Week 7
Hi!
This week there is plenty in the garden and I was spoilt for choice.
I decided to go for this yellow lemon Hyacinth. I bought a mixed bag of Hyacinth 5 years ago when we moved to our house and dotted them around in the garden. I can't remember this one flowering before but the colour is very soft and makes a change from stronger yellow of Daffodils.
I then added blue hyacinth, blue muscari and Anemone Mr Fokker (growing happily in the garden in a free draining bed and has been in flower for 4 weeks.)
The green foliage is from Euphorbia Oblongata (sown 3 years ago as an annual but seems to behave like a perennial).
I made it yesterday and the scent is amazing.
Mrs Green Fingers (MGF)
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Week 6
Hi!This week I chose hot colours.
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Cornus sibirica stems (with its leaves),
Euphorbia
Wall flowers
And Tulips.
It's very pretty and smells amazing too!
Mrs Green Fingers (MGF)
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Week 5
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The garden is full of daffodils, hyacinths are opening and the perfume is spreading through the garden.
This arrangement is a simple collection of 3 different woody plants:
The green and yellow speckled leaves are of Acuba Japonica,
Mahonia flowers and leaves,
And sprigs of Forsythia.
It smells lovely!
Another of the Amaryllis bulbs is blooming, this one is called Susan or Suzanne, the petals have a lovely shimmer inside!
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Mrs Green Fingers (MGF)
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Week 4
Goodbye winter, welcome spring.
Because this is the last weekend of winter 2014, I thought I should include some of the plants that have done well over the last weeks.
The heathers have been in flower for months, coloured leaves of Heuchera and Heucherella have amazing colours, the camellia has been smothered in flowers for at least 3 weeks now and last but not least, the pink hyacinth that smells amazing.
The Heuchera and Heucherella stone urn that I have in the front garden has been like this since last autumn & next to it you can see the narcissus tete-a-tete.
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The lovely crocuses that we planted to naturalize in the lawn outside the patio door have flowered since the end of January (my favourite is the stripy one).
Welcome Spring.
Mrs Green Fingers (MGF)
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Amaryllis (Hippeastrum)
Hi
I enjoy growing amaryllis bulbs.
I started searching the web for information and stumbled across the garden web. There is a wealth of information on how to get these bulbs to re-bloom the next year.
What really made sense to me was the size of the planting pot, a lot of people recommend a pot one inch wider than the bulb, which I think is very restricting.
Growers on the garden web recommend a bigger and a somehow deeper pot to allow root development (one of the comments was if you restrict the bulb then its like putting it in a straight jacket).
They also recommend a very light and open compost as these bulbs don't like to stand in water.
The mixture that I have started to use is:
- 1 1/2 part multi-purpose compost
- 1 part orchid compost
- 1/2 part vermiculite
I also added one slow release tablet per pot.
And that's pretty much it.
I water them when the soil is dry and if I remember (and this is not that often) I add a weak liquid fertilizer when watering.
To my surprise, the bulbs kept pushing new leaves through the season.
I took them outside in July and left them standing in a tray on the patio (south facing) and brought them inside towards the end of September and reduced watering to minimum.
I started watering again in January and the blooms started coming.
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| H.tango |
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| H.lima |
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The added bonus to this is that quite a few of the bulbs started to have babies (I personally think it's because of the size of the pot).
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| This is H.lima with a few babies |
This year I decided not to buy any more bulbs!! But I still got 2 bulbs as a gift from my son who went to Amsterdam last summer (we have been to the floating flower market together 4 years ago) and he remembered that I liked these bulbs.Thank you baby.
I will add more photos as they bloom,
Mrs Green Fingers (MGF)
Links
The Garden Web
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Week 3
Hi
Spring is in the air!Green flowers are definitely my favourites.
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I started by making a grid using sellotape to help support the flowers.
Next rhododendron and sage leaves went in as the base for the arrangement.
I then added viburnum, euphorbia, hellebore and skimmia flowers ( they are not strictly flowers but it doesn't really matter).
Finally I added these flowers that look like a miniature bunch of grapes that I picked of the hedge between us and next door neighbour and stripped all the leaves (I think its privet).
This arrangement is slightly scented which is a big bonus.
Hope you like it,
Mrs Green Fingers (MGF)
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Week 2
Hi
I am pleasantly surprised at the colour in the garden this week.
I initially planned to do a foliage arrangement only but when I looked in the garden there were a lot of flowers that were blooming.
After some thinking I decided on this arrangement:
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There is a white Rhododendron, hellebores, wallflowers and euphorbia. The foliage is from a Rododendron plant (Rhododendrons aren't in flower yet but this branch was broken by strong wind so I thought I will try and force it indoors).
I am also posting pictures of other flowers in my garden this week:
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Happy gardening!
Mrs Green Fingers (MGF)
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Week 1
Hi!
Welcome to my first post. I am a very keen gardener who likes to grow all sorts of foliage and flowers.
I have been thinking about blogging for a very long time but my real encouragement came from Debra Prinzing and slow flowers movement.
In her blog, Debra has created 52 arrangements over a 12 month period in which all flowers were locally grown.
I am challenging myself to create a simple arrangement from material from my own garden every week.
This is the first one:
I have cut some Forsythia branches in the garden, stood them in warm water, after making an angled cut to help absorb water, and kept it in a north facing window for a few days to force the flowers to open. The rest of the branches wee collected from the garden, after the heavy wind last Wednesday, and were from a Viburnum bush (it had the white flowers a few weeks ago.)
Mrs Green Fingers (MGF)
Links
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