The season of mellow fruitfulness continues to be just that. The most exciting fruit in the last couple of weeks was Bek (an Jon’!) baby Rowan… all 8lb14oz of him. He is currently doing his best to make Bek’s maternity leave anything but restful.
We have also had a rather fruitful article in The Times weekend section
property.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/property/gardens/article6838802.ece which has brought about some very exciting leads. The first of these was a email from a young entrepreneur called Pete Thompson, who runs Lowhub, an eco-friendly flower delivery service from New Covent Garden and Borough Market. I almost fell off my chair when I read his email. First meeting, over tea and biscuits, looks very promising and could be just the ticket for getting our bouquets out to our urban friends.
Today we ripped out a couple of rows of sunflowers and cosmos, tilled and mulched. Tomorrow a gang of us, lead by Auntie Mary, will be up at the plot, planting bulbs while the soil is still warm and welcoming. It’s also just the time to be splitting, dividing and consolidating what we’ve got. It can be enjoyable wandering around the plot, looking for a specific flower, but for efficiency and simplicity it’s good to have things growing together — either according to species or according to its purpose ie. fillers, main flowers, or colourful foliage.
Yesterday I treated myself to some Erisimum ‘Harlequin’ while visiting a lovely family-run nursery at Staple near Canterbury. Layham Garden Centre is know for it’s roses — but also its freshly dug — or ‘dug to order’ —Erisimums (Wallflowers). We need a few more flowers for early summer and these could work well planted in between the tulip bulbs.
All the latest seed catalogues have arrived, to tantalise us over the winter and there seem to be some fantastic new varieties specifically for cutting. Having just come back from a trip to New England, I’m extremely tempted to get a few chrysanthemums. I never thought I’d say it, as I’, not generally a fan of ‘mums’, but there are some lovely, subtle looking varieties available. They’re also perfect for autumn and last well in a bouquet. The Americans seem to be big fans of hydrangeas too. So far we haven’t had the best result with our hydrangea plants… but we’ll give them another year or two, before they get grubbed up.
Other news: our polytunnel is full of green tomatoes, so tonight turned into a chutney extravaganza. I made so much I ran out of jars…maybe a good excuse to eat it as a fresh ‘relish’.
Will let you know how we get on with our planting…