Greenhouse to bird house bed - what's aboot? {the longest plant list for a small space ever}

This post should really read, 'confessions of a plant hoarder' or 'here's what I spent my wages on this year'. But, this is a productive garden and to be productive, we need to know what we're working with. I started a list when I moved in. My plan is to make a garden which is productive and bonnie with plants I think are fit for anyone's garden. As my passion is for propagation, that's where I'm going with my hoarding. Good things, which grow well and are bonnie/useful and above all reliable.

The original garden was none of that. Even this tiny area at the back (zone 4 if you are on weeding duty). But, this border never existed.  It looked like this. Logs and Laburnum. Nowt else.

June 2014 - before the S border.

No greenhouse, no bird house. Two plants only and about a tonne of mulch and a footballs worth of fabric suppressant.  *Link to the original walk about this time two years ago, below. 

Back to the two plants. Because we all know that's why you're here. For the plants.

Start of original plant list.
Laburnum - felled shortly after arriving. There it is sprouting on the right hand side of this picture.
Viburnum x Bodnantense 'Dawn'
End of original plant list.

Just a tiny bit bland and boring and several thousand metres of weed fabric lifted, and a few stones later we created the S border, and in the end nearest the greenhouse, this years plant inventory looks like this......

Laburnum - definitely not dead now coppiced - three flowers and several branches this year. I'd also bought an evergreen Pipthanus nepalensis to replace it. Hey ho, now I have two types I guess, all good!

Virburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn' - bonnie and still lives.

Since these two shrubs in 2014 I've added to this bed in dribs and drabs and in no particular design. A designer I am not. I file myself under plant hoarder. 

So here's that hoarding planters list so far.......and I will add to it as I add to this page as I add to the border.  Instead of two plants we now have at least 27.

Saxifraga × urbium - London's Pride (pink/white) - end of prop material runts (free)

 Lunaria annua - Honesty (purple) - self sow (free)

Tulipa - Negrita (dark purple) - present (huzzah!)

Veronicastrum virginicum 'Fascination' (whorled foliage, purple flowers) - bought full price

Aquilegia dark purple single = who knows but its bonnie. (purple flowers) - self sow (free)

Pulmonaria officinalis 'Sissinghurst White' (speckled foliage, clear white flowers) - end of prop runts (free)

Tanacetum parthenium - Feverfew (white)  - self sow (free)

Hosta 'Patriot' - Variegated hosta that survived the mulching (green/white/lilac flowers) - total survivor! 

Geranium ibericum - Iberian cranesbill (soft hairy foliage, blue flowers) - gift in a bucket from the neighbours.

Sanguisorba menziesii - Ornamental burnett (attractive foliage, dark red flowers) - compost rescue from work (free)

Stachys macrantha -  Giant Betony (large leaves, large purple flowers) - bought full price

Digitalis purpurea - Foxglove (white/purple) - self sow (free)

Ribes uva-crispa 'Hinnonmaki Red' - Rose Blush Gooseberry - Aldi for £2.99

Geranium phaeum - Mourning widow - gift from a friends garden (free)

Phlomis russeliana - Turkish Sage (architectural, yellow flowers) - bought full price

Phlomis samia - (architectural, lavender flowers) - bought full price

Crocossmia 'Lucifer' (red flowers) - moved from other area (free)

Rubus fruiticosus 'Merton Thornless Blackberry' (white flowers, climber, black fruits) - Aldi £2.99

Primula denticulata - Drumstick primula (blue, purple and white flowers) - Orkney (free)

Malus Apple Cox eating (white flowers, red fruits) - gift from Orkney (free)

Myosotis slyvatica - Forget-me-not (blue flowers) - self sow (free)

Galanthus nivalis - Single snowdrop (white flowers early spring) - bought

Aster dumosis 'Starlight' -  (purple flowers) - £1 table at work

Brunnera macrophylla (syn Anchusa myosotidiflora) - Great forget-me-not  (leaf interest, blue flowers) - £1 table at work

Pulmonaria saccharata 'Dora Bielefeld' -Bethlehem sage (mottled leaf interest, pink flower) - £1 table at work

So that's what we've got so far. Some bargains, some gifts and a few full price plants. I've spent £32 on this border. That's not bad. All of these have settled in nicely and I'm hoping will bulk up to release a few to friends/clients as and when they're ready. Its an eclectic mix, but why not.

And, its a lot better than looking at a tonne of mulched bark. Or two tonnes lifted as it turned out. Don't fret this has been rehomed on the veg garden paths.

*First week in the garden link is here

Rome doesn't need built in a day.

Kellie Castle and some of the rhubarb collection.

I came home yesterday from a very inspiring garden buzzing with ideas and scored two free scones and a car full of plants.  Life is good and plentiful and a good scone is really hard to beat (so is a car full of free plants). In fact there's been a few inspiring gardens visited this week, always gets the fingers itching to get going on your own garden doesn't it?

