'You can lead a horse to water

but you can't make him drink', or, in the case of Sandgate's Open Gardens event, 'you can offer the village horticulture, but you can't make them visit!' (I still prefer Dorothy Parker's version but didn't think I should print that.)

Hey ho, such is life and it was a really bad day weatherwise with a deluge just about the time we were all due to open our garden gates and let them in. Still, the hardy souls who braved the elements seemed to enjoy themselves, and we are very grateful indeed for their support. We had visitors from Hythe, Canterbury and Ashford, so the word had got around, as well as some Sandgate residents whom we'd not met before. Plus we raised just over £200 for the Sandgate Community Trust, so not a complete waste of time.

The other participating gardeners have all been thanked personally, but I must publish here my gratitude for their stirling efforts. Many of them are quite elderly and their energy and enthusiasm put me to shame. I just hope I shall be around as long to enjoy the fruits of my labours.

The garden still looks tidy and verdant which, given the amount of rain recently fallen, is not surprising and, at last, I have one sweetpea flower in bloom. Albeit a very small sweetpea flower, but the promise is there of more to come. There are dahlias too, with skeletal leaves because the flesh has been eaten away, but still we have dahlias, cosmos, more hardy geraniums, roses with bowed heads weighted down by the wet, and even a lime green nicotiana. The leaves of the echiums still impress but don't produce any flowers, as yet, and the leaves of nicotiana sylvestris almost beat them for size; can't wait for those flowers to appear.

Now the big day has come and gone I'm taking some time to plan for the future, which most probably won't include opening the garden again. Friends and family are welcome to come anytime and toil up the slopes, but my thoughts are flying forward to projects for the autumn and winter months. I feel the need to start afresh, by digging up and replanting, moving and replacing, just making a change; a new plot even?. Should there be anything worth shouting about I'll let you know, in the meantime dear followers, thank you for reading and happy gardening!

Right on cue

Golden Celebration, the last of the 'new' roses to bloom in the top garden, burst into flower overnight. Well, ok, just the one flower at the moment, but more to come I'm sure. There are also now a few blooms on the verbena, one dahlia flower and a cosmos for visitors to see along with all the other hardy favourites.

We've spent today making final preparations, signage, mowing, removing a few visible weeds (there are lots more,if you look closely which I hope visitors will forgive) and generally getting ourselves, and others, ready for the Open Gardens Day tomorrow.

The forecast is ok, a bit breezy, that's seaside gardens for you, but overall dry and even sunny at times. So now we've reached the '5.30 on Christmas Eve' moment, there's nothing more we can do except hope visitors come and we all have fun while raising money for a worthwhile local cause.
Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

The Glory of the Garden

'Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made

By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade

While better men than we go out and start their working lives

At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.'

So said Rudyard Kipling, some time ago (1911), when no doubt he was sitting in his lovely study at Batemans whilst better men were grubbing the weeds from his gravel paths. I have some empathy with those better men, having spent much of this morning on my knees, titivating the edges of our grass and turning over the soil in the borders to at least make our Sunday visitors think there's been some serious gardening going on. I was not alone today either, with David hard at work making sure the brick pathways are as level underfoot as possible, and our young friend John beavering away at path clearing at the eastern end of the plot. Youth and energy personified, John simply gets on with the task in hand, and in two good mornings of work has reinstated the old brick pathway from the back gate down the side of our garden. A feat neither David nor I could have hoped to have completed before the big day.

The garden itself is looking ok now, with lots of roses in bloom, including Princess Charlotte as seen above, one of the new aquisitions that I've been looking forward to blooming for a while. The iris sibirica have all but finished but have been replaced by lots of the foetidissima or 'stinking' iris, also pictured above. On a recent visit to a spectacular garden in Bladbean (open again on 19 August for NGS and most definitely worth visiting) I overheard a gentleman remark to his wife that these iris 'always look half dead to me'. Well sir, look again, the fine markings on the very pale blue, sometimes almost brown, petals, are so delicate and what's more, after the flowers come brilliant orange shiny berries in a sweetcorn like mass. A plant that's very much at home in seaside gardens and certainly nothing to do with my efforts, it's here because it wants to be.

The veg beds aren't flourishing nearly as well as the flower borders, but I haven't given up hope that we'll be eating some homegrown produce by the end of the summer. Also, the greenhouse plants are doing really really well with lots of tomatoes appearing on all the plants and even two courgettes nearly ready for picking.

