Dixter

Trips to Inner Temple, Sissinghurst and Dixter last week. The first two had suffered understandably from the horrid conditions; lack of colour, slow growth.

However, Dixter never fails to amaze me. Full of colour, height and drama. This is such an impressive garden.

Baby stuff

Baby boy Keem looking like tin tin at 20 weeks.

Me at 26 weeks

Me at ? weeks (its all a blur) thinking I was massive, paaaah!

Gardening stuff

My garden early June. All nicely under control here, Alchemilla starting to flower, lush feel but also some colour

My garden July: My lack of gardening early on means the border full of weeds and taken over by the teasels I sowed. Verbena bonariensis is in there somewhere. Next year I will deal with this and add another colour for July perhaps..

A friend's garden: I planted this up last year, the conifers were already there. Top middle is Echinacea 'White Swan' completely devasted by slugs

Same garden. I wanted the planting to be lush and fit with the greens of the conifers but I hadn't accounted for the Ceanothus being bright blue - garrr!

The aftermath: South of France

Phil's beautifully cut hedges

A veggie patch in the South of France

My weeding on the terrace

Terraces in France

2 months have passed since the end of the course and I'm just starting to feel normal again. The first few weeks I had nightmares that I had failed and that I had missed pin up etc.

Here's a few posts with the fun things I've been up to as part of my post traumatic stress therapy program:

A week in France: gardening in the morning, long lunch, pool or beach in the avo. No vino for me this year tho..

Final Exhibition Build

Weird negative feelings this morning driven by the thought that I haven't achieved what I would have liked to and that I could have done better. But I think these came from such a familiarity with the sheets and the scheme and the ability learned from this course of constantly being critical. After pin up, I actually felt quite pleased with what I've achieved, esp. under the circumstances. Maybe you have to learn to let go of your work and give it over to others? Anyway, its out of my hands now...

Revised planting schedule

In the correct format with added bulbs for seasonality

Drainage and other things

Whilst looking through all my work, I've discovered loads of things that I worked on and pinned up but have never been asked for again. So I thought I would tidy these up and pin them behind something. This final final final pin up is a bit of a mystery so far, no one's entirely sure what to put up so if you put it all up, you can't go wrong. Well, aside from the quality that is.. Speaking of which here's a drainage plan.