Grown up garden furniture

You know I said I had that plan to paint an old picnic bench?? Erm…well, the plans has gone down a slightly different route!!

This weekend we were out and about looking for house plants and general other garden-related stuff. We headed over to Focus in Malvern (James is currently boycotting Homebase as they sold us some rather over priced, rubbish drainage rods that broke the first time we used them). We turned into the car park, but as we did, We noticed a store across the road called ‘J Mart warehouse.’ It had logs, compost, trellis etc outside it so we went to take a look before inevitably being ripped off by Focus.

This store is AMAZING!!! You dont tend to see stores like it so much now, but it was full of everything you could possibly need for the house and garden. In the centre of the store was a lovely teak six seater patio set (six chairs and a really cool hexagonal-shaped table). We asked how much it was and the chap behind the counter told us it was £199.

Anyway…. we left it at that as, being the middle of the month, neither of us are exactly rolling in it and we’ve just paid for our summer holiday.

We mulled it over all weekend and today we decided to go and fetch it. Whenever I go to do things like fetching flat pack furniture etc I am always ASTONISHED that we manage to fit it in my car. BMW 1 Series are like Mary Poppins’ bags – we have managed to fit in a washing machine, sofa, flat pack bookshelf, and now a six seater flatpacked patio set in there  so far, but that is by the by….

So we have now assembled it and it does look lovely. I have heard horror stories before now of people paying stupid amounts of money like £2,000 for patio sets, so I think we got a pretty good deal. Plus it is a lovely size for having guests over for BBQ’s (fingers crossed for the weather eh?) and for working in the garden. I cant wait to enjoy some Sunday morning breakfasts at this table!!!

Anyway, here is the finished product…. isn’t it fab? I think I am a bit in love with it……p.s I won’t be painting this blue!!

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Starbucks for the garden

As part of my job I have a lot of driving around the country to do, so it is inevitable that I tend to stop off at the services every now and then to grab something to eat and generally have a break from driving. This week, on my way back from Northampton I popped into a Services near Birmingham which had a Starbucks in it. I was queuing up for my hot chocolate when I noticed that in one of their display baskets they were giving away big bags of used coffee grounds for free, to dig into your garden.

I had never heard about using coffee grounds as an additive to garden compost before, but on doing a bit of research it turns out that coffee grounds add nitrogen to the soil. Some posts on the internet advise sprinkling coffee grounds around plant bases before rain or watering as this becomes slow release nitrogen.

You can also add it to your compost to enrich it, and you can even water them down and use them as liquid fertilizer! Coffee grounds mixed with old egg shells and laid around the bases of your prized plants and flowers can also act as a pest repellant!

Good old Starbucks eh? I will definitely be stopping off for more free bags of coffee grounds!!!

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New garden project!!

Well isnt the weather taking a lovely springlike turn?? I have been in Dover on business for a couple of days and I can’t believe the temperature gage on my car has gone to 17 degrees!!! Positively tropical! I am actually starting to remeber what summer feels like….!

So this weekend I have started to put my garden furniture plan into action. I basically want to buy (or, hopefully, ‘acquire’) an old pub/picnic style bench. I want to paint it bright blue, and I want to ask my lovely mommy to make two bench seatpads from some stripey deck chair material! I would do it myself but I am frankly useless at that kind of thing. Some times I wish I had paid more attention in GCSE Textiles….

Here are some pictures that I have found for inspiration…

I want a bench like that…..

I need that colour wood paint…..

…And I want the seat pads to be decked out in this sort of lovely material!!!

If I actually manage to get all three items this weekend, then I can start my project on SATURDAY! This excites me. I will post some piccies and a blog post on it if my little plan comes together…!

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Bulbs!

This morning James and I took ourselves off to Morrisons bright and early to have a look at their bulb selection.

This year I have decided that rather than buy loads of plants to go in the pots on our patio, we will just buy lots of different types of bulbs instead, as if you bring the pots inside during the winter they can bloom again each summer.

We bought the following selection of bulbs:

Which came to about £15 in total as Morrisons were doing a 2 for £3 offer. We bought dahlias, gladioli, lupins and lots of lillies!

When we got home we set about potting up the bulbs:

The best way to pot bulbs up, I find, is to do the following:

1) Line the bottom of your pot with pebbles and stones, so that the bottom of the pot cannot be seen at all (this helps with drainage).

2)Fill the pot up with either shop bought or home-created compost (I.e from your compost bin!) and if you can, mix this with some of your regular garden soil.

3) Using your fingers or a little thin trowel, dib a hole in the soil to the depth that you need for your bulb (the instructions on the packet should explain this but if not, go for a depth of at least 7 centimetres). Drop the bulb in and cover with soil. You can often fit two or three bulbs in depending on the size of your pot and the spacing that they need (again, this will be on the bulb packet).

4) I am trying a new thing this year, which to cover the top  ofpots with a sprinkling of sawdust, just to protect them a little from any unexpected frosts.

In other news… James has started chitting some potatoes. This basically means laying out the seed potatoes on a layer of tissue or newspaper inside a cardboard box or egg box, storing them somewhere with plenty of light (ie a window sill or conservatory) and spraying them with water daily:

Once the seed potatoes have grown stalks which are about 4cm long, they are ready to be planted in the ground.

So we have had a very productive day today. The beds are now full of bulbs and our pots are too!

The next quest: find an old picnic bench that we can use as garden furniture!!!

 

 

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The Great Gardening Plan!

This week James is on a course and I have to admit I am getting a bit bored at home without him ( I am off out for dinner with my friend Holly tonight though, to see ‘Black Swan’ – I hope it is as good as the reviews say). However, we have lots to look forward to as this weekend we have decided to start work on the garden!

My sister gave a lovely present this weekend of some poppy seeds from the V&A museum in London, which are an orange, red and yellow variety, so I am going to sow these in the front and side beds mixed in with my red field poppies.

In my head, I want that front bed to look like a portrait by Monet, all bright smudgy colours! I am basically aiming to create this look, but with flowers rather than pre-bought plants and shrubs:

I also want to potentially start looking at potting up some vegetable seeds. I am going to read up a little more on this though as I dont want to start them off too early and then lose them if the conservatory becomes too cold. The weather ‘looks’ as though it is heading towards spring, but you just never know, plus there was a frost on my car this morning.

James will probably start digging in some of our homemade compost into the vegetable patches, in preparation.  We also need to tidy up the shed and prune the weeping willow which has grown into such a monster that we may need to call a Tree-surgeon in!

I also spotted some lovely rose shrubs and some bulbs on offer in Morrisons this week which I may look at purchasing. I cant wait!

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Bella Italia! Beautiful window dressing…

This week James and I took our long awaited summer holiday to Lake Maggiore in Italy.

The italians love to make everything beautiful, whether it be table tops at restaurants or trattorias, their front yards, and even their balconies. Whilst strolling around the old quarters of many of the little italian villages we saw balconies festooned with brightly coloured flowers and beautifully scented plants.

This got me thinking. It would be SO easy to transform a poky little balcony into one of these lovely creations.  If I had a small balcony area to a flat, I would love to fill it with pots containing brightly coloured flowers, it is so eye catching. Another idea would be to create a miniature kitchen garden on your blacony, full of herbs and maybe some tomato plants or strawberries.

The balconies that I saw in Italy are proof that with a little creativity even the darkest, smallest area can be transformed into something eye catching.

Here are some photographs of some of the lovely balconies that we saw….

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Garden Envy – Jo’s greyhound friendly garden!

…Aaaaahh I feel so much better after a decent night’s sleep in my own bed!! So back to the blog!!

Last night I went to my friend Jo’s house for her birthday. It was also a great opportunity for me to see the work that she and her partner Ash have done on their garden.

Jo and Ash are really lucky as they have a good sized garden, however they recently acquired the very gorgeous Molly, a retired greyhound, who needs lots of space to exercise and generally run around like a mad thing!

They hit upon the solution of creating a decking area where they could entertain friends, have some planters etc but which also left plenty of grassed area for Molly to use.

Here are some pictures of their garden. Ash did this decking himself and Jo created the flower boxes and baskets. The water feature is also really soothing to listen to whilst you are sitting outside in the evening sunshine…!

The lovely Molly

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