This year's garden

This year I decided to keep our garden a bit more simple. It was nice last year but needed a lot of watering and up keeping...this year I have neither the time or the money (or to be honest the inclination) to replant it all.

So I decided to just tidy it up and replant some things and call it done..to be honest anything was better than the before.

Dead plants and empty pots. Stylish.

It felt a little crowded before to be honest so I wanted to keep it at 'less is more' this year. We had a few pots that were here when we moved in, and when they had their garden redone the landlords said that we could give them back any pots that we didn't want as it looked like they were getting in our way (and to be honest some of them were). So some of their pots went up onto their garden, and ours got emptied, we had this many left!

Plus Minty who will not let me take a garden photo without her (evidenced here, here and here). They are now next to the barbecue, I didn't throw them out as they were expensive to buy and when we get a bigger garden might be handy.

I re-potted some of the larger plants into bigger pots, and then moved them all up onto the nieghbours/landlords garden (they were on holiday so I took the opportunity to steal some space) and I cleaned the concrete. I bought the cleaner back with the stuff from this post, but I never got round to using it. You can see in that post and the pics above that the concrete was pretty stained and dark, I wanted to clean it up a bit for this year. I just brushed this solution on (I forgot to take a pic/note of the stuff but it was from the 99p store and called 'Path Brite' or something similar) and left it for a while (the bottle was really not specific on how long!)

Then rinsed it off and brought all the pots back down, it looks a bit better now, the concrete is definitely cleaner. I could do with a pressure washer for some of the marks, but as a quick fix it has worked well!

The large plants are all that I've kept, and I like that they will keep coming back year after year.

I have some mixed lettuce to plant in the long planters as we do miss having salad stuff to hand, we have just not gotten round to it and it’s too late for much else now. Other than that this is it for this year. I like the more minimal feel, with the lighter concrete and fewer but larger plants I think it looks more airy and bright. Last year we had a lot of plants and it got a bit crowded.

The plant on the right was given to us by Tom's Nanna, it had sat in the plastic pot we got it in until now but just in the couple of weeks since being re-planted it has grown well. I have no idea what it is but I'm told it will do well anywhere, so that's good!

It is also a lot less to water, and although my black thumb only seems to apply to indoor plants and I manage to keep outdoor ones reasonably healthy it is still a bonus to only have 6 plants to water rather than 20! I’m still using the watering globes, but some of them now have 2 as I had spares, which means even less watering. This is the one downside to potted gardens that they need more watering than a normal planted garden as they don’t have any groundwater to use…don’t get carried away and plant loads of pots then curse it for the rest of the summer when you have to water them all every night! Upsides are no weeding, no lawn mowing and no digging borders though so on balance I don’t mind a few extra refills of the watering can.

This is the best shot to show just how little room we have to work with, and how much space we have gained by thinning out the plants a little.

Next year I might add in a couple more flowering plants to bring in some colour, and some more edible things, but I like that the plants we have now should last us and they have all come back well this year, again I didn’t get a photo of the clematis flowers but it flowered well again this spring.

We have also decided to get rid of our bikes as we never use them, so that will free up a bit of space. I realised when I was tidying that I’d kind of forgotten they were even there so we obviously don’t have much need for them!

Now we just need to get the gas on the BBQ refilled and we are ready for some summer evenings outside with a BBQ and a cold glass of something!

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If we owned our flat

I hope you all had a good Easter and nice relaxing long weekend, don't forget to enter my Easter giveaway!

This month I have been spending more time outside, and I think if we owned our flat I would spend a bit of money on the garden. It's ok as it is but I would like to add a few more things to maximise the space and make it easier to use.

Nothing too exciting, but I would probably either paint it or lay a patio over the concrete floor and would add in some trellis or hanging baskets to make use of all the vertical space since it is enclosed by 3 walls. Plus some places to attach a washing line would be amazing as we currently just put the clothes airers outside and they fall over if there is anything more that a breeze. I'd also build in some bench seating like these

Then we could get rid of the small patio set and just have built in benches, which we could put plant pots on when not being used as often it is just us 2 in the garden but we do like to have a BBQ every now and then and it would be useful to be able to seat more outside. Something where the seat lifts up for storage inside would also be great to put the hosepipe, gardening tools, gas for the bbq etc inside to make the most of our space. I'd love it to be like an outside room...with seating, pillows, lots of hanging baskets and lights.

