My Gardening View is certainly colourful now with tulips and daffodils filling borders and containers. There have been a few changes since I last shared an update – nothing unusual there as gardens are living, continually developing things.
The main flower border is supposed to be mainly pink and purple but, as you can see, it’s not exactly worked out as that. Somehow a rather orange tulip ended up there and, unlike most, it’s coming back year on year.
Things are more organised on the other side of the garden. I rather like this combination of purples – ‘Palmyra’, ‘Ronaldo Unique’ and what I think are some original ‘Ronaldo’ – I don’t mark bulbs in the borders as I hate the sight of hundreds of labels.
Even though the display isn’t nearing the end, I’m already making notes about what to buy and gaps to fill this autumn. I like this combination and thought a lot more tulips had been planted. Something has obviously got to some of the bulbs – squirrel, mice or the winter wet, I expect.
The containers have been particularly good this year. (Most of the containers were gifted by British Flowerpots. Read about them here.) I filled most of them with collections bought from Peter Nyssen. I usually put my own combinations together but there’s been a lot going on and, sometimes, it pays to let someone else do the work for you!
Three collections were used: ‘Purple and White’, ‘Banana Split’ and ‘Sorbet Tulips’. They all have tulips, which are then mixed other things such as hyacinths, muscari and naricissi. What makes them particularly effective is the long flowering period – several still have tulips in bud – and the different heights, which give a really full display. I just added violas as container toppers.
I redo the containers every year as tulips are not reliable repeat performers and there’s nothing worse than a half-hearted container display. I can’t bear composting bulbs though and so they are replanted. The daffodils go into the borders and the tulips into the grass under the old apple tree. It makes for a very uncoordinated but extremely cheerful display.
A few of last year’s daffodils were planted in the cutting bed but I haven’t had the nerve to cut them! It’s really hard with bulbs as they don’t repeat flower in the season and last so much longer in the ground. Also, I can see them from the potting shed. However, I think I will move them in the autumn into a main border to free up the space for something I will harvest.
My Gardening View in the kitchen garden has changed. The vegetable beds have had a bit of a makeover, well, the brick-edged beds. They’ve been dug out and refilled with a mix of homemade compost, and composted horse manure topped with bought peat-free compost – the latter because it’s sterilised so less likely to have rocket seeds etc, a major problem with my garden compost.
While they have produced crops in the past, being filled with garden soil when they were first built as we couldn’t afford anything else at the time has not meant spectacular results. Already I’ve got beetroot, turnip, spring onion and carrot seedlings.
Last year, we enlarged this bed, which had always been too shallow to really be effective. It’s really starting to knit together and I just wish we’d done it years ago.
Finally, you can have too much of a good thing – in this case Cyclamen hederifolium. I grew it from seed years ago and it has been steadily marching across the garden. It’s being dug up and relocated to the drive so that the borders can have a bit more variety.
Top image: Malus x floribunda, one of my favourite trees is in full bloom.
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What a lovely view of your garden and how the bulbs have done their own thing at times.
Thank you 😊