Why Do I Hate My July Garden . Gardening the Wrong Way Round and a Garden Visit

First of all, can I just ask if anyone else is experiencing problems with Blogger at the moment.  I have already drafted this post twice - it won't let me scroll up and down for a start.  Then when I inserted photos it wouldn't let me continue writing after - it has been a nightmare.  So I'll give it another try now and see what happens.

Although there is colour here and there in the garden, mainly from the containers - I hate the garden in July, always have.  The bright, fresh greens have gone and the plants and flopping and sprawling in the heat.  The early excitement of wondering what is going to flower next is over as I struggle to keep the garden looking half-decent.

But, on the bright side, the veg garden is overflowing with riotous colour wherever you look - mainly due to the fact that I sowed lots of wild flowers and annuals to attract all those creepy-crawly-buzzy creatures.

pot marigolds and campion edge the veg rows

flowers nestle round the cabbages and parsnips

the potato patch is full of poppies

sweet peas, sweet william and feverfew mingle with the weeds

the runner bean flowers add another spot of colour

the teasels that I planted for the goldfinches are now towering about everything

This picture is out of sequence (damn you Blogger)
showing the hens and ducks free-ranging at Rolleston



the white flowers of the celery that has gone to seed mingle with the peas and runner beans and feverfew

So you see it is really gardening the wrong way round - I have more colour and flowers in the veg garden because of my deliberate attempt to create a haven for wildlife than I do in the flower garden where I have been relying on perennials that haven't made it through the winter.  More thinking and planning to do for next year methinks.

Right - on to the garden visit.  My friend and I visited another NGS Open Garden at Rolleston Hall yesterday. The weather was fantastico, a bit too hot really for wandering round - we gardeners suffer for our art!

It is a privately owned home (a very wealthy family from the look of it) so the garden was only open for one day.  The grounds were very spacious with acres of lawns looking down onto a lake and woodland.

This was the view from the back of the house

A wonderful lake that was so inviting in the heat - I could quite easily have gone in for a bit of wild swimming

The garden was walled and very loosely planted - if there were any gaps the gardener filled them with broad beans and potatoes - it looked charming. 

The greenhouse was immense and looked brand new it was full of every sort of pelargonium you can think of - but too hot to linger in to take photos.

There wasn't an inch of ground to spare anywhere and the Ladies Mantle did a fine job of sprawling over the paths and giving a sense of continuity.

The delphiniums were at their best giving height - but even in this garden there wasn't an awful lot of colour other than the towers of sweet peas (see top right)

When we had had the obligatory cup of tea we chatted to the Head Gardener who was at the gate taking the money.  She said that they had had nearly 300 visitors in all, which is pretty good at £4 a head.  I asked why there was no water feature in the garden and her face dropped.  Darn it she said (or words to that effect) I checked the fountain yesterday to check it was working then forgot to switch it on this morning.  I can understand it - there must be loads of preparation before opening a garden like this - she even roped her husband in to help with the weeding.

It was a lovely garden and all those we chatted to said how much they had enjoyed it.

Do you get dissatisfied like me at certain times of the year
when your plans don't quite work out as you had
envisioned.
There's always next year I suppose.

Sorry about the state of this post I have just looked at the preview and even the size of the font is wrong - I wish Blogger would get their problems sorted - if there are any errors it is because it wouldn't let me go back and correct them - hopefully next week  everything will return back to normal.  Moan over.