Green Girl Gardener

Apparently it’s Summer. You wouldn’t know it from this past week though, would you! I’ve not been able to get out in the garden properly without fear of washing away with the floods! It’s not quite been biblical proportions, but surely not far off!

I did manage to pop out last night for a quick appraisal, and O. M. Geeeeeeee! The weeds are taking over! Clearly, unlike me, and most rational beings, they’re a fan of drizzle and downpours! It’s dry at the moment, so once I’ve finished the task at hand, I’ll get out there for some damage control.

First things first though, I’ve been AWOL from Six on Saturday for a couple of weeks due to, well, life, but I’m back this week – can’t go out anywhere today because I’m waiting for a VIP (very important purchase) to arrive which is going to order my garden much better. More about that another time though.

I had a very lovely, relaxing and soul affirming day out yesterday at the NEC for Gardeners’ World Live!

As you can see, it also included tickets to the Good Food Show – two topics very close to my heart. Unfortunately, having just started Slimming World, I couldn’t really take advantage of all the yummy offerings available, but it was still nice to look around.

Right, how do I narrow all my pics down to six?

Maybe I’ll start off with Foxgloves, or Digitalis for the Latinate amongst us. As an aside, I’ve just discovered that Digitalis is the Latin translation of the German fingerhut, literally, thimble. I think henceforth I shall refer to thimbles as fingerhuts. There’s a reason Germans are known for their efficiency, a thimble shelters and protects your finger so why on earth would it not be called a fingerhut?

Aaanyway …..

So beautiful – look at those pretty fingerhuts! During my weed patrol last night I had a peruse of my borders and it would appear that the mystery plant which was part of my last six, which I suspected was a Foxglove, but then decided it wasn’t developing in a very Foxglovey way, has actually decided it is a Foxglove. I’ll probably include that in a future six when it’s properly flowered. It may still change its mind, but for now it certainly looks like it’s of a mind to develop fingerhuts.

Think I’ll talk Fuchsias for two of six (is anyone else a Trekkie? I totally just thought ‘resistance is futile’ as I wrote that. If anyone’s completely confused, google Borg).

I L.O.V.E Fuchsias. They remind me of my Grandad. In the floral marquee there were several beautiful displays like the one above. They look quite normal to me because I’ve always known of Fuchsias, but it occurred to me that they actually have quite an unusual looking flower. Completely different to any other genus that I’ve seen.

Last Summer I had a Fuchsia Delta Sarah (named after yours truly, obviously!) which has purple and white flowers, unlike the usual pinky tones, and it’s supposed to be a hardy variety, but it didn’t come back this year! I asked the man at GW yesterday about it, and he said I’d got it in the right conditions so maybe it just hadn’t got big enough to survive the Winter. So, I bought the biggest one he had.

It looks quite pink in that photo actually. Hope he gave me the right variety! It only has this one flower at the moment so maybe it’ll mature a bit more purple. Whatever, any Fuchsia is beautiful, and I will have a Delta Sarah – resistance is futile!

Numero trois is grass. I adore grasses, especially thin fronded ones which wave at you in the breeze (although I am partial to a Cordyline too).

Ooh, I just can’t help myself, I have to fondle the fronds! When we got round to the Fox Tail grass (bottom right) it was just all too much and I had to make a purchase. You wouldn’t believe how soft those fox tails are. I was going to get three for £14 but at the last minute I saw Hare Tail grass and added two of those and got all five for £20.

Apparently they like being in a pot, so I’m going to put all five in one pot for a beautiful grassy display. Unfortunately I planted my purple carrots in the perfect pot last week so I’ll have to do some reorganisation.

More grass news. My Festuca Blue is very happy in its pot on our bistro, and is in flower.

And, it’s had babies!

It was obviously a very mat/paternal little thing because it’s managed to procreate through the gravel and the weed control! I’ll try to extract them without damaging them and will grow them on in a pot.

Up next, Alliums. Beautiful, beautiful Alliums.

I’ve had a mixed outcome with my own Alliums. My Giant Alliums are a massive failure and I had such high hopes for them. They started off so well, with masses of leaves that I thought were going to take over the world, and then tiny buds on tiny stalks appeared, and then the whole lot died! However, I did have two surprise Alliums amongst my Daffodils which flowered beautifully until all this blasted rain came and flattened them!

Number five combines two of my passions – gardening and crochet/knitting.

Lovely colourful yarnbombing. I learnt that it’s not good to have permanent yarnbombing on trees because it restricts the trunk from growing, but as this is a pop up garden, the tree will only be yarnbombed over this weekend.  There were chairs so you could sit and knit in the yarnbombed garden, but the weather wasn’t really conducive to that. We were lucky that it wasn’t torrential like it was earlier in the week, but it did spit on us a couple of times while we were outside.

Finally I’m going to make a shoutout to the stars of Gardeners’ World without whom the show (both on the telly and the live version) wouldn’t be the same.

Poor Monty was a very busy boy! We had tickets to see him at 10.30 which was great (he talked about developing Longmeadow from the early days right up to what he’s doing with it now) but then he had to rush off to do a presentation on another stage, and we saw him at various points throughout the day. Plus he had to do some filming for last night’s show which was from the show.

We didn’t have tickets for Carol Klein, but the stage is open so we saw her from a distance. I just love her enthusiasm for all things floral.

I’ve run out of points and I didn’t talk to you at all about the contents of my subscriber goodie bag. I got some Willow to grow in a pot, which I’m quite excited about and some hedgehog food. I’ve never seen any hedgehogs in our garden but it’s quite possible that we have one. If not, maybe some food will attract one!

Anyway, my VIP has arrived and I want to get out and do some weeding before the heavens open again so I’m off.

Check out the Propagator’s page if you’d like to read some more sixes.