Not safe to let me go to Garden Shows!

I was very kindly sent some money by MoneySupermarket.com as part of my entry to their home improvement hero  competition.

 They are asking 

Is it possible to change the look, feel and even functionality of a room on a low budget? We’re asking bloggers to provide step-by-step instructions to help educate the nation on how to carry out simple, yet effective home improvements. Whether you have skills in craft, art or DIY, we want to see what you can do with a £50 budget.

 My bright idea was to use the money from this competition to change the look, feel and  functionality of my "garden room" ( ie flower beds) outside my sitting room.

I wanted to improve the view from our sitting room and (nearly finished - yay!) newly refurbished bedroom, so when we looked out of the windows we would see lots of colour and insect life. The view  is not very attractive at the moment, with weeds and a half dug patch of soil on show.  This area used to have Leylandii trees, but they blocked the light and shaded the sitting room so last year we cut them down .

Compostman then dug the stumps out (using the JCB) and we moved a large tree Paeony into the hole, but that is all that has happened so far. It is a bit of a mess and as it is by the road and we look directly out on this area I felt it could do with a makeover.
 

View from sitting room and bedroom window

I was working with the idea that if I improve the view out of the window, I have also improved the room itself. Inspired by some of the planting I saw at Hampton Court I came up with a design for planting up a new herbaceous perennial flower bed, as well as some improvements to at least one other existing bed. I used some of the money to buy some nice new plants but this is going to be frugal flower planting as I can't afford to spend the sort of money on plants that I saw at Hampton Court!

I marked out where I wanted the new bed to go and then Compostman got to work digging, while I gathered up plants and seeds and took stock to decide what I would need to buy.

At the moment I have quite a good collection of plants I have grown from cuttings or seed. I also always keep an eye open for "past their prime" plants sold at a discount.  I bought three plants late last year (Coreopsis, Solidago and Aster) which would have been £8 each full price, for £1 pound each and re potted them and over wintered them.  These have been earmarked to go in my new flower bed.

I also took advantage of the good deals on plants at various local nurseries with  "4 for £10"  offers which I used to buy some rather nice RHS award of merit Geraniums as well as some Campanulas and Nepetas. I am also a member of various Garden Centre loyalty schemes so was able to get BOGOF deals on some of the plants I wanted to buy (the two Dahlias in particular were a bargain at £4 each)  I also got lucky at a local garden supermarket where they were selling various herbaceous perennials cheap because they looked rather tatty. A bit of tlc and some dead heading and they looked pretty good again and will look even better next year. They cost me £1 each rather than the £5 each full price.

I had no need to buy in soil improver, either! I dug out a lot of wood chip compost to enrich the very hard clay soil in the new bed. Note my lovely new wheelbarrow - thank you, Argos!

I then got cracking and and laid out the plants in their pots on the soil and arranged (and rearranged) them to my design. Then Compostman and I got to work planting them. As it is so hot at the moment we waited until the evenings so as to be a bit cooler.
 

I also had some summer flowering bulbs which I planted in the bed in drifts of colour. These were reduced at the end of last year so I got them cheap (£2 each pack) and planted them in pots to overwinter in the polytunnel - some of them came in handy today. I also planted some of the Crocosmia bulbs I got free from Spalding Bulbs.

I had a lot of (free) wildlife friendly seeds stored up, which I scattered around the herbaceous perennial planting. Hopefully it is not too late for these to flower if the weather continues fair. If not, I have more seed packets and will be sprinkling them on the bed next year. I have also planted some daffodils and snowdrops in this bed - we have a lot from where we were digging around the pool so I have moved a lot of bulbs across

part way through planting up.

Compostgirl helped me with some of the watering

The colour scheme starts yellow at the left, moving through orange, red, blue, purple, pale lilac and then finally white on the right of the bed, with the backdrop of the honeysuckle and the climbing rose on the fence. It still looks a little sparse; I wish I could afford to buy lots of each plants to re create the dense planting effects I saw at Hampton Court, but I can't so have done what I can, with what I have. I do have lots more cuttings growing, especially Lavender, Geraniums, Nepeta and Daisy though, so will be able to add more plants to this bed as time goes by.

Finished, for now

View through the sitting room window now

I view my garden as a part of my house; an "outside room" if you like, so I want to make it all as attractive as I can. With the money I got from moneysupermarket.com I could have bought a picture to hang on the wall in the sitting room but rather than a frozen image in a frame I have chosen to improve the view of the "living picture", outside. The wildlife love it as well!