I will share an update on the garden soon as a few plants are coming back to life...I think I'll keep a bit more simple this year as I overcrowded the space a little last year but we'll see.

Sponsor me to climb Kilimanjaro! www.justgiving.com/katie-kili 

 

Lavender Layout

Back here I picked some lavender to dry out, and it's been around a month. Most of the tutorials I read said to leave it somewhere between 2 weeks to a month. Sooo...this is the result

Pretty much every method worked! If you're drying the lavender to use on display whole (like around a candle or hanging on show rather than in drawer fresheners) then hanging them might be better as the stalks stayed straighter. You can see the method back in the original post here, and I'll hopefully do something with it soon! Minty is there in the bottom right corner stealing a bit, she snuck up while I was taking the photo then ran off with it, I don't know if cats like lavender particularly or it's just our cats...

Also there's a new post on the wedding blog, the start of finding the venue - starting with venue no.3 the large hotel.

Drying Lavender

The last few weeks our garden has all come into flower and fruit, so I've been having fresh tomatoes and rocket from the garden in my sandwiches (So good!) and the lavender was smelling lovely.

So I trimmed off a few of the stalks with flowers, making sure to leave a few on there for the bees (bees love lavender and we've got to help them out) and to make sure we get more next year

I was left with a good amount of lavender, although they had different length stalks. All the things I read said to cut them off just above the leaves and this varied per stalk.

All the tutorials I did read varied on how to actually dry the stuff though! Most agreed they need to be out of sunlight to keep their colour but they varied in how to actually do it. So I thought I'd try a few ways and see what worked best. One said to tie each stalk individually then tie bunch them together and hang upside down (this seemed a lot of effort!)

Others said just to bundle together, and hang upside down or just leave in a cool dark place, so I did 2 bundles just tied together 

 I also left a few untied as some tutorials didn't ask for it to be bunched together

One bundle and some of the individual ones are just in a pot on the table, this room doensn't have any windows so gets minimal sunlight

That's mint in the bottom, we had some left from mojito making a while back and Tom thought it would smell nice in there. I like it as a table decoration.

The individually tied bunch is hung in the wardrobe in the hallway

 The other bundle is hung in my wardrobe making my clothes smell nice

 And the rest of the individual stalks are in the bottom of Toms wardrobe

We'll see which ones work best, the bundles and individual stalks are definitely the easiest and I can't see how tying them individually has any more benefit...

When it's dry I'm going to try making some drawer and wardrobe fresheners, hopefully they will be pretty easy as my sewing isn't great!

The garden is a bit changed about at the moment and we were making mojitos because just before I did this we had a barbecue so that garden looked like this

First barbecue in our little garden and it worked out ok, not too cramped, we just need to put the garden back together!

I've not killed the plants yet!

It turns out I actually can plant a garden and not kill all the plants off within a few weeks! I have the opposite problem now that some of the plants are doing better than expected and it's looking a bit crowded. (you can see previous posts on the garden here, here and here)

The clematis was also threatening to start climbing onto the walls, which we don't want to happen

I got this trellis for £10 from Wilko. I actually went into the pound shop after and saw similar ones in there, but the queues in both shops were massive and it was hot and I couldn't be bothered to return this one a buy another, moral of the story - always check the pound shop first!

I've done this before with a clematis in a pot and it worked really well, I jut cut some of the tape connecting it to the pole it came on, not all of them just enough to loosen it a little.

Then just bent the trellis and stuck it into the pot behind the plant, hopefully it'll grow into a nice big plant and we can screen the barbecue a little with it

 I moved it out to give the others a bit more room so it looks a little less crowded now

I'm hoping we can pull some of the larger plants round to in front of the barbecue and bikes once they're a bit bigger, we won't be able to screen it completely but it'll look a bit less gross!

The lavender has gone mad! I'm hoping to try drying some of it out and maybe making some drawer fresheners or linen spray

The forsythia has gone back to green as it flowers in the spring but it's growing well, the label says they can grow up to 4ft and I've seen ones bigger, so hopefully it will get larger.

 The random shrub that was here when we moved in is also doing well and growing

I'm so proud of our tomato plants, they've all grown massive! I've tied them onto the poles again higher up as a few of them were breaking under their own weight

 We're going to have loads of tomatoes!

The herbs are kind of doing well, the mint and parsley have taken over, and we also have another pot of mint on the opposite side of the garden (next to the forsythia) so we really need to use it up, mojitos anyone?

