Front garden transformation, mowing, hippeastrum and garden lighting 💡💡💡
Hello Friends!
Half term and halloween have done their dastardly work and as predicted, I am behind with everything (including the writing of my new book). Having said that, extremely exciting things have been happening in what I loosely refer to as 'the front garden' (actually more like a triangular piece of wasteland that I have been putting off doing anything to). Anyway, I finally got the landscapers in to do something about it, and the results, even SANS PLANTING are making me ridiculously happy. I've blogged about it but here's a quick before and after:
Yuck
A bit less yuck
Here are my five minute forays this week:
Monday:
I haven't made it into the garden today because I've been making coffee and biscuits for my totally awesome team of landscapers who are transforming the monstrosity that is my front garden. I have done lots of gardening in my head, dreaming up planting plans for this new space, but alas nothing else.
Tuesday:
I have been letting the grass grow again after strimming the meadow-ish bits of my lawn a few weeks back. This is simply because my mower broke and it was my birthday, and my father very sweetly offered to get me a new (cordless) one. Days of research have yielded nothing but a very confused mind as to which one I should get, and the grass isn't getting any shorter, so I go out and fix the mower (yes, it's not REALLY broken, it just has an annoying loose connection which requires finicky handiwork and a screwdriver to fix). Anyway, I finally have a fully mown lawn, and fewer sycamore leaves on it too, which makes me happy, in a bored kind of way.
Wednesday:
It's the most glorious autumnal sunny day and I go out with bulb planting fervour to plunge the rest of my stash into the borders. If you've been keeping track, you'll know that the last time I spoke about planting bulbs in borders was at the beginning of September, so yes, the two groups may well flower one after the other, or the second lot might catch up....who knows? Anyway, the important thing is that they are IN and I can get up off my hands and knees. I have a few bulbs left, some crocuses for the lawn and a few extra tulips for pots. The crocuses need to go in soon with my auger. The tulips can wait a week or three.
Thursday:
I'm doing something rather exciting with the RHS this month, which I'll spill the beans on soon, but preparation for it has reminded me about my hippeastrum, which are growing madly in the shed right now. I used to have huge collection of these, which got destroyed during our house build for one reason or another, so last year I bought three bulbs to start a new one with. I have completely and utterly neglected these over the summer months, leaving them outside to be ravaged by slugs and not feeding them (which is what you're supposed to do if you want them to flower again). They also haven't had a dormant period (you're supposed to stop watering them and let them shrivel up for a bit) so although I'm not holding out massive hopes of them flowering this winter, I still bring them indoors into the warm, because I love their leaves and their stateliness. I do need flowers though, so I go out and buy another massive bulb and pot it up. Details below, which, due to the fact that hippeastrum bulb's requirements haven't changed in the last 365 days, I've lifted directly from last year's newsletter.
Friday
I do quite a bit of armchair gardening, ordering some pretty lights that I can fling over my front hedge and the viburnum tinus trees in the garden. My garden lighting is pretty low key (which is the way I like it, and all I could afford) but bonfire night and the festive season require rather more pizazz I feel, so I am concentrating on creating mood with a few solar-powered things. Here is my list, in case you are interested, and I'll obviously share how they look once I've installed them. Fire is the prettiest lighting though, and we'll be lighting one in our fire-bowl and brazier this weekend.
Warm white solar string light
Warm white solar net lights
Both from here.
Otherwise, it was five minutes tackling the weeds in my compressed gravel path, and I realise that I need drastic action if I'm going to keep on top of this going forward. There are lots of things in there that I love, but there are lots of other things that I don't love. I feel a blow torch may be in order.
Amaryllis
Amaryllis are actually called Hippeastrum. Nobody ever uses that name though. They are expensive (about £10 a bulb) but the amazing display they put on makes them more than worth the money. They come in shades of pink and white, and beauteous reds like the one above. The petals are velvety and the stems are massive and fleshy. You could grow loads in plastic pots and then cut them for vases if you liked. You can buy them in gift boxes with a pot etc, or loose, and use your own pots.
Soak the bulbs for a couple of hours in luke warm water to wake the roots from their slumber.
Mix together some one part multi-purpose compost with two parts John Innes no 2. This is the ideal mix but a pre-bagged mix is absolutely fine. Bulb fibre is also fine (and essential if you are using china pots with no drainage).
I like to use smallish terracotta pots with some depth to them - basically a mini-long-tom pot. The diameter of the pot only needs to be a few centimetres larger than that of the bulb; this thing is growing UP and DOWN rather than OUT.
Fill your containers with compost and place the soaked bulb gently on top so that the fattest part of the bulb (the middle of it) comes to two centimetres below the lip of the pot. Back-fill with more compost and firm gently, and you're done.
Water well, so that you can see water coming out of the bottom of the pot. If you're using bulb fibre and a china bowl then you will have to guess when to stop watering so that the compost becomes damp but not wet (something I hate doing, which is why I use pots with drainage holes).
Put the pots on saucers and bring them inside. A shed or an unheated room is fine for this, as long as they're by a window. Once they begin growing you can rotate the pot every now and then to keep the stem straight.
All the good things, always
xx Laetitia
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