Although the garden is becoming a problem for me to manage, needs must. If you want the garden in spring to be a joy, you need to work in autumn. I bedded out about 80 mixed pansies in October. These are growing well. In November I planted 60 mixed tulips between these. I chose a white tulip with pink fringes as it is not easy to blend with mixed colours. I had already split up and planted about 60 blue ajuga plants and I put about 50 tete a tete narcissii in amongst these. About 50 forget-me-knots, found in the garden, had grown into nice little plants. I transferred the mixed tulips saved in the garage from last spring amongst these in a bed. These last two jobs cost me nothing but labour. The remainder of my tulips went between various other plants I had split and replanted.

Fruit

If all that work set up my floral show then I needed to consider my veg patch. I killed unknown numbers of slugs over the summer. Consequently, no more French beans or cougettes, which are loved by slugs. In essence, our decision was to plant soft fruit. We already have five fruit bushes, four apples, a damson, raspberries and a gooseberry. I put in an order to a nursery in Perth and, next day, 13 healthy young bushes arrived. That was some service. Consequently, 3 x tayberry against the garage wall and 2 x boysenberry against a fence. Add 4 black & white berries, 2 x gooseberry’s and 2 x early raspberries in the open ground.

The Garden in Spring

Today, the garden in full and no space for more plants. That said, there will be space for a salad crops between the bushes for the first year. The fruit bushes were hard work. Each needs a large hole into which a lot of compost has been dug. This, my own compost, was also full of worms and heaven knows what. It is very satisfying to set plants up to do well. If the genius of plants is to understand what we do for them, then surely they will repay me.