"Spring Garden 12 May 2008" by ranger49

Raising plants can sometimes be a bit like raising children - you can never be sure they will turn out quite the way you expected. You stick with the kids and - they are usually fine in the end.
It is though very tempting to get rid of difficult plants - those that go on having tantrums at the first breath of wind, touch of frost or heat of the sun.
And they never do anything useful or productive, just skulk in dark corners not even bothering to switch their own lights on.

Many of the plants in this garden have nearly ended up on the compost heap or been given away to a foster garden.

Then when you have almost given up hope they suddenly grow up and burst forth in their true colours. All that watering, feeding and patience is rewarded at last!

Raising plants can sometimes be a bit like raising children - you can never be sure they will turn out quite the way you expected. You stick with the kids and - they are usually fine in the end.
It is though very tempting to get rid of difficult plants - those that go on having tantrums at the first breath of wind, touch of frost or heat of the sun.
And they never do anything useful or productive, just skulk in dark corners not even bothering to switch their own lights on.

Many of the plants in this garden have nearly ended up on the compost heap or been given away to a foster garden.

Dotted around the shrub sand flowers a number of partky semi-functional pots made by my brother-in- law are to be seen. We call the one in the second picture the Onion Pot. It fits in well among the aquilegia.

The pink striped clematis, Nelly Moser, has been a particularly difficult one to raise. Just turned 15 and settled down at last

The planting of this delicate lilac flowering shrub next to the pure white " Early Sensation" with its glossy dark geen foliage just happened.

Something may have to give here - lower branches of the holly tree perhaps or move the azalea to a new home. It's not objecting too much, so, far to the shade.

This weigela is our best this year and was grown from a cutting taken from our first puny specimen.

Swapping cuttings with family and friends not only saves a good bit of money but provides permanent reminders of the person from whose garden it came.
Since regulations within the EU have permitted the transfer of plants and cuttings for non-commercial, personal use we also have memories of holiday homes and their owners in France and Spain. Nothing protected or exotic.

The rockery was one of our ( John's!) first projects here. The first digging of the garden uncovered hundreds of sizeable stones.
Then he dug up spaces in the meadow - that the builders had described as a lawn - to put up a greenhouse and two small sheds .

Not knowing what to do with all the clods he removed they were simply stacked in the middle of the plot.

The grandchildren wanted to know why we had a pile of mud in the garden. Then it dried and became a flat platform of solid earth.

By this time we had stacked the stones around it and - so the rockery more or less designed itself and became a raised bed with a rockery.