I’m writing this on Friday night before I set off on my walk on Saturday, hoping the weather starts to improve pretty darn quickly. It’s been cold, wet and miserable for the last couple of weeks, in fact it was so cold we put the central heating back on again!! Looking at photos on facebook of the garden over the last few years, the plants are couple of weeks behind at the moment, I think they’ve gone on strike with the cold!

Having said all that, when the sun does come out, the garden is starting to look really pretty, there’s lots of little spots of colour, rather than big splashes. This is the patio area. There’s iris, erysimum, astrantis, lupin, foxgloves, geranium…

The iris round the bird bath are beautiful, it’s gradually become a huge clump, it really needs dividing but the soil is so awful there it’s hard to get anything out. The flowers are stunning, they have a delicate silver edge to them.

According to my OH, my mum’s dog, Lucy, who now lives with us, was refusing to go into the patio area as she couldn’t get through the foliage. I thought he was exaggerating or little Lucy was being fussy, but maybe she has a point! The alchemilla mollis had completely flopped over with the rain and as a little bichon frise, she’s only got little legs!

Up in the Amber & Amethyst garden the obelisk is pretty much smothered with rose and clematis, I can just see the top peaking out and a little bit of the side. The whole bed is filling up nicely with a rather pink peony, a luscious poppy, foxgloves, cornflower and a lovely deep red astrantia.

Over by the big fence there’s a clematis I planted a few years ago to grow up another obelisk with a rose, the rose refused to have anything to do with an obelisk so I pruned it back to a bush. The clematis has great fun now just meandering where it wants. I am tempted though to build another obelisk, maybe next year!

In the front garden one of my favourite shrubs is looking beautiful at the moment. It’s a cotinus coggygria, a golden leafed version. The purple version is seen a lot, I’ve got two myself, but I think this version deserves to be grown more often. It’s a lovely shape and size and it brightens up the front garden. I planted one in the back last year to held screen the compost heap, though it’s only little at the moment. Unfortunately in this shot you can also see the extent of the problem with weeds I have in the front! Due to all the rain we’ve been having my weedkiller plan isn’t working very well, but I’ll persevere! Once I get on top of the weeds I’ll put some membrane down and a mulch.

I’ve a lot of work to do before our open garden weekend at the end of July – I’ll have to hit the road running when I get back from my walk!