Still no exchange yet, but in the meantime we are busily planning our new garden. Hopefully 23rd March is still our completion day which means we will be in before our Easter holiday. That means we can hit the ground running preparing the ground so we have some results by the summer.
Garden design, planning and planting is a long game requiring patience, but unfortunately I don’t have very much of that so I need to see some almost instant results.
One thing I know I’ll be having is a cut flower patch. Taking inspiration from recent trips to Aston Pottery in Brampton in Oxfordshire, just down the road from Emma Bridgewater’s house (she has a fab cut flower bed too) I am planning how much space I need and how much accessibility between the beds.
I have always grown flowers but always ‘within the garden’ the thought of cutting them would just make me think I’m ruining my garden ? Hence to have purpose beds where it will be designed to have the flowers cut, will be a novelty.
In preparation for this exciting area I am trawling all the shops in search of bargain summer flowering bulbs. My favourites are dahlias, lupins, delphinium just to name a few, which fortunately are very available and easy to grow. I thought if I can start with some common every day varieties I can always add unusual varieties later.
I have been keeping a diary of my purchases and have been planting them into troughs. They are too close to one another but the theory is, once I’ve prepared the bed I’ll be able to transplant them to the correct depth and spacing. At least they’ll have had a good start and I’ll be planting them at the small plant stage rather than the bulb stage.
Picking up packs of bulbs in the supermarket or garden centre is a low cost way of getting lots of bulbs together but nothing really can beat Wilko or Poundland, of course the proof of this bargain hunting will be evident when or if they flower!
However at this stage at £1 a pack it’s definitely worth a try.
I’ve also put together a wish list so that I can actively seek out the plants I really want.
For now, I’ll keep buying and building up my stocks, I’ve got a feeling even this many are not going to go very far in the space I have planned for them.
Whilst the garden is huge, we still need to plan it carefully to fit everything we want into it. This cut flower bed will go at the very end of the garden nearest to the farmers field so I can see it but at a distance.
The idea is, to make more beds in front of that one if more space is needed with a gravel path between each row.
Big plans…..let’s see if they work out
All sound amazing – can’t wait to see your garden grow ???
Thank you Wendy