Now I’m not normally one for blogs with loads of pictures and not a lot of words (as you have probably guessed) but I thought that I would share with you my summer garden as promised.I wrote earlier in the year how I was looking forward to all of the seasons in my new home, I have written about Autumn (L’automne), Winter (L’hiver), Spring (Printemps) and now it is time to share my summer (ete) garden with you.

I did bring many plants with my when we moved, some of which have now been planted directly in the garden, my beautiful Japanese cherry, and my shrub that will grow huge and has flowers that look like snowballs in the spring. Most of them however were my clematis that I have had for years, and they have thrived. From the one beside our barbie, where we sit in the evening with a vin rouge (no, nothing changes there!) watching the sun go down.

To the one that I have planted in an old seventeenth century chimney pot, that Rich has buried into the ground for me. There were some doubters as to whether this would thrive, but they love to tumble as well as climb.

We have our seating area on out terrace, surrounded by various pots and a lavender that is the biggest lavender I have grown – I have decided that this will be planted out next year so that I have a lavender hedge.

The geraniums love it over here, as does Nemetia that grows wild!! And, yes the window is blue, although it has only had one coat so far, but I’m loving it!

Wee have our herb garden which has not fared well this summer, another project for me later in the year I think, but everything else is thriving, and I have my treasured plan that my new French friend gave me.

 

Then we have the little stone bird bath we brought over with us, sadly (or not when you have five cats) the bath did not survive so I have put a trailing geranium on top; the Peonies, my favourite flower that I have planted is not faring well as you will see, because a certain mail Welshy thinks I have planted it for him to pee up!!!

 

As I mentioned in the autumn we have a huge walnut tree, which nearly killed our friend the other day  when a walnut thwacked down and just missed his head – he asked if we provided hard hats in our garden!! We need to move the blue table and chairs me thinks before we kill someone!!

For the past few weeks the temperature has been high and our terrace is a sun trap, with full sun all day long, when I checked the temperature it was over fifty degrees centigrade most days – I cannot give you a more exact temperature than that because that’s all our barometer goes up to!!! But needless to say the gazebo is a welcome addition. You can also see the trees stumps that are now being covered with Ivy, and I am loving the look. We will get round to putting a plank of wood on some of them and making them into a bench. The others we are going to use as plant stands next year and Rich will put large bolts in them for us to attach the pots to.

We have a large privet hedge that sections off some of the garden and I have let some of my clematis and both my red Jasmine and my white Jasmine go free, and they are thriving; if you look closely you can see the clematis coming out from the hedge, she has also grown through it and had flowers coming out of the top. If you look at the second picture you will see the red Jasmine going wild, and my hope is that this will hedge will be full of climbers, including two honeysuckle I have planted and the smell will be fantastic.

I’ve also planted some clematis that I bought from Lidl for only just over a pound, they will thrive next year, but are not doing bad this year, and I love the look that Rich came up with, using old twigs from the trees we had cut down in the garden for them to climb up.

My meadow flowers did not really materialise, as much as I had hoped, and those that did have been strimmed by Rich (bless him!) but I am confident that they will grow back next year and more with them. Here is the only survivor!!

We have also planted various Hydrangea, they love it over here and the colours are spectacular, I will be planting more when they are sold off this autumn.

But more than anything is the abundance of cherries on our trees, which we cannot get (now I understand why you have cherry pickers!!) but we managed to get these few and they are sooooo sweet:

Thank you all for your support with my blog, I am glad your enjoying it, please share and get the word out.

Look out for more to come……..

 

Moisy