Wednesday, April 04, 2007

The wild flower garden

As you all know, when we moved up here to what we now refer to as "the shack", it was a bit of a tip. Certain parts of the house needed gutting as the smell of dogs and other nasties was pretty horrendous. The outside of the cottage was just as bad, if not worse. The garden had been left unattanded for probably 6 weeks or more in the height of the summer, this left us to tackle a rather rampant wilderness as well as getting the inside of the cottage livable - not a task for the feint hearted! Dealing with 7 ft high nettles and dockings meant that Gregg would go armed with strimmer into areas of the garden and not be seen for a few hours!

We battled on enjoying the fact that we were very clearly stamping our mark onto our little piece of the Perthshire countryside but soon realised that an acre of land is not something that you turn around in a few months (timescales have never been my strong point!)! I had a huge list of jobs to be done over that first summer, we're still knocking them off the list! Our neighbours continually comment on how we've imporved the place so much but we only feel as if we've scratched the surface!

I have always been a keen gardener, very much influenced by my grandmother, she had me weeding at a very early age! Both her and my grandfather were and still are great gardeners, but more about that in another post. It's only really now that I feel as if I'm getting to grips with the scale of our garden and that for once I seem to be organised in my seed planting! I sat last night and planned the veggie plot and read up on each vegetable that I'm intending to grow this year, at last I felt as if I was actually doing what I came here to do.
Gregg and I also got discussing another area of the garden last night, the wild flower garden. I shouted up to him to do a search for a company called Scotia Seeds. Diane at our local Organic Hut had recommended them to me last summer when I was talking to her about growing wild flowers. They are based not far from us and produce native wild flowers to Scotland. It has always been a dream of mine to grow a wild flower garden and at last we are ready to plant some seeds and see where it goes...........

We are planning on sowing the wet meadow mix along the burnside,


the woodland mix on the banking over the burn,


and the short mix around the edge of the paddock.

So we'll have hopefully have turned an area that looked like this......

into something a bit more eyecatching and appealing to nature.

I read this post today and felt truely heartened to see that there are others out there who understand exactly how I feel, sadly, there are so many people out there that just don't get it.........

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,

Yeh we do have a busy year ahead, I don't know how we are going to fit everything in. Looking forward to seeing how the wild flower garden progresses. I really do hope we can be proud of our garden when we have finished, something to show off to our wedding visitors.
Gardening is something I feel I could get very into, would have been nice to have been more established with this hobbie and maybe have been involved with the flowers for our special day, although I have to say our florist is amazing!!
Well I am off to try and do a rough plan of how we would like both the front and back gardens to look once we have finished. I'm glad all the weeding is now done!!

Poppy

Everything Stops for Tea said...

I'm just thinking how I'm going to sort out my weed patch (its too small to be called a garden!) I'd like to get it sorted once and for all this year now the fences are painted. I'm looking forward to seeing it develop!

Ragged Roses said...

I couldn't agree with you more about gardening - it is one of the best things. Your garden will look wonderful. I'm sure. What a good idea to grow plants that are native to the area too! good luck with it all, still it's a wonderful feeling getting into a lovely hot bath at the end of a day spent gardening!
Kim x

Anonymous said...

Your homestead looks fab - I what a great project! Makes me want to get straight back to Scotland and find a space in the country, perhaps one day!
It will be fantastic to have wild flowers blowing around in the summer with the sound of bees amongst them. Enjoy sowing!

Annie

Everything Stops for Tea said...

I've just been on your "other site" I can't believe you have a stockist in Dunkeld... thats where we were for Mbira camp - if only I'd have known I could have boosted your sales figures!

Anonymous said...

Hi Lisa,

It's going to be lovely when all those seeds flower. Can't wait to see the results. Happy gardening.

Marie x

Anonymous said...

What a lovely bit of land you have, I can't wait until the day we have something to garden, herb pots in the kitchen aren't quite the same, but I suppose it will be appreciated all the more for the wait.

weirdbunny said...

From the photo's it looks like you've done loads of work. It's hard changing the land then keeping on top of it matienence wise. I'm so happy it's spring. We've been out the garden with friends all day, and had a bbq this evening. Gwenny wanted me to sort out the pool ! But it was so like summer today. I haad to say no as we never put it away properly last year, so it's all yucky!

Gypsy Purple said...

Wishing you and your family a happy and blessed Easter

Rach said...

crikey, what an amazing garden you have. I am envious!

I have such a small garden I have to grow my veggies in the front garden. (the chickens own the back garden) The neighbours think I am mad.

weirdbunny said...

Just to let you know, if you tried to read my blog last night and it said to invited readers only, well it's back to normal this morning. Hope it didn'e inconvenience you ! - Julia x

Primrose Hill said...

Hi All,
Hope you all had a fab weekend, the weather was great, everyone seems to have been out in their gardens enjoying it!
Yep, we have a fair size of garden, just over an acre. It's great bt a lot of very hard work, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this will be our first year of really getting our teeth stuck into it, it's taken us 18 months to get to this point!
It also took us a while (2 1/2 years) before we found our "dream" corner of the world, and even then it's not perfect and certainly not where I would have expected to be, but I wouldn't swap it for anything. As my mum always says, "what's meant for you won't go by you"!
L xx