Urban gardening - Creating a doorstep container

Over the past month or so I've been gradually planting up pots, moving plants and transforming our garden spaces. The weather has been amazing and I'm at long last experiencing what it is like to garden with light and heat! In our previous home we had a courtyard garden that was quite shady however we now have a front and back garden space to tend to, I'm trying to be much better with watering than I have ever been as in the warm weather everything drys out so quickly.

I thought it would be a good time to tell you a little bit more about my gardening journey as it is becoming a real interest and a hobby. I'm spending more time listening to things about gardening and planting, watching TV programmes about gardens and reading books and blogs. Over the next month or so you'll see a flurry of posts about our garden so I hope that you will enjoy my little series.

I'm trying to become a better gardener and so as part of the process I decided to take the plunge and create my own arrangement of flowers in a container. I've never done this type of gardening before, many of my gardening endeavours are really simple. I tend to pot up a few of the same plant, like geraniums or cyclamen, into a pot or window box and put it on display. I love having the simplicity of the same plants grouped together however I decided that I wanted to get a little creative and wanted to buy a few different plants to create an arrangement in a container that would be placed at the front of our home on the doorstep.

What sparked the project was finding this gorgeous baby blue coloured pot from the RHS collection at my local garden centre. Glazed pots like this are quite pricey for the garden but are a real investment bringing glorious colour and creating a feature in a space. I was given some money for my birthday a few months ago and I knew that I wanted to allocate it to buy something special for our garden space, this pot was just perfect. After finding the pot I really enjoyed wandering round the garden centre, discovering new plants, and thinking about how I could arrange them. I decided to go with a pink and white colour theme for the front of our home this year and luckily found some lovely plants.

Working from the back of the pot I arranged a Scabious (Pink Mist) in the centre and surrounded it either side with one Dwarf Pink (Whatfield Joy Alpine Dianthus) either side. In front of the arrangement I added two trailing Calibrachoa White to create a lower layer. I then finished it off with a few pieces of varigated ivy to soften the edges of the pot. I love the combination of pinks in contrast with the blue pot as well as the different heights of the plants.

I'd highly recommend getting a little creative and making your own arrangement in a pot. Each time I come home I smell the scent of the flowers, see bees enjoying the blooms and know that I created this arrangement, it makes me really pleased that I created something different.

April in our urban garden

At times our garden feels pretty bare, we're in a stage where we are clearing space for new plants and a new garden design whilst trying to spot what plants are part of the garden we have inherited. I hope to be able to keep as much of the current planting as I can moving forwards and just add to it. Here are a few of the plants currently making an appearance in our space.

Bright yellow crocus making an appearance...

A blossoming apple tree...

Our acer returning greenery to the garden...

The seed grown geraniums from a few years ago still flowering...

A delicate poppy appeared from nowhere...

Our pot grown hosta is growing once again...

One of our pot grown blueberry bushes covered in flowers...

Each time I step outside into our garden space it makes me smile. I've been spending time outside when I can sitting in the sun dreaming of how we will be changing the space, measuring the garden and starting to sketch out a bit of a garden design. I'll update you over the next few weeks with our progress in the garden. 

Garden plans - How we will use our urban garden

Last week was National Gardening Week and for me it meant spending time with a few new books and working out a few more things in our garden. I thought I'd tell you about our garden and the plans we have started to make for our space.

With the weather warming my attention has once again become focused on our garden. For us our garden space is perfectly sized for us and what we want to do at this point in our lives. Mr C and I work full-time and so we wanted a space that meant we could give it the attention and time it needs to be maintained as well as being able to sit alongside our other interests.

Our garden has already seen a change from this...

to this...

There's lots of work to do but as you can see we have removed a lot of plants that were filling up a space within the garden and have created the space for raised beds.

Before we made the changes Mr C and I thought about what we wanted the space to be used for. I knew that I wanted to have raised beds to grow herbs, vegetables and cut flowers but there were also a number of other things I wanted to consider and be part of the garden project.

I want to use our garden to...

Grow our own - there's nothing better than cooking with freshly picked herbs added to a dish. Home grown carrots and potatoes with butter and herbs are just delicious. Picking salad leaves, giving them a wash and creating a delicious lunch is something I got huge pleasure from in our last courtyard garden. I don't expect our garden to replace all of our food shopping but I hope it will help in a few areas and will teach us even more about seasonal cooking and growing our own.

Be a space to relax and entertain in - I love entertaining friends and as Mr C has a huge passion for cooking what better way to combine using an outside space for growing as well as entertaining. I envisage summer evenings with tea lights in jam jars, the chiminea or bbq providing heat when the sun is setting, daytime lunches with pretty napkins and big platters of home grown salad to share, and a space we want to sit in and enjoy. 

Reduce the impact on the environment - For us it's important to consider where our food comes from. We regularly shop at farmers markets, our local independent shops, and will go to supermarkets for a number of things, but we do our best to buy what is in season and as much as we can buy food grown in the UK. I would love to reduce our reliance on things that can easily be grown at home, for example rocket, lettuce and herbs that we regularly use. It means we buy less and have less packaging to recycle.

Help nature - We want to attract and encourage wildlife as much as we can into our little space in the city. In time we will add bird feeders, a bird box and a bee house/hotel and think carefully about the flowers we grow. At the moment a bee hive isn't really an option but something I would've loved to have done if we had a flat roof space.

