Here you will find posts detailing progress and developments from my garden in Surrey, UK. I will share an update each month covering new projects, planting, and general improvements. As well as working on my own garden, I also offer horticultural services, focusing on design and maintenance. I successfully completed the RHS Level 2 Certificate in Practical Horticulture in 2020.
Yes thats right… we’ve actually made our own homegrown compost from scratch and it looks alright…if a little lumpy! Back in June 2017 my trusty helper Luke made our composting station. We did some research in to the magical formula necessary for successful composting (which requires a delicate balance of nitrogen: green stuff and carbon: brown stuff). Fast forward 10 months
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I’ve decided to bunch these 3 cold and relatively dormant months together as there isn’t much to report on! We had a relatively mild Christmas period; however, like the rest of the country we experienced quite a lot of snow fall and plunging temperatures towards the end of winter. It seems to have taken its toll on the daffodil bulbs
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(or to give it its full name: 30th birthday pergolation walkway of dreams). Although we said we’d stop working in the garden after finishing the first half of the dry stone wall, we couldn’t resist building something else. We had a good excuse to spend more money on the garden as it was my 30th birthday in November (oops). We
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During September and October we continued to slog away at the wall as you can see from the pictures! It was actually easier going as we’d learnt a lot from our experiences building the first quarter. The biggest difference was realising that we could really chip away at stones so we could fit them where we needed them to go;
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On August 1st, our first delivery of sandstone arrived! We bought 8 bulk bags worth – as you can see it was rather a lot! As I was at work, Luke had to move it from the street, which is down a short track, to our cottage (as the lorry couldn’t fit down). Luckily a really kind neighbour helped him
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July 2017 was a busy month for us in the garden! We have started off by planting this trachelospermum jasminoides (aka star jasmine) into this pot – we also made this bamboo support from the spare pieces we’d pruned off next doors plant that was leaning over the fence. We’ve put this outside the front door in the hope that
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With all the grass cuttings and pruning stacking up, we thought June was an opportune to build ourselves a composting station! That’s right – no bins here! We went to our local builders merchants and bought all the materials and (literally) carted them on the trolley all the way back home… My partner then worked like a trooper, under my watchful gaze
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In May we decided enough was enough regarding our regular deer diners so we decided to build a fence that would hopefully deter them from coming in and also give the garden a clear boundary – this was also important as a public footpath runs adjacent to our garden. We made a trip to our local farm supply shop and
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During the time I took off as annual leave in Easter 2017, I spent a laborious week or so armed with something akin to a machete (!) clearing the space between our garden and the National Trust common (which is divided by a small ditch). The garden was one of the main reasons we really wanted to buy the house
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Although there was so much to do in the garden, I knew that for 2017 I really wanted to have some home grown flowering plants in time for summer, so in March I planted some helianthus annuus seeds (nothing fancy just some sunflowers!) I’ve decided I’m going to do this every year as it was really fun to grow
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