Green Day
May 7, 2006 at 10:09 AM
by Ashleigh
Long ago, in another life ... and before I met DH I had a beautiful garden. My ex and I had a maisonette with a front and back garden and an extra piece that was meant to be a vegetable garden but which we made into a mixed garden. We did all the work ourselves, including trenching the flowerbeds down to six feet and we took what was a barren hard piece of ground into a beautiful calming garden. Our patio was gorgeous - hanging baskets full of ferns and fuchsias, tubs of strawberries, roses in containers and in winter bulbs and annuals. Remember, I was in Africa so the annuals that grow here in summer grow there in winter. The only plant we didn't have success with was the tulip. Even winter daytime temperatures in Harare were too warm. In addition, we had fifty rose bushes in our cottage garden! I had fresh roses in my home every day of the year. We spent all our extra cash on our garden and used to spend most of our time out there working on the weekends.
Then I met DH and left my garden and my other life behind and moved to Cape Town where we had a flat in Sea Point first of all which didn't have a balcony conducive to plants, then another two flats, same issues. Then we bought a house but we didn' t have any money to do anything in the garden, so it was barren and bare.
In England we had a cute little garden. It was overgrown when we arrived so we cut the grass, paid to have a picket fence installed to keep Sebastian in and a garden path to reach the end of the yard and to stand on to hang out the laundry. We had one big flowerbed running the length of the path and then we put in a little bit of portable decking for our table and chairs and I had containers planted with roses and lilacs, and whatever annuals were around. Sadly, we left that garden too, and I didn't even have time to get my containers emptied so that we could bring them with us - heavy golden stone containers from the Cotswolds (I think!) I hope my friends are enjoying them!
Our first apartment in Holland was a rental apartment and we clearly had no desire to do anything on that balcony. We bought our own apartment a year and a half ago and last year I too had no desire to really get involved in any kind of gardening. We had some windowboxes and a couple of tubs with rosemary plants in them but that was it.
This year its all changed! We went down to the garden centre yesterday and came back with tomato plants, alyssum, flossflowers, strawberry plants, cape daisies, lettuce, basil, oregano and thyme. I already had some baskets with solanum in them, which I fear did not survive our heavy winter, so those were pruned back and I substituted fuchsias in their place. At the front of our apartment we have hanging baskets with pansies in them, which I will switch out in about June for something more withstanding of warmer weather. I'm not sure what kind of summer we'll have yet, but the last few days have been hot, hot hot!
I hope we get a good crop of tomatoes and lettuce and I'm looking forward to having something to potter around with!
Today's photos are courtesy (and copyright to) Brad, who took most of them at the shopping centre down the road. He got into a discussion with a man passing by and it transpired that all the flowers at this particular shopping centre are done on a volunteer basis and his wife is one of the volunteers! They are truly beautiful and we made sure that he knew how much the display was appreciated.
**All photos (c) Brad Meier
Comments
Your flowers are beautiful!! Your photography is also perfect...
Lovely ***
Lovely photos!
I love my garden in spring too. In winter the appeal wanes to it will be a while before i get green finger again. i had a lot of success with begonia and impatients flowers this year. Easy to plant and they survived well almost untended. They just liked fairly regular watering.
Good luck with your balcony gardening.
Enjoyed your garden saga and the pics Ashleigh. Looking forward to more wonderful pics of your gardening efforts this year - hope the weather cooperates with you! :)
Ash,
I'm doing some landscaping in my yard this year -- adding a fountain and building up the area so that the flower bed is raised from the circular side walk that goes around the fountain area. I also plan to change out two of my flower bed areas and in one of them I am putting in Canas -- they will be red and yellow so a bright display, they even have some that are striped like yourbeautiful tulips in your pictures. BTW, they are absolutely gorgeous flowers! nothing like Spring tulips in a garden -- though I only had daffodils and a few tulips this Spring. I'm changing out all my flowers so the bulbs are going out and I'm putting in a bunch of bushes and perennials. I used to have a garden (vegetable) but it got to be a lot to take care of. I live on a corner lot and it's a lot of yardwork for me. So I had to make some changes and I put a swing now where the garden used to be. Who knows...maybe some day I will decide to build up that area and have a raised garden so that I can work on it without getting on my knees . That might make it a lot more appealing to my back . Your Blog is great, I love reading it, and I love that gorgeous picture on the front with all thsoe flowers and the Dutch mill. I'll look forward to seeing how your garden grows this year .
My best,
Cathy Caldwell
Hi Ashleigh, been a while since I visited you so I've been catching up. Hope you find this, as I am responding to an earlier post, a few pages down! Sorry to read about the little guys both being sick. Such sweet photos though..The flower photos are beautiful, and I loved reading about how the conditions changed everytime you moved. We have recently relandscaped our back yard and are in the process of starting again with trees, shrubs and all. I even started a mini herb garden, with rosemary, basil, parsley and chives (very basic!), and I've harvested some of each already, to use in my cooking this past week. Fresh herbs are sooo much nicer than the dried stuff!
Ash, these are stunning pictures. And the gardens-we-leave-behind ... made me think of the few places I settled long enough to put down roots. I love having things grow around me. Sounds like you'll have a wonderful summer of puttering around with your newly-rediscovered green thumb!
May 7, 2006 10:39 AM