It was a bank holiday in the UK on Monday, so we were grateful for the extra day off from work! I sure could get used to three day weekends.
Our good friends Lucien and Laura had organised a get together for a group of like minded exotic gardening fans on Saturday. We started off meeting at Akamba Garden center near Birmingham. Akamba genuinely is a Garden center like no other, with so many accessories and statues, as well as exotic plants. As well as shopping we also had a plant swap in the car park.
The cafe transports you to somewhere a long way from Birmingham!
Heres looking at you! Giraffe with cute eyelashes.
I love the way the palm leaf looks like its hanging out of the statues mouth.
Fantastically crafted, but we found this head slightly disturbing.
We debated buying this fish to sit by our new pond, perhaps when the pond is finished,
it will find a home here!
King of the jungle!
As well as the metal animals, Akamba is home to lots of real ones too.
From Akamba we then headed down to Fibrex, which specialises in ferns, ivies and pelargoniums. Our interest was on the ferns and unusual ivies, and we soon had selected several plants.
Mark selecting from the variegated ivies
Fibrex is quite close to Bob Browns nursery, Cotswold Garden Flowers, which despite the rather cottagey sounding name, always delights with some unusual and rare plants. CGF is always an interesting nursery to visit and this time was no exception.
Every nursery has a cat, and CGF is no exception!
As is often the case with plant expeditions we came home tired but quite pleased with our selection of plants!So as is typical after a plant buying trip, the next day involved some sorting out, potting on and planting out. A couple of our purchases will be grown on before planting out, so these were potted on with fresh garden compost, and popped into the greenhouse.
With a better forecast on the Sunday we were able to get some more work done on our pond project, and have now finally finished laying the blocks. There's still some more work to do, but it was nice to reach that particular landmark.
Finishing off the last of the blockwork
With all the rain of late, and some sunshine the garden is coming together nicely for the coming season.
Hopefully the weather will improve some more soon, although it does look like we will have some more rain first, with any luck the sunshine will be here for the next bank holiday at the beginning of June.
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Gaz
