... in with the New

So, having cleared out the irises, we could refresh the soil with compost out of the 'heaps' and Sue set to planting verbena bonariensis ...

... except ours don't look like this yet!

We are now in summer and have started days of 30 deg, so this will be another part of the garden needing watering!

Out with the Old ...

We have had a really good display of Irises this year ... the Irises along the 'Iris Walk' lasted a long time.

But garden plans and new ideas (at least in the head of the Head Gardener) have called for a change.  So one side of the 'walk' had to come out!
We finished dead-heading them ...

... and alley-oop, up they came ...

... to be given away or dumped!

To be continued tomorrow ...

Sightings from Lockdown

Back on the 19th April we mentioned the little Redstart which was sitting on a nest which they'd made on top of our security light above our entrance.  A week ago the parents began flying in and out with food and I could see 3 chicks.

Today, one week later, the parents are still hard at it and the chicks are now adolescents.

Other than that we've gardened ... now is that a surprise?
We've planted up a bit more of the Exotic bed and I had some good cardio-vascular exercise bringing bags of sand from the barn to freshen up the surface of the bed.

and no, that wasn't some old hippy we'd enticed over from San Francisco!

PS Update!  Look who was looking at the big wide world the next morning ...

 ... we grow up quickly here!

Due to 'popular demand' we have made another video of the Garden :-
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hisVUS9uVH0

Mais aussi nous avons préparé un video d'une visite du jardin avec des commentaires en français :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2HMwmsGrXQ

In My Dreams

In my dreams the prairie would now be a blue haze of 3600 alliums which we planted in the winter. That was in my dreams but this is the reality

 

He has got 3 little friends!!

I should know by now that you get what you pay for. I bought the cheapest bulbs which were the smallest size. No wonder they seemed a bargain.

How many years will we have to wait for the show of my dreams? John says we should buy another 2000 in the autumn. That may seem a good idea in May but I can still remember the back aching weeks we spent planting last year.

Going all Exotic

The weather forecast is promising temperatures at night of no lower than 10 deg C and so the Head Gardener decreed that the planting out of the Exotic Beds should begin.  Last year we had 2 purple Sugar Canes but this year, with the 'Lockdown', we haven't been able to source them, so we were planting Canna Lillies and a Phormium

There will be plenty more to go in ... the bananas are in the process of 'hardening-off' (along with a lot of other things!!)