escaping the heat....

The answer is to start early....cutting flowers in the walled garden at 7am.........the suns high and its already pretty warm....

At last the sweet peas are flowering their hearts out.

Bunches now available in the shop!

my Erin moment!!

Our aim....

.....is to try to please and make the flowers just how you dreamt them to be...

 ..a woodland garden basket.....hedgerow flowers.....oak apples....entwining sweet pea tendrils from the walled garden.... baby pears on branches.......peonies and garden roses......

 ....a posy that would float......we made a base of hollow delphinium stems....added some moss.....entwined ivy and  crossed our fingers....it worked in the sink.....just hope it did on the river....

 people sometimes get fuchsias and freesias mixed up......but no this was to have fuchsias in ...they were so pretty....

whats your favorite??

Flower love

We got the most amazing cloony rannunculus on Saturday....just about everyone who came in the shop loved them....we have found the run of the mill rannunculus to be a bit hit and miss on quality this year, but these big beauties have been amazing with some the dutchman took home lasting over three weeks...we love them when they are big and blousey....like a ballerinas frilly tutu!!

This weeks wreath on the door.....we usually make these up each week from flowers that have just passed their best and we would not sell but are too lovely to put in the compost.....we didn't have many left overs last week so this  is just bits and bobs off the flower table that we thought would look lovely together with some  lilac which was being a bit temperamental....surprisingly it perked up no end when cut short and popped in this...

A Gold Star for anyone who can list all the stuff in this wreath!!

On the garden front, at last that biting artic wind has dropped and there is sunshine..yah!! We have just sown about 1000 seeds and put in 40 peony tubers( that's not them all ahh!!)......now heading for the showers...x

News from the walled garden

it may be still cold but today the sun was shining...yah!!

so it was all go in the garden today..

 the ground cover is going down

while waiting for the BIG poly tunnel to arrive we put up an allotment sized one to get some seeds going ...
while we sat having our picnic lunch...tea from the flask....soaking the sun up when the wind dropped you could even think it was spring...we talked of the things we wanted to grow...an ever increasing list....maybe finding someone with bee hives....putting up some bird feeders.....
we watched three red kites circling high above us....we listened to the baby chatter and the black dog race around barking at nothing..and wondered how everything will look in a few months time....it was once a dream but everyday now it is such a reality....

...we are trying to recycle as much as we can and have hundreds of paper pots at the ready..sweet peas are destined for these ones......

..gorgeous Hellebore Niger ...already thinking ahead these are for cutting next year ....these are the same  variety as we were selling in the shop at the weekend ( sorry now sold out!).
While buying gardening gloves at the garden center yesterday I happened to look at the prices ....we are seriously cheaper on many plants.....we might do a price comparison like the supermarkets..watch this space.

Next week is Tutti Day in Hungerford....we need to redo the shop window in the town colours.... flowers are one of the vital parts of the celebrations so we have lots of work to do....xx

Sometimes....

the sweetest jug of flowers is made up from left overs....

and sometimes you wish it would warm up so we can get planting...