Main border walkway and garden heart at Kellie Castle

Now, I'm not what you'd call a patient sort, really, you'd noticed? But even I have to admit that whilst I'd love to get torn in and spend every last bean I have buying wood, nails, plants and all things marvelous, sometimes planning is required and some thought. Like where to put the third blue shed we have, by the veg patch or under the honeysuckle? Ponder, ponder. 

A beautiful card from a chum with a blue shed in it (and with a fiver in it (RESULT!)) from Susie Grindey.

Three sheds in one garden, is to my mind, a bit odd. 

I'm more of an action girl running off to find a hammer, but I've got the books out instead and drawn up me plot and I'll ponder some more.

In the mean time I've these to give their normal 24 hour soak before they get loose in the garden.

More plants, fabulous.

And a clump of my absolute favourite Ladies mantle (Alchemilla mollis). Now I've waxed lyrical about this beast before with my 'ladies walk'. Yes its common, yes its prolific (no use of the word 'thug' on my watch thank you). 

It looks fantastic in the wet (we are in Scotland after all) and a marvelous cut flower filler to bring out the colours in any plants. Spot the ladies mantle in my bouquet - fabulous! There will be lots of it here, in ten years time when I'm cursing it and taming it. Remind me I actively sought it out.

 Sharing plants from friends and fellow gardeners is a great way to spread joy and keep the costs down. When friends give me plants it reminds me of them, so its nice to have a bit of their cheer in my garden. I never bin a plant, someone, somewhere will be glad of its beauty and cheer. If not a friend, or a colleague, the local charity shops and gardening groups often welcome cast offs. So if its not staying in my garden, someone else will enjoy it I'm sure. Just saying!

Enjoy your weekend! I'm off to find places for these plants once they've had their isolation soak :) and then go collect my chickens. 

Sometimes patience does pay off (as does the ability to bash stuff with hammers, like hen houses).

If they're good I might let them wander about the garden too, like this. Maybe.......they'd just best not eat my ladies mantle.

Recycled or precycled strawberries (?), one careful owner

Forgive the question, but are my new strawberries good recycling or good precycling? I'm trying to decide if the strawberries (in my recycled fish-box) I dug up on Saturday  morning from a lovely lady on my local Freegle (thank you Caroline!!), are recycled or precycled. I'll tell you why, I've had my head in a book I got from the library called 'Precycle' by Paul Peacock. I've often my head in a book, its how I appear busy, when not really doing anything or avoiding hoovering. Read more, hoover less I say, much better for the environment and saves you electricity.

It is most excellent, and lovely to read with alot of great hints and tips. The art of 'precycling', is simply looking at ways to reduce/alter the initial consumption, thus eliminating/reducing the requirement for recycling, well, ultimately that is.

Hmm, how to explain, without you falling asleep. Lets see,  if you make a pizza rather than buy one, you don't then have to get rid of the pizza box as your home made pizza (Precycled pizza) won't have a box which you have to recycle, you wont need a bag to take it from the shops, nor a car to get there in the first place, you save energy in a whole load of forms. That's the ethos anyway.......its not really about doing without, (ie pure reducing) more about having what you want, but having it with less packaging, or if you like having it more efficiently. i.e. 'pre' the rest of the 'reduce, reuse, recycle, reclaim' mantra.........

Given the advice in his very good book, if you can borrow it from a library or a chum rather than buy one then do, its an excellent read. Now this might shoot him in the foot a bit, on the whole book sale front, but hey given the nature of the book, I'm sure he'll understand. He's a champion of this kind of thing afterall! Hmm, I wonder if he made any money?! I don't feel bad, the library bought the book, I borrow it, enhancing his ethos nicely.

Anyway, back to my recycle/precycle dilema. I'm always on the hunt for plants and if they edible AND are free all the better. At the weekend I met a lady who had too many strawberries rampaging around her greenhouse. Rather than throw them away she put a quick ad on Freegle and I got lucky and she picked me to help her dig them out of her greenhouse. Rampaging strawberries no more, she's now got room for her winter veggies.

And a lovely lot of strawberries I ended up with too, enough to drop some off to a chum on the way home. So I guess her strawberries were recycled to a new home, rather than 'reclaimed' through composting, but by growing the strawberries herself for food, think she was practising the art of 'precycling', that is to say by growing her own food, she avoids trips to the shops, plastic bags, packaging and disposing of it all. Hurrah! Therefore by growing her own strawberries, she's actively reduced her consumption of everything but the actual strawberry, very efficient if you ask me. By giving them to me to grow my own food, I guess she's recycling too. What a star.

