My garden this year .

[Diane]

[attachment=0]smaller.jpg[/attachment]At least it's all coming together (in spite of the chickens!).

[Diane]

Oops - that's a bit big.

[oldherbaceous]

I love seeing pictues of other peoples gaerden, so thank you Diane, and your garden looks lovely.

[Primrose]

Yes, I love seeing other peoples' gardens too. The first thing I do on going into a house I haven't been into before is go and look at the garden. However magnificent the house or its contents, they don't interest me half as much as the garden does, and what's growing in it !

[Diane]

Thank you Peter for the edit.

[Ricard with an H]

Thanks for making the effort to show us your garden Diane, and all that with chickens as-well.

I keep taking about having hens but my partner discourages me because of the extra work and responsibilities. Also, I go to bed very early and this time of year the fox would have the entire flock by 7-ish.

I'll post some photos of my plot later in the day.

[Ricard with an H]

My kitchen garden takes-up the lower part of our paddock and the raised (Terrace) area between the paddock and the house lawns. The terrace area whilst draining very well can be windy hence the the sea buckthorn hedge that has struggled. On the paddock I have a wildflower farm and the comfrey farm which incorporates some of our log storage and working area, composting and recently the cabbage strip.

Up on the terrace I have grown flowers in the bed that produced onion white rot, I still have to deal with those bugs.

Little gem is doing well with a comfrey mulch and I have red-barron onions with a soft neck garlic. Two rows of strawberry that I possibly spaced to close together.

I don't know yet how many photos I can get on one page but I'll follow-up with another.

[Ricard with an H]

More photos hopefully in order.

[Ricard with an H]

And yet again.

[Diane]

Oh - that is heavenly....what a lot of wonderful space. Beautiful.

[oldherbaceous]

Afternoon Richard, i am very impressed, and that takes a lot of doing these days.

[Ricard with an H]

I wasn't expecting to impress anyone, just to share how lucky I am though at a time of my life when I haven't got the work in me or the cash to pay others.

The top-end of our paddock should have orchard, there is a lot of decent top soil at the high end. It's where the moles like it best.

To create orchard I first need a wind-break and whilst there is some wind-break to the south and west (The paddock lies N-S) I need more on the west side.

What I haven't shown is my domestic planting at the back of our barn-conversion. I have around 200 cosmos and stocks, a few sweet peas and some perrenials between the farmhouse and us. When they are in flower I'll post another photo. I also have the gardens at the front which I'm slowly opening up for more planting.

Oh the stones.

Each year I open a little more ground for planting, this is very much like the work an allotment holder has to do but my allotment is at home. It took me two weeks to hack out that cabbage strip, the soil is only nine inches deep at best. When the cabbages are done I'll lay six inches of muck from the farm over the soil then form a raised bed around it. That is what I did for the comfrey patch, I had two harvests of comfrey already.

If this property was in Dorset or Hampshire it would be have cost twice what we paid for it or would get for it.

No traffic, only tractors. Hard to find if you need help quickly.

[Westi]

Your garden is beautiful Richard! Hope you get the odd chance to sit back & enjoy it!

Westi

[Ricard with an H]

You're very kind to say that and it is a lovely space but looks untidy very quickly.other than the cut grasses, lawns and the recent kitchen garden most of it is wild. Right now that wild-ness is at it's best but it all quickly gets to look tatty and depressing if I don't keep cutting-back and trimming.

Both my neighbors have paid help, the farmhouse just tend their house garden and let their grounds off to sheep,sheep tend to be picky about what they eat so they have paddock areas full of untidy tufts. The barn attached to us has small gardens tended by paid help, their 4/5 acres are also left to sheep and wild growth which needs farm machinery twice a year to keep under control.

Most people my age won't or can't do the work required to keep things managed, in my case 'cant' is quickly approaching. Fine if you can afford to pay for help. Most years I have to paint some of the outside, do joinery repairs, roof repairs and other preparations for winter. If you burn wood it needs to be sorted in the summer.

It is lovely though, I never dreamt I would ever own a place like this.