I spent a total of £43 on plants for this new bed, both new and bought at a discount.  I have also planted three Pulmonaria  and a couple of extra Lavender plants, which I grew from cuttings for free.

Planting

Wildflower Seeds (free)
many different Bulbs (free)
Globe Artichoke x 3 (from Rocket Gardens delivery)
Solidago
Coreopsis
Dahlia
Geranium (split into two plants)
Campanula Globerosa (split into two plants, one used)
Nepeta (split into two plants, one used)
Aster
Salvia
Penstemon
Dahlia
Lavender
Pulmonaria (several, split from plants in the garden in spring)
Polemonium
Aqueligia
Centaurea
Philadelphus
White Foxglove
Campanula persicifolia (split into two plants, one used)
Buddlia alba


Most of these plants would be £5 each, to buy full price, some (like the Buddlia and the Philadelphus shrubs) would be £8 - £10 to buy so I think we have managed well to buy so many plants with the money :-)



So, if you want to plant up a frugal-ish herbaceous perennial flower bed, have a look round for discounted plants and give them some tlc, maybe re pot them into a bigger pot as well? If you can, split plants into two or maybe three? Also look out for discount flower seeds which you could sow now and then plant out as plants next year? At this time of year a lot of gardening magazine are giving away free perennials and biennials seeds on the covers, why not buy one and sow the seeds? And look out for BOGOF and multi - buy offers to collect lots of plants together.

Have fun!

Bumblebees nest in the bird box

 This is the Bumblebee nest on the side of the garage - it is absolutely heaving with bees coming and going :-)

 I took a short video of the activity

 If you can , zoom in on the hole...you will be surprised at what you see.

Edited to add - Apparently these are Bombus hypnorum - its a new ish Bumblebee which has gradually moved across from Europe to the UK - and it is also called the Tree Bumblebee - and likes nesting in holes in trees - which of course is what a nest box looks like :-)

Friday roundup. An apology, more on Google Feed Reader demise, Monty Don, bees and planting bulbs in my garden.

First of all, welcome to my new followers, Laura, PixieMum, Tom and Bryallen :-) Hope you are enjoying yourselves.

................................................

Second, an apology!

For those of you who might be worrying, you DO NOT need to re follow me via Bloglovin, if you are already following me via Google Friend Connect  - indeed I would prefer you to follow me on Google Friend Connect as it keeps all of you in one place for me to read. The Bloglovin feed is just a back up plan, just in case Google take yet more widgets away ( as they are going to do with Google Reader)  to try to get us to use Google+. instead.

See Veg Plotting's excellent post on this subject for a far more comprehensive discussion of this issue.

..........................................................

I was interested to read, yesterday and also today, on Twitter about a bit of a spat going on around Monty Don (MontyDon@TheMontyDon) and his excellent advice on a recent GW programme - in which he was reminding us that it was still very chilly and that it was ok to delay sowing seed while the ground was so cold

Somehow, this has been presented in the media  as

Garden centres blame Monty Don for mass dumping of spring flowers

Garden centres have blamed Monty Don for keeping customers away and causing millions of spring flowers to be dumped after the BBC presenter told gardeners not to bother planting until the weather breaks.

 Yet they quote him in the same article as saying 

In a recent episode of Gardener's World, Mr Don urged viewers not to hurry into their gardens.

"There's no great hurry to sow seed, so don't panic. Don't be in a hurry. You don't have to sow anything at all until April," he said.

He said it about sowing seed! NOT planting plants! They are different you know ;-)

Of course the soil is still too cold to sow much (or plant much)  - I have only put my spuds in because I have then covered them over with geotextile ( and fleece is on hand if the weather gets any colder)

But lots of shrubs could go in now, in fact I seem to recall Monty Don planting roses on the same programme as he said the above?

All he was doing was giving us some sensible advice. Bedding plants mostly do not like being planted out in freezing conditions.
..........................................................................................

On a similar subject, I have been planting my summer flowering bulbs in pots in the polytunnel - it is still too cold to plant them out in the ground so I have been getting them started in pots, at least. I decided to do this after Monty Don (yes, him, again!) suggested starting Onion and Shallot sets in pots as the ground was still a bit too cold to plant then directly.

