Our Garden

30 posts

Dove Cottage Garden

Other photographs: Back Garden Front Garden In June 2015 I moved from my four bedroomed, modern detached house, home for 16 years, to a three bedroomed cottage in a small village in Cheshire. I have dreamed for most of my adult life of a home in the countryside and after […]

Plants in our Garden

For many years I kept a long running post detailing the plants in my garden in St. Helens. My new garden in Cheshire was very overgrown when I moved in so most of it was removed or pruned hard during the autumn. The progress of the “re-build” of the garden […]

Back Garden

These are photographs of progress made on the back garden each year from 2015.

Spring Flowering Bulbs

One of the first jobs I did in the new garden was to plant lots of low growing spring flowering bulbs in the raised bed. We have mixed Crocus, Anemone blanda (blue shades), Galanthus Single Snowdrops and Narcissus Jetfire, which turned out to be too big really. My hope is that […]

Our Plant of the Month for March is Hellebore

Hellebores can flower as early as January and continue on until late April producing lovely nodding, saucer-shaped, flowers in many colours. Their foliage is virtually evergreen, just cut down the old leaves during January or February to show the flowers off to their best. They are very low maintenance and they don’t mind the shade. Most prefer heavy soils with plenty of organic matter added each year.

Our New Bug Hotel

I recently entered a competition on Facebook to win a Bug Hotel and, surprisingly, I won! I have seen this type of bug house before and always liked them so I was really pleased to have won. Bug Hotels are designed to be used by insects as nesting sites and as […]

Plants in our Garden

In June 2015 I moved house so I have begun a new post about the new garden and am closing down this post. Take a look at our new garden here. We moved into this house in 1999 and, being brand new, it had no garden at all. Over the […]

New Additions to the Garden

When we moved in to this house in 1999 it was brand new and the builders had planted up a small flower bed in the front garden. The bed consisted of a tall, slim conifer and a prostrate conifer of some sort. The first plants to be planted in the […]

Snowdrop Wendy’s Gold

My brother and I have been after this particular Snowdrop for years and last year I finally got my hands on some. Out of six bulbs three have flowered and are looking marvelous in the spring sunshine; take a look below. Click here to see more plants from our garden.

Auricula Selfs Collection

My Auriculas have arrived. I chose to buy a collection of “Selfs” which meant that I didn’t know in advance which varieties I would receive. As it turned out I received Bright Ginger, Chiffon, Cortina, Toolyn, Moonrise and Wedding Day and I’m very pleased with them. Here are pictures of […]