blooming marvellous!

30/31 May: What a weekend! It's been blisteringly hot with clear blue skies all around since Friday. It's been a long weekend of several gardens. In between working in my garden (more on that later), I've been enjoying life in a beer garden (ok, not many plants to look at but you cant beat a long cool drink with a friend on a sunny day), a garden centre (to help the same friend get some plants for pots), and Gardening Scotland. The sunny weather certainly encourage people to visit the show in their 1000's. The childrens pallet gardens at Gardening Scotland were inspirational in their creativity and a perfect reminder that you dont need a big space to create an impact. In the floral hall, my favourite display was the mecanopsis garden which was simply full of the most stunning metre high blue poppies.

My mecanopsis (bought at the show a few years ago) is yet to make an appearance this year, but it wont reach the striking heights of its show cousins. This weekend however, the garden has been jam packed with new appearances. The peony is now in full bloom and heavily laden with soft ruffled heads of crimson.

The graceful purple iris with fine dark purple and white markings and yellow centres has started to flower alongside the vivid yellow hemerocallis (day lily).

Every week new types of aquilegia open this week's additions include a stunning pink and yellow variety and the blackest purple one has tall lilac tufts that start like tiny blackcurrant berries.
The alliums continue to shoot forth while the normally understated silver leaved celmesia has thrown a plethora of thick rope like stems with with daisy like flowers.

Mr & Mrs Great Tit are still working hard but no sign of the chicks yet other than the sound of constant clamour when food arrives. More orange tipped butterflies are breezing through the garden but no others to report yet.

Finally, it great to see the grasses quietly making a come back alongside the showier blooms. The first heads on the stipa gigantica are fluttering in the sun glinting green and pink whilst a very different smaller grass sports the first spiky mace-shaped heads.

With everything sprouting its proving tough to stay on top of the dead-heading and weeding but I'm trying. The vegetables and fruit are also coming on in leaps and bounds. This week:

• We've been enjoying the first peppery radishes along with more salad leaves.
• Potting on the chilli and pepper seedlings that we've grown from seed along with some cauliflower seedlings we've been given.
• The peas are now about a metre high so I've added more string to the wigwams to give the something to hold on to.
• The tomatoes have been basking in the sun and are already sprouting their first flowers.

Fingers crossed for a good crop!

Gardening Scotland starts tomorrow

This year's Gardening Scotland exhibition starts tomorrow (Friday 29 May) and goes on till Sunday 31st May at Royal Highland Showground, Ingliston, Edinburgh.

It's Scotland's leading gardening show and a great mix of plants, floral, food and garden furniture Lets hope it will be buzzing again this year. For more information check out the Gardening Scotland website.

I'll be there on Sunday and heading straight for my favourite garden furniture designer, Fusion Metalwork who'll be exhibiting some fantastic new designs. I'm also looking forward to seeing what new plants are on display this year (and perhaps coming home with a few!)

Fingers crossed the weather stays sunny.

Peonies and herb tarts - summer is here!

Today was just glorious. An impromptu alfresco lunch with friends and family perfectly captured the reason everyone should have a garden - so they can sit in the sun, surrounded by nature and friends with food made fresh from homegrown ingredients.

More on that soon, but first. The peonies! They have finally started to open and the large deep crimson cup shaped flowers filled with tightly packed ruffles look fantastic. There’s just three open so far and lots of bulging round buds waiting their turn.

Next to the peonies the first oriental papaver has opened. It’s plum petals are so thin and papery they are almost translucent. With black spots like thumb prints they circle the tight black centre packed with loops of stamen. The rest of the large hairy poppy buds are still tightly closed.

It’s been a long week of waiting for the big buds to open. The weather has been so mixed, and yesterday seemed more changeable than most going from sun to blustery winds to lashing rain and back again. But today the sun shone.

Mr & Mrs Great Tit are still going in and out of their eaves nest constantly while other birds hop around the garden. The orange tip butterflies are still flitting around.
















The aqualegia and cranesbill geranium are in full bloom all and the ferns are all unfurling new stems.

The purple and white alliums are a spectacular mass of tiny flowers in a perfect sphere.

The oregano, thyme and rosemary are all growing madly. With lots of delicate new shoots it’s the ideal time to make a lovely herb tart.

Since cooking is my other creative passion, here’s the recipe for the herb tart I rustled up for lunch.

I hope it encourages you to make the most of the new herbs.

Brie & Tomato Summer Herb Tart

1. Roll out a rectangle of puff pastry, place it on a floured baking tray and lightly score round the pastry about 2-3cm in from the edge with a sharp knife. Make sure no ingredients go onto the border.




