Adventures in gardening

Date: 08 January 2012 15:56:05

Yesterday on my way back from teaching in Glasgow I popped into a garden centre I'd spotted near home. I am really happy to have found it, hopefully I won't go too mad with flashing the cash but I was excited to be able to buy some plants to fill the pots which I'd had to empty of their weeds when we left Glasgow. I'm hoping that the new garden will become a riot of colour; however I also have to be sensible - the front garden gets battered with wind, and the back court is quite dark and mossy, so much as I wanted to I didn't buy a magnolia as it wouldn't last 5 minutes.

What I did buy though, along with some gloves and a broom to try and sweep up the worst of the moss, was a selection of things to start off with. Two skimmias (one male, one female, so the female will hopefully get berries in the autumn as well as them both having spring flowers), a hebe, a lavender, and a special offer on some bulbs which meant that I now have crocuses and snowdrops in one pot and some narcissi in another. The other thing I did was retrieve some plants which seem to be thriving in the (uncovered) compost bin, I think they might be forget-me-nots which I love, but am not 100% sure. So I potted them up, and if it turns out I don't like them I can always return them to the compost.

My next plan is to buy a compost bin with a lid, or have a go at making something (if I can find the blog post I once found which explained how to do it) so that I can compost food waste. I'm happy to just throw it onto the bin I have, but I guess the neighbours might not be so keen as it is open to the elements, plus with a lid it can hopefully heat up and rot down a bit quicker. I'm very excited about the compost side of things, it always gave me a buzz in London too :)

I have started a flickr set of my garden photos, so I can track the progress over the year/years. I'll add to it as and when I do stuff - the photos (including a few from 365 last year) are here.