What’s happening?

Posted by Anna B on June 20, 2010 | 0 comments

“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.” said the philosopher Henry David Thoreau. Let’s hope he was right, because we’ve been very busy indeed.

So busy, in fact, that our latest completed garden hasn’t even been photographed yet, let alone added to the gallery pages. We will try to fix this ASAP, because it really does look great, even if we do say so ourselves.

So what have we been up to?

Garden design projects
We’ve been working in Ashbourne on a rear garden project involving a challenging uphill slope, as well as an enthusiastic springer spaniel puppy. Our scheme involves terracing up eight levels, and we’ve removed 60 tonnes of soil to achieve this. The garden should be completed in the next 10 days or so, and we’ll add pictures when we can.

We’ve also been quoting on projects from as far west as Stoke to as far east as Leicester and, encouragingly, we’ve been booking work into the late autumn/winter.

Growing your own
Our vegetable and fruit garden is flourishing again. We’ve harvested the spring onions planted last September, and this year’s crops now include two varieties of potatoes, spinach, onions, peas, tomatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and one or two carrots. Fruit-wise we have a bumper crop of strawberries on the way, as well as blackcurrants, raspberries, rhubarb and apples.

What else?
On Friday we took a day off and visited the Gardeners’ World Live event at the NEC. After a week of glorious summer weather, Friday turned out to be wet and cold. Undaunted by the elements, and buoyed by frequent visits to the champagne stands in the next door Good Food show, we gamely surveyed the rather disappointing show gardens. Thankfully there was an excellent selection of nursery stands in the floral marquee, and we made full use of the plant creche service which saw our purchases magically appear in a holding hall at the end of the day.

Today was the day of the Village Fete. Over the back fence we had an assortment of tents, burger vans and portaloos, and a TV crew rumoured to be from GMTV were covering the dog show. The kids got sunburned manning the sweet stall, and maybe tomorrow we’ll see if we managed to get ourselves on television!