Gardening
To say that we have a garden at the rear of our house might give you the wrong idea. What we actually have is a 20 foot by 10 foot walled, concrete, yard — which is fairly traditional for 100 year old, urban, terraced houses in the UK.
However, I haven’t let the lack of grass & soil deter me as I love container gardening. In fact, I think grass is nothing but one big chore — especially if you have a 60ft plus lawn as I did in one of my previous gardens. Mowing that every week in summer was definitely not fun. This “garden” I have now is about 12 years old (we’ve been here 13 years) and I’m fast running out of space for new pots.
The list of plants is now pretty impressive (if I say so myself) and includes:
- Holly
- Parsely
- Mint
- Lavender
- Foxgloves
- Alpine strawberries
- Pansies
- Geraniums
- Primulas
- Conifers
- A wild orchid
- Nasturiums
- Ivy
- Campanula
- Two dwarf Japanese maple trees
- Bay
- Ferns
- Some other perennials whose name I can’t recall
- Sundry other wild flowers grown from seed
One of my favourites is the Holly as it was one of those wonderful “gardening accidents” that happens every now & then. About 6 or 8 years ago, I bought some sprigs of holly for Xmas and in the post-Xmas clear up, I noticed that the (now pretty shrivelled) berries had fallen. Thinking that they might as well fertilise some soil, I dropped them into a little trug & forgot about them. Eighteen months later, I was rewarded with a stack of 2 inch high baby holly plants.
I now have a 5 foot holly bush in a large pot at the front of the house (and another group in a second pot that I recently transplanted — ouch!) and a 4 foot bush in the back garden.
The white metal shelf unit was originally in our tiny bathroom until it was replaced by a custom wall unit. It’s great for smaller pots. I’ve also hung wind chimes on one side and some bead & button suncatchers off the shelves.
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