So, just a couple of days left to do the final chores on the lists, including one last mow, get the plant sale table set up and then welcome our visitors - a lot we hope! Fingers permanently crossed that the weather stays as it is right now.

Lots of other people around the village are working hard to make this second Open Gardens Event go well. A very welcome addition to our 'garden attractions' will be photographs by my lifelong friend Melanie Chalk, which will be on show at the Chichester Memorial Hall during the event. Also there, Melanie and Michael will be on hand to serve tea or coffee and cake to any weary footsore garden visitors.

To give Rudyard Kipling the final word:

'So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray

For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!

And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away ! '

Less than a week now

With time pressing (it's only six days now until the event) I rose early this morning and was in the garden working by 7.30 a.m. A beautiful time to be in the garden on a lovely day as this one promises to be. Still mighty damp underfoot, but at least the weeds are easier to extract. With a 'to do' list as long as my arm I made a start but, as invariably happens in our garden, I became distracted by something else that needed to be done. Hence, here I am at the computer, having just about worn myself out moving a huge pile of cut off timber from the steps at the back of the house and bags of kindling to the garage in readiness for next winter. I was a Girl Guide, so I know the need to be prepared! I am rewarding myself with a cup of coffee before starting the second shift of the day.

The images above were taken a couple of days ago. The tomato is just one of quite a few now, on plants thriving in the greenhouse border. The courgette flower, on a plant in the raised veg bed. We've started eating our new potatoes and, as I dug up the plants to get at the potatoes, I filled in the resulting space with Turks Turban squash plants. Not a variety I've grown before, but chosen for its very appealing markings. We have flowers on our runner bean plants, and on the purple dwarf beans too but little else in the raised beds shows much sign of life yet.

Our new roses continue to tease by showing lots of buds, but keeping their flowers still tightly furled. There are also buds on the verbena bonariensis and several of the dahlias and cosmos, both recently planted to fill in gaps in the long border. Fingers crossed that this little sunny interlude will continue as promised by the weathermen and the buds will burst forth just in time for Sunday, 12 o'clock!

'Gather ye rosebuds .....

while ye may, old time is still a flying. And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying'. (Herrick 1648).


Indeed, earlier today in the garden, I counted at least nine different rose bushes all 'smiling' in their own special way. From pure white, through white tinged with pink, pink flushed with orange, to pink in its own right and on to red, brighter red and the deepest of deep reds, all smiling in the morning sun.

Up to now I haven't really been into roses at all, thinking that they're more of a problem than a pleasure. All that black spot to watch for, the thorns, the lack of fragrance in modern ones etc etc. However, of late, it's come to me that they are really quite splendid plants to have in the garden and I realise, if a little late, how lucky we were to have roses still blooming through all the weeds and brambles, when we took over the garden some eight years ago. Most of those originals are still blooming. Last year I was particularly pleased with the salmon pink/orange rose that blooms in the garden at the back of the house and already this season it's flowering its heart out. The flowers have a delightful fragrance and make a charming cut flower to grace the dining table too.

My newly triggered interest in roses led me earlier in the year to buy five new, bare rooted plants from a well known rose grower. I followed all the instructions and gave them the correct dose of mycorrhizal fungi (I even weighed it out!) and rose fertilizer at planting. It paid off, we now have royalty visiting our garden in rose form, namely Princess Anne, featured above in the picture is a sweet shade of pink. A slightly prickly specimen (like its namesake?) but nonetheless welcome indeed to the mixed border. Harlow Carr, another pink one has also started to bloom, with clusters of smaller flowers and we await with anticipation the flowers from Princess Charlotte, Golden Celebration and New Dawn.

I now have a wish list of roses, well one anyway, Rhapsody in Blue, which I saw in a garden in Elham at the weekend. We were visiting their Garden Open Day for the NGS, and saw eight delightful gardens, and this rose was climbing over an obelisk in one of my favourites of all the gardens. Perhaps it's an age thing, but I found myself trying to drop off to sleep last night, planning where I could put such an obelisk, and one of those roses.
Answers on a postcard please!

Wee-eed

All jubileed out now it's time to focus on the big Open Gardens Event that is only about three weeks away. The recent nostalgia for all things 1950s and a picture I saw of Bill and Ben and their little friend got me thinking about weeds!

