When we moved into our new house we had a sleeper raised front garden which is really lovely, I have always wanted a space like this and have enjoyed the last year of watching it from my kitchen window. It is very large and L shaped the first thing I did was to cut the L shape into 2 and make the nearest to the kitchen into a tenders such as lettuces, radishes etc and lots of herbs.
The second part nearest the street and opposite the kitchen window I wanted as my eye candy to view upon each day. However the whole garden just seemed to have massive overrun planting with no structure and so I have a large task ahead to sort out. I have pruned back sedge grass by 2/3 giving me a massive 30ft by 5ft patch and have been filling this space with all the tall and bushy plants like lupins and foxglove, but they have started flowering and had to stop. I have also been battling with them self seeding everywhere and have managed to get 50 seedling which I spent 2 months bringing on and now I have a little shop on my drive where I am selling them along side a few foxgloves.
There were far to many purple lupins in the boarder so I will be pulling some of these out to populate other parts of the garden as well as sell off to the local neighbours, and to break up the purples I purchased a pink and yellow west country lupin of which I will capture the seeds and pot on for the new year.
As I said above I am in process of moving the lupins and foxgloves to the rear of the boarder and them bring in a mid level flowering beauty followed by low level planting however I am battling Aubrietia which is suffocating the planned low level planting.
the lupins seem to flower really fast before seeding and I wish they would slow down so I could enjoy looking at them, it is great the foxgloves have popped up the same time as I just love their speckled throats and the whole patch is a buzz with bees.
Bring on year two and I really hope to have a handle on this space.
how absolutely beautiful! i always admire lupins but they are the kind of flower i only get to see when we travel to colder places. and foxgloves are so magical looking to me. i just want to turn into a fairy and live in one.
ReplyDeleteI love a good foxglove, they are springing up everywhere here too - the bees are happy too :)
ReplyDeleteLupins I love, mice to see colours other than the purpley ones as that's all I have seen so far this year. It must be lovely to look out of the window and see them - thanks for joining in again Helen x
Love this, so cottage garden like. I have 2 lupins this year and I cheated by buying them :) I must save the seed and try and grow lots next year. Probably one of my favourite plants as they give such great architecture to a border.
ReplyDeleteBeautiful variety of colours in your lupins. Some have begun appearing in our garden and I'm curious if more will come.
ReplyDeleteThese are beautiful, I love their height and structure, must get some for our garden soon.
ReplyDeleteI think I shall need to take a leaf out your book and have a patch of garden just for gazing upon, will make washing dishes more enjoyable!
Oh, I love lupins! One of my favourites, we had loads in the garden when I was little :) #HDYGG
ReplyDeleteLove your lupins, and it's nice to see so many different colours. We had a beautiful pink one last year but it got ravaged by garden beasts - shame because the bees loved it. Seeing your foxgloves has reminded me I have a packed of foxglove seeds in my tin that need sowing!
ReplyDeleteWow, stunning plants, a lovely but complex problem to have - too many pretty flowers ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to grow some lupins at the moment ready for flowering next year. I think a whole batch of them look stunning.
ReplyDeleteGlorious! I love lupins, they look slightly unreal. Such a lovely flower en masse. Thank you for sharing
ReplyDeletethe lupins are lovely but yes they seem to race through flowering and don't look too attractive when in seed
ReplyDeleteI used to love seeing the lupins along one of the Motorways in the UK - but can't for the life of me remember which one. I also love foxgloves which grow wild in profusion in Normandy and I love it even more when I hear the muffled buzz of a bee deep inside one of the flowers.
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