You see this is the random thoughts which go through my head as I'm upto my oxters in strawberries, in a trusty recycled fish-(where on earth would we be without them)-box.  I'm not standing in the box you understand, (although that has been known) I'm just using it to dissect the lovely strawberries into various size plants.

After this heart stopping major surgery we have our cuttings, no fingers missing this end, so we can call it a success. Most of the old leaves are snippity snapped off, (a technical term), trimmed down to let them start again. I've left at least one leaf about to emerge, otherwise I've got rid of the rest, the plant doesn't need them right now, they will exhaust it,  they need to settle in and grow new roots and not worry about their leaves so we've trimmed them right down.

To avoid bringing in any pests, these plants have been subject to a dosing by the hose and are devoid of most of their old soil, just in case. Also, during these exploits its good to avoid introducing new weeds (or recycled weeds!) into your garden, therefore I'm avoiding the creeping buttercup, who's roots I'm now very familiar with, avoiding the bittercress, which I don't want in my garden, I've trimmed and sorted the little darlings down into new cuttings/rooted plants and have a goodly lot to start the strawberry patch in my tunnel. As the home polytunnel's not up yet, I'll park these beauties in soil, in a reycled fish box, in a sheltered corner until they can go into their permanent patch.

 Until they are planted, the new plants and cuttings will liberally dosed (again) wiht the hose, they will be parked overnight in a little purple trug (not recycled but very loved and well used) and covered with a recycled compost bag to keep them nice and moist. They will be OK like this for a couple of days, but I'm hoping to plant them before then.

 So there we are, I've a bucket full of recycled strawberries for planting, which are going to allow me to 'precycle' strawberries at home in the summer by growing my own. No packaging, no food miles, free strawberries and jam, yum! Well that's the theory anyway, I think.  Sovled that one. Phew I'll sleep well tonight. I think I rather like the concept of precycling - if I can avoid all the packaging in the universe by growing my own I'll be very happy!

Now,  I'm thinking of other things, like what on earth do they call a collective group of strawberries? I consulted Mr Google, who else? And this is what I found..............collective nouns galore.........'punnet' was the answer. Hmm and a few more for fun, who'd have know you can have a 'flourish' of strumpets!

A muster of storks

A punnet of strawberries

A flourish of strumpets

A class of students

A stack of suitcases

A flight of swallows.................

Good things come to those who wait.............

Trying to propagate eggs! Only being silly, I wash them and then let them air dry in a seed tray seems the perfect way to do it

Today has been a very good day! My son has had a few good results in his exams, which I’m really proud of! You can even positively hear the buds breaking. The weather has even been smiling on us – a balmy 6 oC with sunshine and don’t tell anyone, there was barely any wind. Shhhh, it was supposed to be windy. Maybe today was one of the 10 days of the year we have here with NO wind. This is a fact, there are only that many days a year on average with no wind, I certainly don’t joke about the wind. In the sunshine, I noticed the hen coup all of a sudden has a rampage of daffodils popping up all over it. I think the job for the weekend will be to move these to various places around the main garden. What a bonus! Free plants yippee.



Free plants coming up all over the summer chicken coup! Nice to see them. They look like they are in prison but soon they'll be rehomed in the garden.

I sold a dozen more home grown eggs (£2) today and I’ve had another couple of requests for eggs this week. This is great as it means my very clever feathered friends will have some posh food, to keep them fit and healthy. We get free grain (floor sweepings) from the farm at work, but I also supplement this with layers pellets which I buy once a month. I get free eggs, friends get bargainous lovely hen eggs and the hen money goes to pay the ‘posh’ hen food. They also return the egg boxes and it’s the perfect mini-recycling local supply system.

Egg boxes from the big supermarket nicely recycled with our eggs and a silly home made label! This way I can keep track of the boxes we do keep recycling!

My dearly beloved is up in the Isle of the Winds this week and suggested a treat of fish and chips for lunch. Whilst I was in the local fish and chop shop, I asked if everything was local. OK, so they did look at me slightly strangely, of course it’s all local, why would they import fish or tatties here? Be like 'taakin sand tae the beach' I was informed. Ok, good stuff its all local and very yummy. A picnic lunch on the beach, in the sunshine (well OK eaten in the car) then a walk with the dog – perfect lunch!

The beach at scapa, a perfect beach in Kirkwall easy for a quick lunch and a scamp! Peedie is having a sniff in the foreground there.

I posted off a few seeds and plants to far flung places in the UK yesterday from Ebay sales. My email this morning informed me that I’ve sold a couple more packs of seeds today as well. And, to make life even nicer I’ve had another direct request for a fair few veggie seeds this afternoon. Yippee, this is the kind of day we like – slowly making a bit of progress on that side of things. And, of course, reducing my seed mountain somewhat!

Part of the seed mountain! From Pandoras box.....

