Whilst the weather was good I managed to spend a long afternoon in the garden with mum while Martin was at work. We focused on giving the front a really good tidy, clearing away all the remains of the Spring bloom.
We cut down all the snowdrops, bluebells and daffodils to make it look tidy, in readiness for the foxgloves, campanula and roses., which have already started to make a good show.
We also tied in the roses to their supports and got out the Black and Decker and gave the privet hedge it's Spring trim.
The bays and box balls are sprouting like crazy and I will need to pluck up the courage to trim the boxes very soon.
Other than that, the front should look after itself now for the Summer.
The back's a different story all together .............
May always gives us a really good show in the back garden. We see the last of the trees to flower with the laburnum, the lilac having gone over and needing a good deadheading.
Martin's yellow azaleas finished flowering and I spent a back breaking hour taking off all the dead blooms and giving them a good tidy up. These are soon replaced by two pots of pink azaleas that we planted a couple of years ago.
These are accompanied by a pot of pink Celosia Caracas, I'd never heard of it either, which I had as a gift from a good friend earlier in the month.
The 'Nellie Moser' clematis has also been amazing. I never got round to pruning it back at the end of last year and I think that might be my strategy going forward.
I have over 30 beautiful flowers on mime - mum's only got one on hers. The curse of the hard prune!!
We were disappointed to miss Mollie the Witch at her best, as she flowered whilst we were on holiday. I'd like to say that the picture is of our Mollie, but it's one we took at Bodnant, but it is what she would have looked like!! We have seen lots of activity on our other peonies though, with red in full bloom now and white just about to come.
Both the white and the purple allium are currently in full bloom. The purple ones we bought at Gardeners World live a few years ago. They are supposed to be a massive allium, called Globemaster, but something strange has happened. We planted five bulbs and the first year they flowered we had five huge purple blooms. Ever since then though, we have had far more than five smaller blooms, so not sure what's happened there. They still look good though, and they're purple, so they're always going to have a home in my garden.We've also got the first of the orange roses that flower above the shed.
We've tied in the sweet peas which have taken really well in their pot and I have given the patio a really good tidy up and planted out some margarita daisies in my small empty pots, which should give us colour all through the Summer.
I've also planted up a couple of hanging baskets, which are currently sitting in buckets, waiting for the weather to pick up before actually hanging up. I spread my plants over two baskets and I've now bought a tray of lobelia, which I will use to fill the gaps.
Martin has also made a start on a job that's needed doing for a while. He's putting some metal edging strips on the corners of the raised beds. At the moment the wooden corner posts are getting chewed up by the strimmer when my grass cutting man comes!!
I've been really pleased with how we've got on in the garden in May. The colour scheme seems to have changed completely, from the yellow and white of early Spring, to a more summery pink and purple.Hopefully the work we've put in so far will mean that we can relax in the garden through the Summer and just enjoy it, though I'm sure we will still find plenty that we'd like to do.
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