Finally, a weekend at home in Kew!

As I said in my last post, life has been pretty hectic recently and I didn’t realise how much I was running myself in to the ground. So, this weekend I treated myself to a lazy one at home catching up with Alex, pottering around the house and sprucing up the garden, ready for entertain this summer.

We are so lucky to have a little bit of outside space. As a self-confessed country bumpkin I think I would go mad if I didn’t have my own little garden to tend to, somewhere we can sit outside with a cup of tea and enjoy the sunshine.

We moved in this time last year and the garden was a blank canvas. Luckily we have a lovely land lady who said we could do what we like as long as we don’t touch the beautiful Magnolia bush. Of course we didn’t, it’s gorgeous and smells amazing!

Last summer was spent pulling out weeds, clipping back the unruly Clematis (which Alex subsequently killed…) and getting the soil ready for planting. We filled the borders with clippings from my parents garden back in Suffolk, as well as a little Passion Flower, which has now grown so big it takes up the whole of one side of the garden! Which is exactly what I wanted to happen.

After a winter of neglect the garden is slowly starting to come alive again. The Clematis is budding (on the bit Alex didn’t kill), the Magnolia still has a few last blossom flowers and my gorgeous Peony which I was sure had died, is coming back to life. I got her from The Walled Garden in Saxmundam (Suffolk) and picked her purely for her name…Shirley Temple! When she blooms she’ll be the most beautiful delicate light pink colour.

So this weekend the garden has had a good weeding, the Passion Flower has had a little attention as it was looking a little unloved and the window boxes lining the path down to the garden have been filled again. This time with Box balls and Lobelia White, which will hopefully go crazy and produce a cascading waterfall of pretty little white flowers from each window. I'm also completely obsessed with Hydrangeas so intend to plant a lot in the borders and pots around the garden to add some more colour.

There's still bits and bobs to tidy and plenty more flower pots to fill. My dream is for a garden of organised floral chaos! But for now, I’m just pleased to have been able to spend the day at home in the garden, reconnecting with nature and recharging my batteries.

I hope you’re all enjoying the amazing weather this weekend!

Pip

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