Euan

There was a healthy layer of frost this morning but, delightfully, the sun was warm enough that I made it outside this lunchtime to make a start on the front garden. Finally! I’ve been itching to for ages, but the weather hasn’t been playing ball. I couldn’t weed the rowing boat because it was still hard with frost, but I made progress on the beds.

The plans for the front are simple. I need to weed out the three skinny beds in front of the house, and I will certainly need to bolster the two at either side with more plants this spring. The one in the middle is a little different, as I am hoping last year’s peony makes a return this year, and hasn’t just given up entirely (there is new growth, so it is looking promising!). The plan for that one is to relocate the two roses in the archaic, broken wooden planters into the bed beside the peony, and hope that the reason they don’t seem to be thriving at the moment is because they need better earth that they haven’t already wrung dry of nutrients.

The tedious part will be weeding the gravel. I am not a fan of gravel, but it looks like we’re keeping it for now, at least, especially given the front of the house also acts as back-up parking. Once weeded, we’ll get another bag to layer over it, to better suppress the weeds and grasses that just can’t help themselves.

And then we have to order the hedging plants and the fruit trees. There is an ornamental cherry on the grass already, and Euan has assessed how many more healthy trees we can grow there. Auri and Euan are adamant we’re keeping the old rowing boat in the garden, so that will be planted up with wildflowers. The hedging will skirt round behind it, and I am yet to decide exactly what to do with the patch of grass in front. A bed, perhaps? Only I am hoping for something low maintenance. Bulbs in the green? We’ll see. I’m not worrying too much about that this side of summer.