These are the flowers picked from the garden for our Royal Wedding Party on Saturday. I had a lot of fun arranging them. My daughters made this bunting: And my lovely friend Clare leant me hers: My equally scrumptious friend Shelley made this: My eldest made these sweet little flags for the food: Our friends…
Category: Cut flowers
Bridging the Gap with Biennials
I have extended my cutting patch this year, adding two new raised beds. I got a little bit overexcited by my new space and went on a spending spree with the marvellous Chiltern Seeds (whose catalogue of pure flower porn inspired a whole post of its own, Flowergasm!) You might have thought that two varieties each of…
Six on Saturday: Vintage Silk
As you may have noticed, I have a thing for bright and deeply saturated colour. But I have other weaknesses too. Back in autumn I was seduced by a certain supplier of tulip bulbs and gave into temptation. I decided to try some sun-faded tones: vintage silk alongside my usual velvet and satin. I selected…
In a vase on Monday: EMERGENCY RESCUE!
I wasn’t planning to post this morning, as I don’t want to fatigue my readers. However the foul weather (swirling winds, torrential rain) meant I had to perform an emergency rescue on my tulips. These poor things were in danger of getting their necks broken. So was I. The rescue situation explains why some blooms…
A Profusion of Pots at Perch Hill
I went for total indulgence in the hot spell last week. I reasoned that it was too hot for serious gardening, so I may as well visit other gardens and bask in the tulip displays. So on Friday it was Great Dixter and on Saturday I took the family to Sarah Raven’s Open Garden at Perch Hill….
Opening to the Sun!
Something magical happened on Saturday: the sun came out! And stayed out! You could hear gardeners around the country stampeding to their back doors to get their wellies on! But once I’d had a little potter around, a bit of weeding here and there, I decided I just had to sit in the sun. Here,…
Unripe Tulips
These last few days have been like the big climb on a rollercoaster, where it goes really really slowly, slower, slower…almost stops…you can see the whole theme park below you… You know any second now, it’s all going to happen, and your breath is going to be taken away, and you will feel the most…
In a vase on Monday: recovered gems
I so loved the arrangement by Cathy, Words and Herbs last week, so I thought I would do something similar with glass bottles and jars. There is Hyacinth ‘Woodstock’ (the deeper purple), ‘Jan Bos’ (the pink), a rogue little tulip ‘Passionale’ who escaped by excavations in the raised bed last year, Euphorbia amygdaloides var. robbiae (‘Mrs Robb’s Bonnet’), Crocus…
Flowergasm!
Some might say I am easily excited. They’re right. But I can’t hold back on this one. I may have said before that I am very partial to a seed catalogue. The JParkers Dutch Bulb catalogue caused quite a stir a few weeks ago. Sarah Raven catalogues can be relied upon to titillate, though it…
My fantasy dahlia garden
Greed. Isn’t it wonderful? Is there a word for people like me? Do I need to go into rehab? Do I need an intervention? For my birthday last year I was bought a book called ‘Dahlias’ by Andy Vernon. It is like the crack cocaine of the gardening books. I can’t get enough. I need more. …
Bimbo bites back
Gladioli are the most flamboyantly fantabulous of all the summer flowers. I love their gay abandon, their razzmatazz, the thrill, their carnivalesque, cirque-du-soleil, loud-and-proud, uncompromising joie-de-vivre. Dahlias are the perfect partners if you want a true spectacular spectacular (see my post, Delectable dahlias). That way you have great waving flags of flower spikes from the gladioli, and firework explosions…
My fingers are tingling with magic!
That title picture was just to put you off the scent. It has nothing to do with this post, other than that was in front of me when the magic struck. I wasn’t even going to write a post today. But then I read this blog post from ‘Sharpen your Spades’: Sowing Broad Beans – A great…