The rose bush that isn't meant to be outside isn't doing great but it hasn't died yet, and the sunflowers are growing about an inch every day! I'll have to get longer poles at this rate!

So I went in town in the morning Saturday, then kind of pootled about in the garden for a bit then spent the rest of the day here...

Bliss!


p.s not my cigarette ends in the pot there on the table, I haven't taken up smoking again I just had some smokers come over recently and haven't emptied my makeshift ashtray yet.

Finished Garden!

The garden is the first part of our flat that I'm going to declare finished! Obviously next spring we will probably have to replace some of the plants that don't make it through winter and we will change things around as we go, but right now I can't fit in any more plants without making it cluttered and can't see anything else that I would want to add or change (other than make it larger haha).

Here are some before and afters...

View from the door before

In progress

After

The rest of the garden with the barbecue and bikes...

Before (pretty bare!)

In progress

After

To the right out of the back door and the path up to the landlords garden

Before

In progress

After

The 'in progress' pictures are all from this post back in March when I last shared photos of the garden, we had just planted a load of pots. Since then what's improved (other than the weather in the after pics!) is that the plants have all grown larger, I've bought a load more small pots and 2 larger ones, we've also gained a few more plants. 

I went on a trip over to Gloucester a while back and raided all the pound/99p/bargain shops for garden stuff. I came home with a pretty good loot, small pots from the pound shop, plastic watering globes were in packs of 2 for £1 and do really work (I also have the pretty glass ones from back here), I also picked up plant food, bug spray and a patio cleaning solution (not got round to using that yet). 

Most of the plants are doing really well but some fell pray to slugs and snails like these smaller pots which did have flower seeds in to add in some colour but the shoots were all eaten

So I got some of this tape on a recent trip to the B&M shop in Gloucester, it stops slugs and snails climbing up the pot apparently

I ran out so haven't done all the pots but if it works will go and get some more. 

Also from there I got 2 plastic pots (£1.99 each) one to re-pot some sunflowers into which I'd planted from seeds and were ready to go out, and one for the lavender which is growing like crazy, then I used the pot from that to plant the rose bush I got for my birthday (After planting it I noticed the label actually said that it's an indoor plant, hopefully it'll be ok until winter)

These pillows (£1.99 each) were from the same shop on a previous trip, although they aren't actually outside cushions I bought them with the garden in mind, when the weather's not good they can go on the armchair in the hallway

Some close ups, these guys are all doing really well

Left to right - Lavender, Forsythia, Mint and Parsley, Clematis (It did flower and looked really pretty but I didn't get a photo!) and a random shrub left by the landlords.

The random shrub is actually doing really well and did have a few small flowers, and it's a nice shade of light green and has pretty shaped leaves (anyone have any clue what it is?) 

The edible side is also doing well, the tomato plants (right) are getting big although no fruit yet, the herbs are actually too large for the pot we really need to start using them more! Unfortunately no basil yet but a few shoots are appearing. The pot to the left is spring onions and rocket which is starting to grow up now.

We also now have some sunflowers which are growing fast and a rosebush which may or may not make it as it is not meant to be outside...Those are the pound shop watering globes, not as pretty as the glass ones but £1 for 2 so a lot cheaper, and hopefully once the plants grow in a bit they won't be so visible

As far as budget goes it's a bit of an estimate as a lot of the pots we already owned and some things were gifts but I'd say we spent no more than £100 on the garden this year and no more than £200 in total. 

That breaks down as (per shopping trip):

Blooms Garden Centre - Plants, 2 oblong planters and compost - £60

Pound Shop - small pots, watering globes, plant food, patio cleaner - £15

B&M Gloucester - 2 larger pots, slug and snail tape, compost and pillows - £13

B&Q - Barbecue and bike covers (rough estimate) - £10

Already owned pots, mostly from B&Q and Homebase - About £90 spent if I remember (It was a long time ago but I remember being shocked that a few terracotta pots could cost almost £100)

Gardening in containers is really my kind of gardening, no digging borders or mowing lawns just plant and enjoy! As long as you water them regularly and use a plant feed I find you can't go wrong with plants in pots, we had the same at a previous house and loved it.

The weather was so beautiful over the weekend I couldn't not be out in the garden, although I did get the office finished and it is looking good so a post on the coming up soon!