And speaking of seeds, the time has come to reduce my seed stash a bit more by starting to sow some chillis and peppers. (Jo has done hers and now I feel as if I’m behind!) last year chilli growing worked well, I bought a 10 different plant starter seedling kit from ebay (plants at the 4-6 leaf stage)  and they cropped really well. So I’m being brave and this year from seed, I’m going to grow Jalepeno, Cayenne, Golden Bell, Californian wonder, Haberno, Explosive ember, Yolo wonder from seed and I’ve the 5-6 plants from last year to crop too. I’ll keep a few of the seedlings to grow on and the rest I’m hoping to sell on Ebay/locally if I can. If you fancy a few chilli’s yourself – get in touch! I’m sure I’ll have more than a few ready in a month or so!

Watch out windowsills! Here come the seedlings.............germination beckons! (Can you tell that I'm excited?) I'll do them tomorrow!

Have a great day, I hope its as good as mine today! x

Daisy to the rescue................

I love ox-eye daisies, although not their 'grown up' name as my daughter woud say for the latin, (Leucanthemum vulgare or Chrysanthemum leucanthemum), what a mouthful! Whilst the plant is quite common - I think its under-used in the garden. And, this lovely little monster has certainly helped me out of a rather tricky spot on more than one occassion. I love it in the garden and I love it as a cut flower - even a single flower looks great in a jug or a cup on a table. I have a painting I love - my lovely ox-eye daisies in a lovely vase - need to take a photo of it! We often have daisies on the table - I love them and it would appear, I'm not alone - good article link there:

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/5623401/How-to-grow-an-ox-eye-daisy-meadow.html

With that in mind, I've been trying to figure out how to get more of them into the garden - good for my soul to see them in the garden and good for the pocket as I will use them as a cut flower in the house. And good for the carbon foot print as they are a native local plant which I can get here. I've a bit of a weedy rocky spot in between the byres - I wanted something that could stand upto the wind - tolerate a bit of grass competition - and also will look 'natural' - and a nice cheery welcome for folk coming to the house. Its very exposed out there, normal garden plants would need to be very tough to stand it out there - no point in summer bedding - it would get blown to shreds. I think I need a daisy patch right in the yard, which I can see from the back door in the morning.

I can't think of anything nicer that a lovely cheerful patch of daisies bobbing in the wind. I built it up with a few old rocks from the old byre building (in the field) and some soil I got from freecycle - that way the roots will get established nicely and if they grass comes back (when the grass comes back) I can live with the 'natural' look - I'm aiming to make it look as if the stones, daisies and grass have always been there to cheerily greet any visitors. Thats the plan anyway. This is the first bit of 'landscaping' I've done here - I wanted it to fit in, be pretty and functional enough to just leave it to get on with it. I hope it works - the semi-circle is a good way of keeping away from the edge of the wall where its rocky and horrible and making the two byres look interesting.

Ox-eye daisy is great as a cut flower, keeps well and looks lovely repeat flowers again and again - and I'll be able to take root cuttings/split up the plants each year. Its a great mixed in with other plants - its a good ground hugger when growing - so weed's don't really stand a chance - and if you're thinking of trying to make a grassy area look a bit more 'wild flower-ish' this plant can hold its own against even grass and it is very pretty! I thought it would be a good plant to have in an area I wanted to look natural, be at home with the stones and the byres and pretty in any grass that regrows - its native - so it could almost have accidentally landed there all by itself. Not quite, but almost. Key to a good design is to look at it once its done and after a day or two just look as if its natural - fitting into the family very quickly, like its always been there.

Ox-eye daisies are a bit of a toughie, but a goodie its a native plant and pretty robust! Easy peasy from seed - and can be readily collected after flowering - very easy from root cuttings - or division - one tiny patch can give you alot of plants. Here are mine - I did a whole load of seeds in a couple of seed trays - forgot about them and then after about a year - (when moved house) I split up the plants and put them into a fish box to grow on - when I dug them up earlier this year my two seed trays - gave me a wheel barrows worth of plants - from one packet of 99p seeds!

I wanted something in that patch which would die back in the winter - its dreadfully exposed and although I had thought of a budelia or a hebe - I think really we need something hardy, native and pretty for that patch - a perennial plant like the ox-eye daisy will be wonderful there and very very cheery in the summer. There it is all planted a few months ago - all ready to establish before the winter and the snow landed on top of it!

It thawed out today and all of the little ox-eye daisies are still sitting there having been covered with snow - waiting for spring to arrive - just shows they are tough little soldiers! The grass is growing back around the edges of the stones which now look as if they've been there for ages. The total cost of the bed/plants and hard landscaping - 99p for the seeds gave me about 30 plants - the plants did the rest, stones free being 'recycled' and the chap from freecycle delivered the soil for free. I'm quite happy with it for that price, a very grand but frugal design or what?