Garden of England

Yesterday saw the annual Slade in Bloom gardening competition - run by our residents association - and judged by a senior lecturer at Hadlow College (our local agricultural college). I entered for the first this year, front and back garden, and had a mad panic yesterday morning to get everything ready. This would have been a slight challenge on any normal day but on Friday night I had done a little too good a job of drowning my sorrows at England's abysmal World Cup campaign to date that it was even tougher!

That said, I was quite delighted with how both gardens looked in the end. I'm quite realistic about the fact that we have some very tough competition in this area and it's unlikely that I'll win but it was fun to enter anyway.

Here's the front garden, absolutely stocked full of plants:



Front left is one of my favourites, Ligularia, with massive leaves with dark purple undersides. Front right is a lovely lavender which is ready to burst into flower. The Iris are now finished in the middle but back left are the Crocosmia which should give us lots of colour for the summer. Back right, standing tall, are the Hollyhocks, which aremy favourite flowers in the garden - lovely vintagey cream colour, with dark pink stamen. Vase at the ready!

This is the back garden:



It was really nice, when the judges asked me, to reflect on everything that we've done in 2 years. When we moved in it was just a strip of grass with a scraggy bush at the side and now look at it! It's still in transition - we will be putting a pergola up in front of the girls' run with a patio underneath, and the bare grass patch cunningly hidden under the table and chairs will be returfed with the turf we remove from the patio area. The flower bed is looking really nice, although it's in a bit of a gap between the Spring flowering and summer flowering plants. The judging was bad timing!