General Chat

Morning all. One of my interests in the summer months, apart from gardening itself, is to visit other peoples gardens, which are open to raise money for the Macmillan and other Cancers. An entrance fee is charged, usually £2.50, and plants are for sale at a fraction of the garden centre prices. Tea and cakes can also be purchased.
I go to support the charities, buy cheap plants, and get ideas. So yesterday afternoon, off we trotted to a house in the suberbs of Nottingham. Just looked like a normal 1980s/1990s newish build on a corner plot. The front garden was just ordinary, but when you walked down the side to reach the back, boy oh boy, did your eyes open. Loads of little 'rooms' with tables, loads of planting, collapsable swimming pool, hot tub, even three beech huts appropriately painted, and of course the plants to purchase. But wow, had they used resourses well with clever planting and structure.
Three little ideas I was particularly interested in, was the use of inverted green wine bottles to edge a small bed, and wine corkes to form a small path infront of it. But what really amazed me, and an idea I am going to use in a border I am creating at the moment, was the use of small fir cones to top-dress a small island bed, instead of bark chips.
Of course, solar lights abounded. A walkway had a white grape vine growing through it. But solar lights in the form of red grapes where also intertwined.
It really is worth the entrance fee to visit these places, and fortunately, I have marked up my 'Yellow Book' right up until the middle of September
Love to all
Julia in Derbyshire

i would open my garden
but Benson would have other ideas
he would think his lunch had come early

but it is a good idea to raise money for charity xx

LOL Joy, I take it that Benson is a 'large lad' then
Julia in Derbyshire

morning Julia. I'd like to open my garden,more just for the locals, and at the same time auction off some of my Koi which I breed and have some beauties up in the holding tanks. My OH isn't too keen tho as he is quite a private person and says he doesn't want people nosying around lol.

I think I'll have to work on him and maybe do something next summer.

yes julia he is a right brute

he looks like a lion and thinks he is one to

9 stone of naughtinesslol