Chelsea? I wish.

I love my garden.

I especially love it when the sun is shining.

I’ve learnt that my garden will never be perfect, that I will never complete all those garden jobs that I can see to do in just one weekend, and that actually no one notices all the things that need doing apart from me and my strive for Chelsea perfectionism.

There are some areas in particular that are particularly pleasing to me at the moment.

I love my succulents.

They seem such an alien species to our temperate climate but seem to thrive in our changeable weather. I love how, with very little skill, you can break them up and literally breed them like rabbits. Small succulent plants in little clay pots wrapped with a piece of hessian and a raffia ribbon make lovely presents.

I love my vegetable patch.

This is just a little of what is growing. I also have peas, runner beans, french beans, brocoli and chard on the go.

For a few years I grew everything from scratch but with a full time job it took over all my weekend spare time and left me little to do anything else. These days I ‘cheat’. I sow what seed I can directly into the soil and buy plugs for the rest. I still get the pleasure of eating straight from the garden.

I’ve also learnt to grow what we eat and not what I think we should eat. And I stopped growing vegetables that are really cheap to buy like onions and carrots. Hence we have masses of legumes which we can eat until the cows come home.

Finally, I love my big flowery bank.

It’s taken a good few years to get the bank that rises from the back of the garden under some sort of control. I now have most of the gaps, created from removing old woody shrubs, filled. This means far less weeding!

It was the wrong time of day for a really good shot. ………another time.

I catch myself sometimes looking out of the kitchen window criticizing this area, or that area that needs weeding or tying up or some other attention. Then my OH appears over my shoulder. ‘The garden is looking really well at the moment’, he says.

‘Yes’, I think. If I screw up my eyes and look in a particular direction and ignore the compost bin, it’s my little piece of Chelsea.

Love, Lucie xx