Wisteria growing crazy!

Planted only 4 weeks ago and has gone from knobby stick to this:

 It really loves that south facing sun trap of a wall. Maybe it will flower this year?

Front garden trimmed

I cheated and Denise paid for a local Gardener to help me for 2 hours on the front garden:

Looks much better now.

Slowly coming to life

With the slight increase in temperature the trees are slowly waking up:

Weeding the rockery

Spent a good few hours on the smaller rockery. It was completely overgrown. Planted a couple of shrubs and put some compost down.

Magnolia tree has flowered!

After being planted only 3 weeks ago the Magnolia tree flowered this morning!

New plants and a more relaxing day

Had a more relaxing day today - made the most of the sun and we went to RHS Wisley Garden's to get some inspiration.

Bought these two climbers to give the tiny honeysuckle some company, really makes the most of this wall.

This is one of the trees in the garden just blossemed this week, no idea what it is though.

New bird bath.

Bargin buy trellis by the front door - will probably put a wisteria here as the clematis I bought are even smaller than the honeysuckle!

Rockery gone wild!

Seems the lawn feed is working, looking much healther now.

Another view of the new climbers by the shed.

Another weekend of weeding

Another weekend, another 2 days of work on the garden.

This time is was to tackle the Ivy behind the main lawn and tidy up and rip out dead branches and plants as well as creating a new lawn edging. Idea is to plant a number of small shrubs and bedding plants along the edge. Before it was quite overgrown, hopefully now it looks a little better.

The planters all needed sorting out, planted some new herbs, cleaned the pots and threw away all the ones broken by frost:

Cleaned up the potting area, note the two hanging baskets ready for Denise to do:

Chopped the 50 year old vine right back, hopefully we'll get some decent grapes this year. Although not sure how much longer the greenhouse will last, the panes of glass keep falling out and the door is nearly hanging off:

Against the shed I put up two pieces of trellis and planted the two honeysuckle plants I ordered. Unfortunately they weren't as large as I'd hoped... Don't think they will make much of an impact before 16th June!

Some more lawn edging done. Note the patchy lawn, may have to get experts in - keep throwing on evergreen 4 in 1 but it doesn't seem to make much difference.

Preparation for Claygate Garden Trail

On Sunday 16th June a number of houses are opening their gardens as part of the Open Gardens initiative. We're opening ours in order to raise money for The Stroke Association.

So, that leaves just over 2 months to get the garden into shape, no mean feat since I haven't touched it in 6 months.

First task was to clear away all the built up soil around where the two dead trees where in the corner:

After clearing all the brambles and dead wood - I planted:

• Prunus 'Victoria' (Victoria Plum Tree) 
• Betula 'Jacquemontii' (White Steam Birch Tree)  
• Prunus 'Kiku-Shidare Zakura' (Cheals Weeping Cheery) 

On the opposite side by the greenhouse I planted: 

• Magnolia Soulangeana (Magnolia Tree)

Both lawns with a trim, also dropped on lots of lawn feed, hopefully they'll be coming up nice and green soon!

View from the back door:

Next up is to put up trellis outside front door and on the side of the shed to get some fast growing climbers going.

Got a delivery from Suttons coming this week with a load of flowers whose names I can't pronounce, but they looked nice in the photos:

• Verbascum - Blue Pixie
• Centaurea dealbata
• Astrantia - Abbey road
• Sedum - Purple Emperor
• Echinops - Ritro
• Iberis - Masterpiece
• Dahlia - Othello
• Aster - Asteroid Mix
• Sweat Pea
• Iberis - Pink Ice

After that its a waiting game to see how it will look in 9 weeks time. 

Flooring Day 1

Flooring has gone down in hallway and half of the kitchen and already looks fantastic! So warm underfoot after the cold concrete.

Hallway

View into kitchen.

View from hallway into sitting room.

Water leak and preparation for new floor

On a very hungover Sunday last weekend after Denise party, the washing machine decided to leak. I had to rip up the ageing Lino and found the whole floor was soaking wet, not good.

It's now dried out and were having lovely engineered oak laid tomorrow. Before that can happen the carpenter has put down some latex to level the floor.

Kitchen makeover

Before and after photos of the kitchen makeover. Will have to do until we save up for the kitchen proper! Flooring still to do.

Stairs and hallway part 2

2nd coat on stairs, first coat on floor. Door curtain pole up.

New painted stairs

Finally ripped up the blue carpet in the hallway and stairs. Good riddance! For now we'll paint it white, stairs may be carpeted in future and wood flooring in hallway when we do the kitchen.