It's All Monty's Fault

 I have told you that we have been having "a rethink" with regard to the garden mostly with a view to reducing the need for watering during the inferno months of July and August.

Well we ignored that when we saw Gardeners World a few weeks ago and we both chorused "love that idea". Adam Frost was touring an enormous private garden in Yorkshire (I don't think they have temperatures of  +40C in Yorkshire) and they had planted two long parallel drifts of the same variety of a white and green hosta separated by a low complementary grass.  (Episode 26 )

Never ones to let the grass grow under our feet I immediately started scouring the internet for suitable hostas. I stumbled upon a specialist nursery in Holland (Fransen Hostas) who were having a sale. As we needed 40 plants the sale price swung it. I duly composed the order and much to our surprise found that we could not pay by bank card. Apparently they are a small independent nursery so we had to arrange an international bank transfer and wait for it to be cleared before the plants were dispatched. What a palava!! However when the hostas arrived yesterday we could see immediately that it was worth it. Their quality was superb and we couldn't believe how carefully they had been packed. Each moist plant was individually wrapped in two sheets of paper and then slipped into a plastic bag with a label.

We spent the rest of the afternoon planting our yellow and green hostas (they didn't have any white and green ones in the sale).  The colour didn't really matter as we planned to use a rampant yellow and green carex which we already had as the adjacent contrast.

The planting was relatively quick as John has bought a new gizmo to create planting holes. It is a large drill bit which attaches to an electric drill......also discovered on the internet. We originally bought it as we have 2000 bulbs to plant, less than last year! We are thinking of applying for the European Agency as it works phenomenally well!!

When we had finished John said "I thought that the woodland bed was to be small and not be extended every year until it reaches the end of the alley,"......I couldn't possibly comment.

Now all we need is a 25Kg sack of slug pellets!!!