Garden Highlights and Fun. 

Gardening for fun, relaxing creative enjoyment. Great for excercise in the fresh air, and very social. Just think of all those trips with friends to garden centres, heritage gardens, opportunities to swap seeds, seedlings and cuttings! An endless source of information and a chance to show off and brag about achievements with new companions and friends.   

Cottage Gardening is fun and creative and is enviromentally friendly. Adapting an age old tradition,  encouraging a variety of decorative flowers, grasses, fruits and vegetables, grown within a small space.  

Gardening for fun and creative enjoyment is a very relaxing hobby that can be enjoyed and treasured for months on end.

Before and after photos of my own small property with a steep slope and heavy clay soil. When I moved in the front garden was a slope of grass that was full of weeds, it could never have been described as a lawn!

I decided that a bank of flowers in the form of a cottage garden was the way to go so that a bank of colour could be viewed from the front windows of the house, while providing privacy from the road as the shrubs and flowers grew higher. 

I also didn`t want to have to spend every weekend planting and replanting so I invested in bearded irises, oriental poppies, roses, of three varieties, shrub, ground cover and climbing to add interest and variety. I wanted the beauty and the enjoyment but without the backache. I think that is important when you are `50' and also have a busy lifestyle. So the options that I choose are designed to fit in with my mature gardening lifestyle and requirements.  

Variety is the key here, so that it encourages bees, lady birds, bumble bees and the odd wasp to get rid of the aphids organically, without having to use too many sprays and chemicals.

The soil is a very heavy clay so it needed lots of farm yard of manure, dug in after the grass had been removed. It took time and patience and as I said a great deal of excercise in the fresh air! Feeding the soil is imperitive and it is a case of what you put in is what you get out.

The joy of gardening is in the changes that take place of a period of time. Just as in relationships. What you put in is what you get out, and it is always easier if you meet people that share the same interests as you do.

Senior friends are important to encourage you and a valuable source of important information, what bliss sharing infromation about your hobby over a relaxing cup of coffee and a slice of cake, after you have worked off those calories, you deserve it! After a day on the allotment what better way to relax but in a social enviorment with friends in the pub, where you can swap war stories about snails, slugs, and aphids!

Meet like-minded people and enjoy social lesiure times.   

Meet friends and other garden enthusiasts who share your passion of gardening and the joy of flowers and plants. Have fun with people who love the ideals and ideas that you love.

I followed the cottage ideas into the back garden, but I have  decided to have pebble clips, as the back garden has more shade and the grass was always wet and struggling. I still use roses, and irises, lavender, and I am looking forward to my peonies flowering this year. I guess that you have gathered by now that I like big dramatic looking flowers, that create a big show. Tulips, daffodills, spring up in spring and flood the garden with colour, like nature's firework display. I am amazed that the garden can be covered in snow and three weeks later it is a mass of spring bulbs.  

I have included two dwarf apple trees, two grape vines over a pergola, and a small fig tree, so that it caters for the fruit and vegetable aspect of a cottage garden. I did try growing vegetables in pots but failed miserably apart from the salad mix. So I have invested in an allotment near my home. The before picture is included below and I will include an after picture in time to come! 

Learning and growing just as my garden is! Share you highs and lows with mature companions!