The Unexpected

our years ago, when we moved in to this flat and reclaimed the garden, very little was left to give that 'garden' feeling. I can list them very easily: winter honeysuckle, two neon pink roses, a leaf of a sedum which somehow grew into a clump, forget-me-nots, bluebells, a creamy peony and a half dead hydrangea. Oh and the one bramble we left in for fruit. That was it - literally. Every single other growing thing was added by us, including the lawn. This short list left quite large expanses of empty borders to deal with.

argely my approach was to dump whatever we managed to beg, steal and grow from seed into the available gaps based on what colours I wanted to see together with a cursory nod to conditions said plant would like to grow. Chaos was added by leaving anything to that wanted to self seed to it's own devices. Now, last year I plonked a load of alliums in, having never grown them before. This has led to a mixed result. Firstly the gloriously unexpected acidic colour combination above: allium purple sensation and welsh poppies. It's actually even better now, this picture is a week old - more alliums and more poppys in flower. I want to improve on this further by seeding more of the prolific poppies under the alliums over the summer. Unfortunately, the Mount Everest alliums did not fair so well. For one, they're midgets and you can't even see them at the backs of the borders and for another one lot is in a hopeless place and have been squished under cat traffic. The picture below is an official reminder to self to move these once they've finished they're attempt at flowering - together with the agapanthus and iris swamped under the unexpectedly huge hydrangea.

hile I'm here giving myself a list of things to do - I need to lift and divide the hostas and flag iris' behind the pond when the time is right: