Wharf House Gardener

We’ve always been very bad at taking photographs of the garden before we undertake big jobs. We also took almost no photographs of the garden when we first moved in, in Autumn 2012. We’re delighted therefore recently to have been sent some photographs of the garden from July 2013. This has enabled us to do some ‘then and now’ pictures. In many cases the scenes are completely different, not least because there may now be a hedge obscuring the view! We’ve really loved seeing the differences of the last 7 years. The picture above shows our covered dining area and its former incarnation as a greenhouse.

Back in March, we dug out and entirely re-planted the long narrow bed in front of our outside dining area. We planted it up entirely with plants renowned for their strong scent. I blogged about the plant list a couple of weeks ago. We had very low expectations about what an entirely newly planted, immature Bed would look like. We’re pleasantly surprised by how good it’s looking. See what you think.

Three years ago we made two new large raised beds. One as a ‘Nursery Bed’ to grow on immature plants and one as a bed in which to grow flowers for cutting.  We chose two rose bushes recommended as good for Cutting ng,  a bloom from one of which can be seen in the photograph above. For early interest we have some spring bulbs, particularly narcissi. We have several dahlias but in high summer, much of the flowers are from annuals: sweet peas, cornflowers, calendula (‘Porcupine’), zinnias, sunflowers and targetes (‘Burning Embers’). Right now, we’re getting new vasefuls of flowers to spread around the house, every day. Few things we’ve done in the garden have given us more pleasure.