Up the Garden Path - Work in Progress

Work on the path carried on last year - only two years after it was started!  Andy and I had a weekend where the weather was good and he'd acquired some cement from work.  We had to do things in a shift pattern, ie, I would keep hold of Finn while Andy poured the concrete and then he would take over keeping Finn under control while I placed the slates.   We still have plenty of doggy foot prints though - hey ho.

We certainly didn't do as good a job as Shannon did - Shannon was much more meticulous with her slate placings while we were just in a hurry to finish the bloody thing!  So the slates were more spaced out and it's certainly not very neat.  It also started out as a very different cement colour to the original, although, over the intervening months, it has darkened up so all looks a bit more uniform.

I think it would have been better to do it all in one go so there weren't obvious lines where we'd started anew, but I'm pleased with it anyway.  And only another two years before we finally finish it, I dare say!

Clearly it was too much for Andy and he needed a lay down afterwards to recover!

East Bergholt Place for Plants

Before I joined the RHS, I had no idea that there were so many gardens in East Anglia - of course I'd heard of all the big ones, but the RHS has opened my eyes to all the smaller, less famous, gardens or "partner gardens" as they're known.  They are basically affiliated to the RHS so members get in for free at certain times of the year.

East Bergholt Place for Plants is on the border of Suffolk and Essex, just south of Ipswich, and so only an hour away from home.   I wasn't really sure what to expect as the website showed it as more of a garden centre, somewhere to buy plants, so I was hugely pleased to see that the gardens were beautiful to visit and I didn't even buy any plants afterwards, although I did have a nice piece of lemon cake and a coffee in the coffee shop!

The staff were very knowledgeable and I was given a map and shown where the best bits of the garden were currently, ie, the bits in flower!  I have to say that this is the garden where I fell just a bit more in love with hydrangeas.  I love them anyway, but the gardeners have done something wonderful with the soil to show different colours in the flowers.

I know that iron (or rusty nails) in the soil will make the flowers blue - and that soil with no iron in will make the plants revert back to their pink colour - but look at this - blue AND pink in the same flowers.  Magic!

These gardens also have to be among some of the most peaceful I've ever visited with very few other visitors which is such a shame - especially as I visited on a bank holiday weekend in August.  Some of the paths pass through woodland with lots of strategically placed benches and I sat for ages, making notes of all the plants that I would like in my garden. (Too many!)

Azaleas in flower.  In August!?

From the plants that have been chosen, it seems to me that there will be something going on at all times of the year, so I will definitely be going back.  One to recommend.