#92 Have Your Own Plot in the Garden

I have been lucky enough to grow up with gardens in every house I can remember living in. Except when I was a student in Cardiff. Then we had a concreted yard with a washing line. Function over form I feel. When I was small we had a lovely garden at our house in North Devon. There was a sensible gravelled area for the washing line, a lovely big lawn for us to play on, a vegetable patch where my dad grew potatoes and a huge tree at the bottom which my older brother used to climb. You're picturing it aren't you? Yes, it was as lovely as you're imagining.

My mum and I go to Hampton Court Palace Flower Show every year. It's fab. Loads of gorgeous, aspirational show gardens, stunning flowers to admire and covet, retailers selling everything from artwork to gazebos and, tea and cakes of course. Mum's garden is considerably bigger and better maintained than mine but I do try my best. I don't remember ever having a plot in any of my childhood gardens, but I now have a whole one to myself. Here is a picture:



I know it's not very big, or nice. Bear in mind this is early March so nature is still coming out of hibernation. I confess I don't make as much effort with our little corner of green space as I could. The usual excuses apply - too busy, too tired, too overwhelmed with the general state of it, etc. Mum advocates tackling one bit at a time, so with that in mind I cleared the area around the front of the house this week. This is what it looked like before I got to work:



And this is the result:



A vast improvement, I think you'll agree. Not least because the leaves were starting to rot and go smelly. And if you're wondering what the bricks in the plant pots are for - they're there to stop squirrels from digging our plants up. Rotters they are.

The book wants to know how well things grow in my garden. Well, as we live on a new-ish housing estate our 'soil' is mostly builders rubble with a little bit of local, sandy soil thrown on top. This is something of a hindrance to plants growing as well as they might. I quite like planting bulbs as they can stay in the ground year after year, without needing much attention from me. Tulips are my absolute favourites. Unfortunately we don't get much sun in our plot, and rather too many cats using the area for their toilety-doings. This limits how much we use the garden, which in affects how much time I devote to it. The book also asks how often I tend the garden. As I said before, not as often as I should. However, now that the weather has taken a turn for the better and I've been shamed into publishing photos of my excuse for a garden on the interweb, I can assure you I'll be making a lot more effort. And if there's anything worth photographing between now and the end of the month I'll be sure to update you.