the jungle after the three entangled shrubs finished flowering. We can now get the paint the final section of the fence! My neighbour said that section had never been cut back in the decades she’s lived there (she’s 94 and was out fence painting again!) and I could definitely believe that given the mess of it, and how the ivy had overtaken.
That’s looking a lot neater now anyway!
Still to do is finishing planting the bedding plants… I just can’t decide where to put them, and I’ve some older plants in containers from my old house I’d like to plant out too.
And, now the weather is warmer and drier, we desperately need to spread some mulch to protect all the bare soil I’ve cleared. That’s just one of those awkward jobs I need help for. The bags of bark are too heavy to manoeuvre alone.
I’d like to get to it today and finish off but I’ve got a day out with my parents so I’ll have to try to get stuff done in the evenings this week. Forecast is warm and sunny so that should be motivating!
Bonus hydrangea from our neighbours:
