A small nip of snowdrops

Finally my snowdrops are starting to come out. Love them in these tiny glasses - I'll have to look out for more of these venerable curvy sherry sippers as they are perfect for posies.  Plan to do lots of these on my stall with other small flowers. Makes me feel all spring-y.

As these snowdrops are in the border I've widened, I'll also keep an eye on when they finish flowering, because that's the time I'll need to hoick them forwards to the front of the border as they are traditionally moved 'in the green' rather than when they are dormant.  Watch over your snowdrops and seize this moment to split them into new clumps to start off small new colonies in shady corners which cry out for some late winter/early spring highlights.

Will make the most of this mild weather to go out and do some weeding while it lasts. Also need to turn over and feed the areas of garden which I have just denuded of turf.  Are things really swinging towards the growing season now? Sincerely hope so...

Ways to use up a sack of pine cones: part two

Christmas is coming, the garden's getting soggy, so it's time to mess around indoors

To make this you'll need:

A dinner plate and a small pillar candle
Pine cones
Orange chillies
Viburnum berries
Rosemary and lavender sprigs
Heather sprigs
Skimmia flowers
Ivy to trail around the plate and sprigs to add to the central foliage.
Tiny individual portion jam jars
Floristry wire.


Step 1: Cut a long length of floristry wire (about twice the circumference of your plate).
Wrap wire around the neck of a jam jar, then position a pine cone next to it and wrap the wire tightly around the lower segments of the cone.  Continue in this way until you have a circle of jars and pine cones that sits neatly in the centre of your plate.  Wire the two ends of your circle together and snip off any excess wire.

Step 2:  With your jar and cone ring positioned on your plate, fill the jars with water.  Add the larger leaved foliage equally to your jars.   Next, add the berries and chillis, making sure they are placed evenly around your circle. (Imagine there's a triangle placed on top of your circle, and dot a berry or chilli at each point).

Step 3:  Add the rosemary, lavender and skimmia flowers to the inner edge of your circle.  Turn the plate around to check if there are any empty sections which need more foliage adding.  Trail the ivy round the edge of the plate until you are happy with its position.  Add a little water to the plate to keep it fresh.

Step 4:  Place your candle in the centre of your arrangement.  If you candle is short, as mine was, you can always raise it by standing it on top of an additional small jam jar.

Recycle your jam jars, Christmas is coming.

Mini jam jars - the kind you get in hotels for your one-person breakfast, are great for individual place setting arrangements or for putting candles in and arranging for the Christmas table.  Make little posies if you can salvage a few hardy blooms from your garden, and arrange them down the centre of the table or in a circle, interspersed with candles.

Site goes live(ish!)

The website is now up http://tuckshopgardener.webs.com

and the first flower arranging 'how to' video is done.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnOIWb9Wc5U

Any feedback, ideas and comments welcome.


This means of course, that I've spent this sunny morning fiddling with the computer instead of getting my seeds set - so now I'll get to it...

Hydrangeas: NOT just for grannies!

Say hydrangea and most people envisage scraggy bushes in unloved suburban front gardens.  There are plenty of them around and I always used to dismiss them as granniated flowers.  But that was before I discovered them as cut flowers.  Fantastic from summer to winter, they keep on producing dense heads which change colour throughout the season.  Just look at the ones below - from the same bush, but the paler one, growing in the shady centre and the pinker one growing in a more exposed part.

 They also make an excellent structural framework for short arrangements like this one (in a jam jar) and hold other, less sturdy flowers in position.  I'm converted.

When the weather gets colder, the flowers will darken to a deep red outer ring, with a greenish centre and look stunning in autumn arrangements.


Even the crispy heads look good in their own right when they give up the ghost after the frosts arrive.  These beauties will hold (but eventually lose their pinkish colour) all through the winter 'til you chop them off to welcome the new buds in the following spring.

Have I managed to convince you yet????

Picture perfect roses

Rosa 'New Dawn' - soft shell pink, blowsy and so.. well.. rosy...

