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Wordless Wednesday - Don Keefe (not Don Corleone)

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Product Review - Gro-Sure Smart Ground Cover

I was asked a few weeks ago if I wanted to trial some Gro-Smart Ground Cover, which is made by Westland. I hesitated a little before agreeing as I am not someone who generally mulches areas of the garden. One look at my weed population will confirm this but I do like to have self-seeders and mulches will keep them controlled as well as the weeds. After some thought I realised that it could be really useful in my vegetable borders where I do want to restrict self-seeders from colonising. A short time later a bag duly arrived.
The first thing I noticed is that it is incredibly light. I braced myself to lift the bag and it was really easy to lift.

Then I set to spreading it out where I am growing beans this year. I am not growing a lot of veg this year but nothing beats the taste of freshly picked french beans.
I spread it so it was a few centimetres thick as the instructions stated. I made sure the bed was well weeded and I also picked a day after we had had quite a lot of rain.…

A plant reminder of a good day out

I do enjoy a good plant fair, I do enjoy a good plant fair attached to a good garden and when the two come together it is always a joy. Add into this the company of a good friend and there is not much else that could be wanted from a day (other than cake, obviously).
Last year I went to the plant fair at Felley Priory with gardening chum and we wandered around the garden oohing and aaahing at the various plants. One plant that caught our eye was Pulmonaria rubra 'Rachel Vernie'. It has this wonderfully bright fresh green leaves with a narrow margin of cream/white around the edges. The variegation is nicely subtle and it adds to the feeling of light.
The flowers are a good clear red, I would call them scarlet. This is a seriously good looking plant. We stood and admired this plant and both made a note of the name. At this point I confess I did pretty much forget about it. I would have remembered had I been pulmonaria shopping at some point, but it drifted into that c…

So goodbye lavender edge......

Let me rewind to 2007 when the front garden looked like this:
I declared this front garden boring and decided a knot garden was what it needed. I sometimes wonder if I should have left well alone. Yes it was dull, but the front garden seems to have been a constant battle I have never really won. I could just have mown it once a fortnight, yet that was just not what I wanted to do.
The garden was laid out as tiny box cuttings in the spring of 2008; by 2013 it looked like this. Yes even then the lavender hedge was a bit sprawly but it had a lot to redeem itself with. In the summer it was always alive with bees and butterflies and it was a joy to brush past as the scent would be released. I did love the lavender edge.
But then the lavender edge got old and sprawly. I kept it pruned but it was long past its best. So the other day I was weeding under the (out of shot) Magnolia tree and I started to weed along under the lavender edging. This was going quite well, there has been no …

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