Garden Blogs

Over the next few months I am looking forward to sharing my garden with you. We moved to the Forest of Dean 18 months ago from Southampton hoping for a more rural way of life, and we have not been disappointed. Our property is on a hill, so level’s, or rather lack of them have meant we have divided our outside areas into three separate parts.

We have two young and lively Labradors, so the first area (our front garden) is the only part of the garden they are allowed in. So far it has not been properly planted up, as the few plants we have added have been trampled on and are looking rather sorry for themselves. We are hoping that some time in the near future, when the dogs are calmer, we can introduce a natural water feature in the lower stone tier which the previous owners built.

The second area is to be a semi formal cottage garden. Since last year we have grown as many perennial flowers as possible from seed. This has proved to very successful, in-fact friends and family have also benefited!! The new lawn we layed in 2008 has shrunk in size as we keep enlarging the flower beds to accommodate the plants. The greenhouse has more flower seedlings which we have been sowing since March, these are growing very well, so I can see the lawn shrinking even move once these new plants have hardened off.

The third and final area is our kitchen garden. I especially love this area, it is wonderful picking and eating your own produce. So far we have planted first and second early potatoes, beetroot, turnip, onions (red and white), shallots, primo cabbage, spinach and parsnip. In the greenhouse we have two types of leeks, kohl rabi, lettuce (which we have been eating since March), tomato plants and celeriac all of which will be planted out after the frosts have gone. Not all things go as planned………...a couple of weeks ago we left a very small gap open in the cold frame to circulate the air overnight. The next morning we found a mouse munching his way through our dwarf lupins, cabbage and kohl rabi plants – lesson learnt there!!! Hope you have enjoyed looking at our photos and I look forward to next week’s blog with our news and updated photo’s.