Seemed like a good idea and also for summer flowering bulbs, as they grow at much the same time of year.

I just have to remember to label them all very very carefully!

....................................................................................................................

In other news, am really pleased to seeWAITROSE is banning its suppliers from using neonicotinoids on produce destined for the supermarket. The retailer is asking growers of fruit, vegetables and flowers to stop using the pesticides by the end of 2014, due to their alleged effects on pollinators.

Lets see some of the other Supermarkets following them.

There is a list here of those Garden suppliers who have already signed up to a ban -  including

• B&Q (321 UK stores)
• Wilkinson (372)
• Homebase (340 in the UK and Ireland)
• Wickes (200+)
• The Garden Centre group (129)
• Dobbies garden centres (32)
• Klondyke garden centres (24)
• Notcutts garden centres (19)

Why not stop their use RIGHT NOW?

Have a great weekend, all of you :-)
Compostwoman xxx

A tin full of butterflies and bees

Well, the means to attract them to Compost Mansions, at least!

One of the many things we are trying to do here is provide a haven and a refuge for wildlife; somewhere they can find food and places to hide and nest and breed.

I have talked about our desire to resurrect the Pool area back to its former glory and we also would like to attract even more insects to our patch of land. Bees and butterflies in particular need all the help they can get, flowering plants to feed from are vital and I am planning yet more areas which will have bee and butterfly friendly planting.

So I was very interested to be contacted by Eco social enterprise  Project MAYA, who have come up with an innovative way to raise funds for their environmental sustainability initiatives whilst increasing UK wildflowers: ‘SEEDBALL’. 

 

Project Maya tell me the SEEDBALLS are hand rolled in North London  and each marble size seed ball contains a mini ecosystem: flora-locale accredited wildflower seed are mixed with clay, peat-free compost and a smidgen of chili powder, and rolled into a small ball. Each ball is approximately 1cm in diameter, making them easy to scatter.

The concept sounded intriguing and  I was also particularly  pleased to see SEEDBALLS  are made using Peat Free compost ( a passion of mine, as you know!) but as the SEEDBALL website points out

...many of the cultivated and exotic flowers that are common in gardens produce no nectar, so it’s super important that you plant native flowers. It's also important to avoid peat-based compost as our rarest butterflies are found on peat bogs, and the extraction of peat used in compost destroys this fragile habitat. Here at SEEDBALL we’ve made a promise to ourselves, and to you, to only ever stock native flowers, sourced in the UK, and to use peat-free compost. 

Hear hear I say :-) I was hooked! So Project Maya very kindly sent me a tin of the Butterfly mix to try - containing seeds of Purple Loosestrife, Forget me not, Yarrow, Musk Mallow and Red Campion. 

Open the tin and look inside!

 
Once the SEEDBALLS are on the ground the dried clay acts as a protective casing from common seed predators (such as ants, mice and birds). When sufficient rain permeates the clay, the seeds inside begin to germinate - helped along by the nutrients and minerals contained within the balls. The chili powder continues to deter predators while the seed ball slowly degrades and the seeds sprout. 

This is such a great idea and the SEEDBALL tins are also really pretty. They are aparrently manufactured by the last tin maker of London and can be reused and recycled after use, the seed ball labels are also printed in the UK.

I think these would make a lovely gift for someone keen to help bees and butterflies and other insects. You can throw them onto a bed or boarder, or into pots. The bees and butterflies won't mind and will just be pleased to have food :-)

And I can't wait for the ground to warm up a little more so I can get seed bombing outside.

SEEDBALL is currently available to purchase in selected retail outlets and on line and cost £4.50 for a tin of 20 balls, the perfect amount for a wildflower border or pots of wildflowers. You can also apparently buy bulk bags of 500g  (£40) for larger wildflower area creation. I suspect I might get a bigger bag, although I may also have a go at making some myself.

Project MAYA was officially founded in May 2011, by a group of friends and environmental scientists in order to put ideas from research into practise, and help to create a sustainable society.  MAYA activities are centred around four main areas: enterprise, research, campaigns and education.

SEEDBALL Website: www.seedball.co.uk

MAYA project: www.mayaproject.org


Disclaimer:  I was sent a tin of SEEDBALLS in order to write this review, no money has been paid to me. As always the words I write are my own, although I have used information suppled by Project Maya on their website.