Friends in a botanical art class were recently tasked with making a picture of a weed plant; one chose to depict Forget-me-Nots in watercolour, another Pulmonaria. Now I consider both of these plants to be flowers to encourage rather than eliminate. I know forget-me-nots can be a bit overenthusiastic, but are glorious in their own way. But what then is a weed? Is it just a plant in the wrong place, or something more sinister? The Farmers Almanac of 1881 said "Weeds are little vices that beset plant life and are to be got rid of the best way we know how".

The principal little vice that besets my garden is Cleavers or, as I also know it, Sticky Willy. An inocuous looking little plant to start with, it shoots out yards and yards of sticky foliage in all directions and swamps everything given a chance. Very satisfying to pull out as the yards are gathered in, but much better not to have it in the first place. Couch grass is another pernicious devil that definitely besets areas of our bank in particular, thus have I spent much of this afternoon on my knees to avoid slipping downwards, trying to get as much of its roots out as possible. I will never clear it all. Then there's mares tails, so strong it will shoot through the tarmac on the pavements outside our front wall and a weed you can never get the whole root of out. But, the daddy of them all for underground spreading is Ground Elder, to be despised and loathed at all costs. I fear again that short of using something very toxic, which I'd rather not do, I shall never rid our plot completely All I can hope to do is manage it as best I can.

On the other hand there are those plants that fall into the weed category that I really don't mind; borage that grows so lusciously on the bank giving cover to the ground, producing beautiful bright blue flowers and nectar for lots of buzzy things, dandelions that also flourish in our soil and feed my friend's rabbit Gizmo and guinea pig Ted so well, and lastly the asters, probably not weeds in the accepted sense, but in our garden they multiply just as weeds do so I feel able to hoick out those plants that grow where I don't want them and move them along to the compost heap.

I shall carry on trying to get rid of as many unwanted weeds as possible before the big day but trust visitors will be kind and turn a blind eye if I fail to clear them all.

Firsts

So, here it is,summer at last and with this glorious sunshine come the firsts; shorts revealing winter white legs, t shirts stretching across winter filled tummies and the sunglasses!

And too, the first lush blooms of the season, a rose or two, iris aplenty, aquilegias blooming their petals off, cornflowers, hardy geraniums, marigolds and the shrubs too bursting into bright pinks and purples. Aliums too are springing up all over the garden, often where I least expect them since I didn't make a plan when planting the bulbs last autumn. They are very striking and bear rounded heads of different sizes and colours made up of many tiny little starlets of flowers. Beautiful. Such a shame that they'll be merely flower heads by the open garden day. However, there is already one agapanthus in flower in the front garden with many more promised for later months so all is not lost.

The greenhouse is thriving with trays of seedlings waiting to be potted on or planted out. I continue to harden off some trays, have given several plants away and wonder what to do with those that are left. A bit of fundraising possibly on the open gardens day.

We now have a ninth gardener willing to open her plot to visitors, which is great - nine gardens all for £4, can't be bad. Looking forward to it and hoping for just a little bit more rain, at night, in the meantime. What are the chances?

May Blues

I'm sure it's entirely conicidental that in the week following Chelsea's recent FA Cup victory the garden seems to have come over all blue. Always a favourite time when the first flowers from Nigella ( love-in-the-mist) start to bloom and the eagerly awaited first Johnson's Blue hardy geraniums show their pretty faces. We're also still enjoying many many Forget-me-nots and lots and lots of bluebells, both native proper ones as well as those foreign upstarts. All welcome as far as I'm concerned since blue is my favourite colour, and this is a favourite time of year.

This week has been mixed weatherwise but we've achieved quite a bit in terms of gardening hours. David labours away at installing a handrail alongside the steep steps, which we both pretend is for the convenience of our Open Garden visitors, all the while inwardly heaving sighs of relief that it will last long after the visitors have gone and we can use it for ourselves. I on the other hand have applied myself to clearing a stretch of path which forms the boundary of our garden on the Folkestone side. This path was a 'find' some years ago having been laid by the previous owners and then covered by years of undergrowth. It needs constant attention to maintain it as a useful footpath and easily becomes submerged by falling leaves etc etc. With no official opening last year I confess to letting this path become neglected once again so set to this week to turn it round. Not such a difficult task since the ground is still quite damp and therefore weeds are more easy to pull up and soil easier to shift and after a couple of Woman's Hours and a really interesting and enjoyable Desert Island Discs with Tim Minchin we now have a passable pathway once more.

