This third blog from my Grandma brings us up to date on how her garden grows; starting with landscaping in April to a celebratory tea party in August ’21. Funny enough, I’ve been at Grandma’s this afternoon and despite making good progress last year, there’s still an awful lot of work to do!

Notes from Grandma’s Gardening Diary – Part 3

It was early April before we picked up our gardening tools again. The bulbs had emerged and were still successfully filling the flowerbed with lots of colour. Large and small they spread themselves about the earth giving us a taste of what was to come in the next few months.

George’s latest plan was to fit in a rock garden between the flower bed and the new prairie garden. This time he wanted to raise the bed and of course add some rocks and make it deeper, so now we really did need a wall ! After a few trips back and to, to B&Q we had plenty of sand, cement and bricks for George to get on with it.

It was fingers crossed that this was going to work, but George set about digging a trench for the foundations and once that was complete it was time to lay the bricks. A bit tricky, but no problem, he managed to shape the four layers of brick into a gentle curve.

We are heading for the end of May by now and everything is blooming, down to the 60-year-old peonies that faithfully blossom every year and the hand-me-down lilac tree, that George’s great, great uncle gave to my mum 50 years ago!

So we have old, mixing in with the new planting and they’re all mingling magically together. We carried on in with a few more improvements, mainly adding more and more plants. The family clubbed together and gifted me a mini greenhouse at Christmas and by now all the seedlings had taken and it was looking very productive.

Plants and rocks were added to the new area in June and it looked quite a picture.

Late June into July, George levelled the areas to create a path and began work on a shady, temperate area using tropical looking plants such as fatsia and canna lilly. I was thrilled, it was looking ‘bloomin marvellous’.

And then it was time to show off and really appreciate the garden as intended. We invited family round for a tea party & garden tour; George’s Dad and Grandma were well impressed!

Winter ’21/22 – Once more all is very quiet as the garden sleeps throughout the winter. We still have lots to do and I was delighted when the other day (Feb ’22) George suggested we had a meeting to decide where we go next in the garden. He has more ideas, so I am waiting to see what he comes up with, as we have worked in the garden we have had several plans and ideas most of which we have changed or abandoned, so many choices, but not always possible.

I’m hoping I have given him enough freedom in developing the garden, he comes up with some great ideas and I find myself going along with most of them. I  think we work well together and I really enjoy working and being outdoors, it’s great fun and I look forward to whatever is next to come…….

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I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the extracts from Grandma’s Gardening Diary – do leave a comment below, I really appreciate hearing from you.