2. Next go and pick a selection of rosemary tips, oregano, thyme, chives etc. and chop them finely.




3. In a small food processor, add 3 cloves of garlic, some fresh black pepper, a little extra virgin olive oil and 6 slices of parma ham. Blitz and sprinkle the ham over the pastry.




4. Next cut in half about 15 baby plum tomatoes, chop a few soft sundried tomatoes and sprinkle them over the pastry. Sprinkle the tomatoes with half the chopped herbs.




5. Now take a wedge of brie and chop it into thick slices about 2cm wide and place them on the tomatoes.




6. Grind some salt and pepper over the tart and sprinkle on the remaining herbs.




7. Lightly brush the outside border of the pastry with milk and pop the tart in a 190 degree oven for 15-20 minutes.




8. When its golden brown and bubbling take it out and let it cool for 5 minutes before covering it with freshly picked rocket and baby salad leaves. Eat & enjoy.

Great Expectations

16/17 May: The theme for this week is great expectations. The week started well with some lovely weather and then it turned to rain and strong winds. Even the ducks have gone into hiding!

Everything, including me, has great hopes of the summer to come. So many large buds are sitting tentatively and teasingly waiting for their moment in the sun. Peonies, poppies, alliums, iris are all poised to burst out. But, despite looking so promising, very few flowers have opened this week.

The deep pink magnolia, cherry armagowa and lilac all look a little weather beaten, even though they are in full flower and the gusty winds have finished off the last of the tulips.

Over the weekend, in between showers, the garden was quickly full of butterflies, bees and birds all looking for something to eat before the rain started again. More pairs of orange tipped butterflies could be see flitting very quickly from plant to plant. I spotted this pair of mating dragonflies on the wood anemones.

Mr & Mrs Great Tit have been flitting in and out of their nest in the eaves constantly this week with mouths full of food. It’s been like a baton race. All of the birds seem to be enjoying the lighter nights with full evening chorus cracking off about 8.30pm every evening as the heron does its nightly fly round. The water in the river is too high and fast for the ducks this week so hopefully they’ll be back next week.

The fruit and veg are doing ok though. The extra water doesn’t seem to be going amiss there. The peas and potatoes are shooting up and the strawberries are in flower already. I even managed yesterday to harvest enough salad leaves for lunch. It's not all bad even on a wet day!

Great for the ducks!

Well, this week has been largely weather for the ducks alternating with gusty winds. Not a good week for gardening. Thankfully there was a short burst of good weather today (Sunday) so we could get out and do some power weeding.

Despite the weather, the birds were definitely back in fuller voice today. When the rain forced us to take a break from weeding a host of thrush, robins, blackbirds and tits descended with great chirping to dig for worms. Mr & Mrs Great Tit that are nesting in the eaves were going in and out constantly this afternoon so lets hope that means the chicks have hatched.

With all the rain, the river is high and a thick chocolatey colour - and the ducks are loving it. It was lovely this morning to watch the pair of mallards waddle up the bank and then swim back and forward across the little rocky rapids just upstream from our garden. After they’d finished playing Mr Mallard stood guard as Mrs Mallard fed. Hopefully we’ll have some ducklings again soon. As I watched the ducks I also spotted a super speedy black and white stealth bird that whizzed down the river twice. No chance of getting a photo but I think it was a Martin.

After this week’s poor weather many of the big buds are still tightly closed. The lilac has started to open and is attracting bees and butterflies. There were two types of butterflies around this morning.

One, a cabbage white (white with fine grey lines)

the other an Orange Tip butterfly (white with vivid orange wing tips).

One of the magnolia buds has decided to brave it and open along with a few of the rhododendron heads but the poppies and peonies remain tightly closed.

Buds have appeared on the claret thistle while the first flowers are out on the purple cranesbill geranium, a ruby astrantia and the pink/cream aqualegias.

The summer bulbs and tubers are also starting to make an appearance this week. A few alliums have started to open their papery outer covering. Whilst others like allium moly and the chives are covered in tight little heads. The iris are also forming new tightly bound purple heads.

When rain forced the first weeding break, I watched from the back door as the tiny droplets formed on the lupin leaves in the pot I’d added to the deck last week.

Mesmerised I was driven to grab my camera and get out to photograph it (despite the rain). Realising how beautiful the glistening crystal droplets looked I then continued round the garden to create a collection of photos showing the garden after rain.

the rain clings to some, like the pasque teasels, and just drips off others like the acer

Not even the rain can dull the striking colour of the tulips