This photograph shows one of my current 'stars' in the garden. Cerinthe Major, something we first saw in gardens in our sons home village in Essex and which I first planted in our garden, as seeds, about four years ago. Previous results have been very poor but there must be something about our current weather conditions that favours this plant as it has self sown all over the garden and has been blooming now for several weeks. I like it best in that almost twilight hour after the sun has just set when it seems to glow fluorescently.

Another landmark today is that I've set out my first tomato plants in their final positions in the greenhouse. Using the large pots with their bases removed to make them into rings I've placed the first of my 'sungold' plants in the greenhouse border. I had previously dug in lots of our compost to enrich the soil so, given that they are under 'proper' glass this year I'm hopeful of a bumper crop. Other veg plants are progressing well and tonight we've eaten our first homegrown asparagus, this being the third year of our asparagus bed. However, I should be honest and tell you that our useable crop amounted to just one spear each, the rest having either already gone to fern, or being not yet big enough to cut! I will, as always, keep persevering in the hope of that all elusive feast to come.

Tulips and blossom

These bright tulips caught my eye just now as I ventured briefly into the garden to open up the greenhouse and let the air in. I photographed them on a much brighter day some time ago and they are still flowering magnificently. They are part of a 'bright' collection of tulip bulbs that I planted last autumn and now I know that all that bending and scooping out of soil was worth it. This brought to mind the municipal flower beds around the town and the amazing displays of tulips this year. I keep meaning to email the Parks Dept, or whatever they're called, to tell them just how uplifting it is as you approach Sandgate to see the flower bed just by the old primary school, and others in the area. A must on today's 'to do' list.

The all too brief season of cherry blossom in our garden is almost at an end with the white tree up in the top garden now completely flower free and the large pink tree outside our living room window, already shedding its petals with each gust of wind. Experience has taught me that it's best, as with the leaf drop later in the year, to let all the blossom fall before attempting to sweep it up. Hopefully by then a lot has just blown away too!

Another job on today's list is to plant out my sweetpeas which are actually looking a little faded at present. Looking back at my records I see that I was already cutting flowers on 15 May 2008 so I have obviously been a bit dilatory this year. I have no excuse, so today's the day, and fingers crossed they recover and go on to blooming success.

Well well well

I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice the onset of wet and windy weather almost immediately it was announced that a hosepipe ban was in operation. However, given that it's the 'wrong type of rain' and that it could suddenly turn warm and dry at any moment, we thought we should do everything possible to reduce our dependence on mains water to keep the garden irrigated. To this end, David has been labouring tirelessly in recent days to complete the installation of 'ye olde village pump' over the water reservoir that used to stand inside the old greenhouse, but which is now outside the new one. This, together with proper guttering, downpipes and water butts, should help considerably with maintaining an ongoing water supply to our plants, free of charge

Additionally, David has reused old crazy paving to form a new path from the grass to the greenhouse door with gravel beds on either side. The intention for these is to provide a good standing area whilst using the pump, and as a 'nursery' area for pots of garden cuttings etc.

When the weather does brighten, which it did beautifully yesterday, the garden is beginning to look rather lush already with two of the large rhododendrons in full flower and acquilegias springing up all over the place. The young leaves of crocosmia positively sparkle with an acid green glow and compliment the euphorbias very well. All the hardy geraniums are leafing up to give, in some cases, rather large green humps all over the flower beds. In the small basement garden they are in danger of overwhelming other plants so a job for the coming weeks is to lift and divide some of the clumps, potting bits on to swell the ranks of plants to sell at the Open Gardens Event.

We've finalised details for the Open Gardens day (1 July - put it in your diary) now so with only about 9 weeks to go there's a lot still to do. Still, we've made a good start and I even cut the grass for the first time yesterday!

What a difference a week makes

Out with the old and in with the new this week and with the minimum of effort on our part - just goes to show it pays to get the professionals in. But, what a difference; we now have a lovely, warm and inviting greenhouse, a place to idle away many an hour when the weather's not so lovely outside, being snug and warm under glass. Just need a strong gale or two to prove it's as sturdy as the installers suggest it is.

Looking forward very much to starting off lots of seeds this weekend and sorting out all the pots etc. The biggest shock to me was just how many we had squirrelled away over the last nine years. Think a good sort out is required before I put them into the new house and spoil its pristine interior!

