Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to have some ongoing warm weather?!

Nevertheless the garden is growing, and flowering, and spreading. The garden is tightly planted and I also allow ‘visitors’ which means little surprises here and there. The plants are good to me – they carry on even when I don’t give them as much attention as they might like, or as much water as is necessary. All I have to do is the best I can and then we seem to have quite a good relationship. I think they need time to decide whether or not they will settle in their selected spots – I can’t see the point of continuously moving plants, especially not if they are growing well. So, even if a position isn’t 100% convenient I will leave well alone.

I like to open the front door in the mornings and see how things have fared overnight! The alchemillas are doing rather too well perhaps, but I like them. I dug up half a dozen today for a friend so they will be making the journey back to London, where their predecessors probably started life. They also look good at the end of the day, or when the leaves capture drops of water.

The entrance into the garden is quite narrow and with a right-angle bend so looks quite spare – it certainly gives no hint of what lies around the corner. The crab apple tree leans and really needs a much stronger stake, and the hedge will be cut back once the roses are over. The bright pink specks of colour are two visitors – gladiolus communis. Last year there was only one flower spike, this year there are two, and so we are on a roll! And the little pink spot in the alchemilla is an aquilegia – another visitor! Even in this small area I seem to have accumulated quite a list of plants.

Round the corner it is all quite different