Hello fellow lockdowners! Hope you are all doing ok and keeping well. Thank goodness for our gardens, be they large or tiny patios, that’s all I can say.
I went out this morning and took lots of photos of my patio veg pots, only to realize I showed the same ones on my last Six on Saturday so had another look at our garden which is burgeoning with new growth.
For those that don’t know, I moved into a small apartment block 2 years ago and last year a few of us decided to make a garden in the entrance grounds. It has taken off this year and all the cheap shrubs we bought from Morrisons have established themselves. We had a tight budget for what we wanted which would not stretch to the garden center prices. Whilst we know the plants would have been bigger and provided density the first year, we were happy to wait and it’s paid off.
1. Weigela ’Bristol Ruby’
Still a very small shrub but I was delighted to see it is flowering. I love Weigela and although still only about 2ft high it will grow into a splendid, beautiful spring flowering shrub.
2. Salvia ’Hot Lips’.
The flowers are all red at the moment, I’m hoping the lip-like white and red flowers appear also. I gave it a bit of a trim during the week to keep it in shape and the sage scent filled the air. It was wonderful.
3. Sweet William (Dianthus)
We bought a couple of scraggly looking trays last year, but they went through the winter and are flowering away.
4. Tulips ’Ballerina’ and ’Don Quichotte’
There are four large pots on the edge of the drive into the apartments. We filled them full of tulip bulbs in November. Sadly most of them are over, finished off by recent very heavy rain and strong winds. These are still standing tall and looking beautiful.
5. Wallflowers (Erysimum) ’Persian Carpet Mix’
I always buy bare-rooted wallflowers, they are such good value. I bought a lot of them for the garden from the garden center before the winter. They were reduced to half price and we’re really smelly, wrapped in very wet newspaper, but such a bargain. Most turned out to be yellow but a few were a fabulous velvety burgundy. I’m going to cut off the seed heads, trim them down and with a bit of luck, we will get another flowering from them next year. If not, we’ve lost nothing as they were so cheap and we’ve had an excellent showing.
6. Chinese Witch Hazel ’Ever Red’
Moving away from the garden, this shrub is in a container on my patio. I bought it in October, hoping it would provide bright color during the winter. It has struggled and needed a lot of nurturing and moving about the patio until I found a spot it was happy in. Eventually, it’s Happy Home is south facing but in front of other pots sheltering it from the wind, which is often easterly. It has settled down and thanked me with some lovely deep pink flowers against burgundy leaves. They are supposed to be bright red flowers but I’m not complaining.
Take care everyone, and hopefully the ’new’ normal will happen soon. Meanwhile peep over the fence at the The Propagator’s blog and check out all the other Six in Saturday contributors.