Should be a bumper crop of toms at least this season and who knows, maybe I could be just a little more adventurous.

The rest of the garden is being to green up nicely and all spring bulbs are doing their utmost to keep spirits up despite the lack of rain. I'm particularly pleased with the vinca, a small unassuming plant that is doing its stuff magnificently on our bank now and covering large swathes with variegated foliage and producing lots of delicate mauve flowers too. Just need to find something that will thrive under the cedar tree to cover the bare, dry earth there. I keep trying with clumps of hardy geranium, but with only mixed success.

The hellebores have also done very well this year and are still full of colour at the moment. However, some of the daffs have already gone over and the dead heading has begun - just a few each time I go up and down the path. The miniature tete a tetes have done really really well this year, lining the steps up the hill with their delightful nodding heads and making a golden edge to the wooden steps. I've been lucky enough to have received another batch from my friend again this year (ones that have 'gone over' in her shop) and have planted them to fill in the gaps so, in that respect, I'm already looking forward to next Spring!

Whoa, we haven't even had summer yet I hear you cry, or have we.....?

First or last?

Gardeners' Question Time last Sunday started with the presenter saying they'd be tackling the question of whether snowdrops are the first flowers of spring, or the last of winter? I couldn't care less, they're just lovely and it was better to get out and look at them than listen to the answer, so I did just that. Today, there are the first muscari pushing through to join the snowdrops and many miniature daffodils along with their full size versions are making a splash of colour on the bank now. Hellebores too are blooming well bringing soft shades of pink, purple, mauve and cream to add to the early colour show.

With the unseasonably warm temperatures it's been a delight to get started on seed planting with old favourite varieties of sweet pea and tomato being the first to go in, along with dahlia tubers being tucked into plenty of compost to keep them warm and encourage them into flower. I intend to leave them in pots this year, hoping to foil the pests and give myself the opportunity to place them in spaces in the borders as and when they are in flower, and there's a gap that needs filling.

Recognising a need for the garden to look at its best in July, ready for the Open Garden Event, I will be planting some new shrub roses along with seedlings of cottage garden favourites such as Nicotiana Sylvestris and cosmos. Inspired also by the meadow planting in Eaton Lands and Sarah Raven's recent programmes about planting to encourage bees and other nectar loving plants, I intend to scatter wild flower seeds on the south facing bank between house and the top garden. With luck, and a sufficient amount of water, we should have a bright and colourful bankside to greet us each morning from late spring through to early autumn and possibly beyond - we just need a bit of rain to get them going, but not too much to wash them away.

Here we go again!

Two jays, several blue tits, a wren, some robins, great tits, a greater spotted woodpecker, a yellow wagtail and the ubiquitous squirrels (three this morning) are just some recent visitors to our garden. But, that's all going to change again this year when we once again hold another Open Gardens of Sandgate event on Sunday 1 July. We hope, of course, that there will be lots of human visitors to come then and share the vistas, enjoy the plants and raise lots of money for a local charity yet to be decided.

In the meantime there's much to be getting on with. The unusually mild winter months have brought several plants into flower at strange times. Borage for one, a soft blue flowered herb with hairy leaves runs rampant over the bank in early spring but is in full flower now in places, as is bergenia (not a favourite, but it fills a gap). We still have roses blooming too with one plant giving its fifth flowering since June last year. Signs too of spring bulbs which we would expect now of course. A few daffodils have already come into flower but the 'February Golds' are only just poking their leaves through. As indeed are the naturalised white narcissus that form an glorious stripe through the grass from late spring.

A couple of hyacinths have been fooled into thinking they should be in flower and have only managed to just breast the soil before flowering to a height of only a couple of centimetres and one has died off already. So a strange year for plants and a busy one ahead for us with some storm damage to trees and the greenhouses to attend to, as well as paths and steps to repair. Moles are the new pest and a sonic mole deterrer to keep up with our neighbour (because he's got one, not that he's a mole)is top of the shopping list.

Before all that energetic work begins I'm taking an hour off tomorrow, or Sunday, to join in the RSPB's Great Garden Birdwatch. A comfy armchair, a note book and cup of something warm to keep me alert whilst watching our feeding station for visitors of the feathered variety. Fingers crossed that this sunshine continues and the birds are hungry!