Hoping to inspire next generation!
The garden is bursting with colour and life! Sunshine intensifies the shade of every flower to its brightest and best. The wallflowers, daffodils, primroses, hellebores, ribes and forsythia continue to perform, while blossom, muscari, honesty, chaenomeles, camellia and hyacinth are bursting into bloom. The lilies, geraniums and peonies are firing out foliage at such an incredible rate, it’s hard to find a spare patch of soil for new plants and seeds!
The seedlings are germinating well in the greenhouses and none have been exterminated by slugs or damping off yet. I’ve been trying hard to ventilate well and water sparingly – so far so good!
We’ve planted Astrantia major, gladiolus ‘Belinda’ andd ‘Nanus’ mixed, pompom dahlias,hlias, lilies and freesias in pots. ts. They’re all planted in Coco co Coir – a coconut fibre coir. ir. It’s so much lighter than a bag g of conventional compost andnd it expanded to 25 litres when hen soaked in water, so I thought hought I’d give it a go.
However, it took longer to soakoak and needed more water than han it said in the instructions. Breaking it into a workable state took some effort, so I returned to seed compost for sowing plenty more flowers and vegetables. I also bought kniphofias ‘Flamenco’ and ‘Royal Castle’.
Our garden is coming alive with playing children, which meant that the snake’s head fritillaries were accidentally flattened by the boys in their plastic car .... if only there was a football that just chopped off the flowers that needed deadheading! But there’s no doubt that our pleasure from the garden increases when our children are out enjoying it.
This week, the allotment is a priority. Onions, chitted potatoes and broad beans need planting and Enviromesh needs fixing over the home-made tunnels. There are some slabs to move and some tidying to do, particularly as my son’s school class may visit after Easter.
I’m determined to get the plot looking as good as possible by then. It’ll be wonderful to try and inspire some gardeners of the future.