This is me in my garden. I consider it my science project - I had never even owned a house plant until I moved here. I like making things and this has to be the biggest thing I've ever built.
Actually, I was given a house plant when I moved in. I called it my Tamagotchi plant, as it was a challenge to keep the thing alive. A challenge I ultimately failed.
The plan is to have a wild garden, with wild flowers and an informal layout, with only a few traditional garden plants. The "wild" part seems to have been achieved, although "overgrown" and "out of control" are perhaps the words other people might have chosen. Sometimes I need to take the shears with me when I want to walk round, to hack a way through the vegetation.
I get most of my wild flowers from packets of mixed seed. I ignore the instructions saying to plant them direct into the ground, and grow them indoors. I tried the approved method the first year and found that weeds already present in the soil outnumbered the plants, and I found myself pulling out individual weeds one at a time, hoping I wasn't killing a plant by mistake. For your information, nettles can sting even when they're tiny.
Mind you, sometimes it's interesting to leave a patch of ground unplanted and see just what comes up. Mostly it's just weeds, but if there's anything worth keeping you can transplant it.
I have grown several different types of poppy, including an unusual wild one which was growing here when I arrived. It has orange petals and grey-green leaves. I'm particularly keen on Verbascums. Again, there was one growing here already. I didn't know what it was at first, and was frantically looking up plant books to find out as it grew bigger and bigger. (They can get to 3 metres tall, and I've clocked them growing at almost half a metre a week. I exaggerate not.)
The picture below left shows Verbascums and Poppies.
The picture above right shows what is possibly the world's first gooseberry hedge. What happened was I needed to plant a new hedge. I transplanted some saplings which had been growing underneath the existing hedge, which is mostly Beech and Hawthorn. The plants I took to be Hawthorns turned out not to be. The berries are delicious though.
Having said that, the berries seem to disappear shortly after they ripen. Books say that birds don't eat gooseberries, but my local birds don't read books. I reckon it's either them, or rare South American Tree-Climbing Rabbits...
On the left is Mr B, one of the local blackbirds and a suspected berry thief. He and the missus have four children; Emma, Mel, and the twins Howie and Jazzie. On the right are some of the starlings who make nests in the roof of my garage. Do they show me any gratitude? Indeed they do not, dear reader. In fact, they're more likely to shout personal abuse if they see me in the garden, even if I'm nowhere near their nests.
Euphorbia griffithii 'Death to Rabbits'
On the left is a Euphorbia, given to me as a present. You have to be careful with Euphorbias, as the sap is highly alkaline and can cause burns if you get it on your skin. It's also toxic to any animal which might try to eat it, not necessarily a bad thing.
The second picture, sadly not very clear, is of my orphan tree. I call it that because I found it at the front door as a baby. It was about a centimetre tall then; now it's more like a metre. It's some sort of conifer - it'll be easier to identify when it's bigger.
The next picture is my Maple, Crimson King. On the right is a Birch, which I rescued from the rascally rabbits. It has a kink just above ground level, as a result of them biting its head off when it was little. I'm not very fond of rabbits.
I was kind of hoping I could get one of the frogs to turn into a beautiful princess, but they always escape before I can catch 'em.
I also reckon moles and foxes have been in the garden, although I've not actually seen them. I did once see a fox in the field across the road from my house. The cows were chasing it.
This is Amy - she's a moonchild, gathering the flowers in my garden. She doesn't say much, on account of being made of concrete.
It's now more than ten years since I moved to this house and started work on the garden. Before I arrived, the previous owners had only planted some of the garden. The rest was derelict - I believe that other houses and buildings had been on the site and were demolished. Certainly, I often come across the remains of what appear to be foundations when I'm digging.
The left hand picture below shows what it was like when I moved in, although it was the middle of winter at the time. Lots of plants sprouted up later, but in the part you can see here most of them were weeds.
Some people might not find my garden to their liking. There are rather more weeds than are normally tolerated, but I'm not prepared to wage war with weedkiller. Anyway, it's my garden and I like it the way it is.
Before and after - spot the difference
Anyone fancy watching a Hitchcock film?