Mixed bunches - includes Rose de Rescht (dark pink, front small bunch), Ferdinand Pichard (stripy), Zepherine Drouhin (dark pink in taller bunch).  The perfect tiny shell pink one in the small bunches is Felicite Parmentier - has loads and loads of flowers on it at the moment.  They all smell gorgeous too.  How can anyone resist?

Coming up roses...

Lovely scents in the garden at the moment - sweet peas are starting and the roses are coming into flower.  Can't resist cutting them for the house and love them mixed in with the frothy lime green of alchemilla mollis.

 It's also the only time of year when I have even a small corner in my heart for ground elder.... If it wasn't such a thug, it would actually be quite a good plant as it has lovely bright foliage and stems and gorgeous airy white flowers.  The fact that I have hack them off before it can spread seed anywhere else means that I have lots to stuff into my flower arrangements - it is very pretty though. Pity I hate it for its invasiveness...

A mixed bunch of roses, knautia, alchemilla mollis, ground elder and pink and white snapdragons.  A few sprigs of pittosporum are great with their variegated leaves and dark stems for contrast.

Wish I could add smellivision too.... Gorgeously scented.

Bursting buds!

I love this time of year - you go away for a week and come back to find your garden is 50% fuller than when you left. Boinging is occurring. The recent damp weather has done everything the power of good AND the water butts are all full again.

Since I went away, more tulips have come into bud, the pear tree has started to blossom (that was nearly 'plossom' - I quite like that typo), the guelder roses and actual roses are busting with new leaves and the clematis on the garage is hanging with fat nuggets waiting to open.  More fool the ones that do because I was reading a flower arranging book the other day which said that clematis make surprisingly good cut flowers.  Any flowers that were open this morning have been snipped and put into my latest bunch.

The greenhouse has had yet another reshuffle as more things that have germinated in indoor warmth are booted out to toughen up.  I just hope this -4 degrees which I heard rumoured in a recent weather forecast for the Midlands just doesn't materialise.  That's the only problem with early spring seed-sowing enthusiasm and an unheated greenhouse.  Still, the seedlings and plantlets in there at present are looking happy enough, if growing a little more slowly in the current shifting temperatures.

I'm getting very impatient with my most recent batch of dahlia tubers though - they are showing no eagerness to sprout nearly three weeks after being introduced to compost...  I'm going to start shouting at them soon to see if that works!

First bunch of the year

Big fat buds are appearing on the pear tree and I've had to clean out the cold frames to house the greenhouse overflow.  It must, therefore, be spring.

I've even managed to pick enough stuff for a vase of flowers, so hopefully it is the start of a prolific year of flowery marvellousness.

Must prune more of the red-stemmed dogwood used in the arrangement above, so it comes back with more bright red growth late in the year.  Love the lime green of its leaves at the moment. Very eye pokey!  Have planted lots more honesty seeds (the purple stuff) in the garden this week, so should get lots more to pick over the next few months - got quite a surprise to see that flowering this early - must be a self-sown seedling that has overwintered in the hedge bottom.  Also sowed pot marigolds, nigella and cerinthe so I should get a few vasefuls from that investment of five minutes labour.  I love this pink hellebore flower - a seedling from one of my mother-in-law's plants years ago, which is now firmly established in my own garden.

Nearly pruned the straggly bit off the amelanchier tonight, but had the bright idea of holding off for another few days.  If I trim it back when its blossom buds are a bit further on, I can enjoy it in the house rather than just putting it straight into the shredding pile.

This good weather has brought on a ruthless purge on all things which are not earning their keep in the flower border, or which need dividing to promote new vigourous growth.  Leggy lavenders have gone, sambucus nigra is about a third of the size it was this morning, things have a bit of breathing space around them, and plant labels marking out seed beds are now starting to appear in all the borders.

 A friend went home with a tray full of various hardy geraniums, lysimachia, knapweed and knautia as she's just in the process of digging out a new flower border and needs some inhabitants for the bare soil.  Just hope I haven't passed her any bits of ground elder with it.  I DID inspect all the rootballs carefully to see if there were any nuggets of the evil weed lurking within.  I see that stuff when I close my eyes at night at the moment!