Grow a cut flower patch - I adore having cut flowers in our home but it upsets me when you realise the distance the flowers have travelled to make it into our homes. I try to buy British where I can but from time to time I do buy from supermarkets where the flowers have been flown a long distance.  I would prefer to have home grown seasonal flowers in our home instead, it's a little mission I have. Plus how lovely would it be to visit a friend with a small posy of home grown flowers tied together with a little piece of garden twine or ribbon as a gift!

Create a cycle - I'm keen to find out more about how to recycle our garden waste and home waste. As we plan our space we are thinking about whether we can have a compost heap or wormery. Creating our own plant fertiliser will mean less waste will be taken away to be recycled by the council. I've still got a lot of reading to do on this but I hope that later this year we will be able to set up one of the options.

Reduce urban run off and conserve more water - As we will be changing the use of the garden space quite dramatically, I have on my mind the impact it may have to the ever increasing problem of urban runoff. We are planning to take out the lawn, add pebbles and stepping stones/path to the end of the garden, and grow more things in containers where our lawn once was. Our garden design will plan to reduce urban run off by having hanging baskets, more containers on patio spaces to absorb the rain, more water butts storing excess water from the house roof and plant more plants to slow urban run off.

Include reclaimed or sustainably sourced materials where possible - Mr C and I have started building raised beds over the past week from recycled scaffolding planks (I'll show you soon!) and have used wood from a wood recycling project in the city. We are planning to remove the lawn and will use this upturned into the raised beds with compost being added on top. To fill the raised beds we are planning to use the existing compost heap as well as compost from Mr C's family farm. I hope to only need to buy peat-free soil as and when we need it, but I am aware we need to get our soil ready for the best growing conditions we can and this year may mean investing in more soil. Where our budget will allow I want to make sure that the materials we select are sustainable and I look into where the materials come from, or recycle and make our own.

Be a space to escape in - Over the years I've been gardening I've found that it is an incredible form of therapy. When I've had lots on my mind being able to escape into our outside space, dig, sort and tend plants has given me a fresh purpose and a real focus. I want to continue that in this space and see our garden as something we are very much responsible for, that is an attractive space to escape to and enables me to continually learn about growing seasonally. I'd like to create a mini haven in the city that I can sit in and enjoy.

I hope that this gives you a little insight into what we are planning to do with our space. I'm off now to continue reading my gardening books and researching greenhouses! I'll be back soon with an update on our raised beds and what the garden is looking like at the moment.

Enjoy the sunshine and enjoy your outside space, whatever size it may be.

October in our new garden

Last week I told you about our exciting news that we had moved house. With our new home comes a brand new garden to grow plants in and to transform and make our own. It was sad saying goodbye to our courtyard garden space where my passion for gardening really kick started, but I know that our new garden will take my interest and knowledge of gardening to a whole new level. I'm buzzing with excitement about our new space and I am looking forward to sharing it with you.

I can't tell you how energised I feel about this garden and the plans I have started to put together. For Mr C and I we are seeing it as a blank canvas and the chance to really shape and redesign the space. Our garden is a perfect size for us and will hopefully in time be a space that is easy to look after. In our new garden there is plenty of space to grow things in the ground and in containers, there is space to entertain, and most importantly we now have lots of light! We no longer have a sheltered and shady space where plants started to bolt for the light. Along with the benefits of having so much light, the downside is that our garden will now be exposed to the elements. I'm sure we will be learning as we go about what areas of the garden are effected by extremes of hot and cold weather!

So let me tell you a little about our new gardening spaces...eeek I’m so excited! We are lucky to have a small space at the front of our home to garden as well as a back garden. Our front garden is a typical narrow small space for a terraced home. We have lovely yellow and black tiles and a small gravelled space, in total measuring about 1 metre wide. We have a bay window which allows us to have three window boxes on the windowsills, remarkably our existing window boxes fit perfectly…it was meant to be! At the moment the geraniums are still flowering in the window boxes so I plan to leave them in there for a few more weeks and then look to move them into new pots and put them under cover for the winter. There's plenty of opportunity for container gardening at the front of the house and I'm looking forward to working out what to plant in the window boxes for the winter and what plants we could add to the space.

Our plans for the back garden are quite extensive and we hope to achieve a hefty garden redesign over the next few years. We would love to paint the back of the house to freshen and tidy it up, or if we can we would like to get back to the original brick. We plan to replace the concrete walkway and patio space with attractive paving which is in keeping with the victorian/edwardian style of our home, with the aim of creating a space to entertain. Many of the plants in the garden are over grown and will be removed with a fresh start on all the planting. We plan to remove the lawn and potentially create a space that has a feeling of a walled/kitchen garden with raised beds, a winding brick path, areas of gravel and a lean-to greenhouse. I'm hoping to have a combination of small vegetable patches, a herb garden, and a cut flower patch. We want to have a space that is productive and one that we can sit in and enjoy. It is a big project and will take quite some time to save and plan for, however for the time being we are going to do what we can to make the space more of our own.

One of my favourite features of our back garden are the brick walls that surround the space. Three walls frame the garden and they are all at different levels. The walls are a combination of grey stone at the back and variations of grey and red brick on the left and the right. Around the garden I have discovered a few lovely shrubs, a rose, honeysuckle, a small acer tree, and a few small fuchsia's that I really and will definitely try to keep in the redesign. We moved our pots, garden furniture, and cold frame with us to our new home and have added them to the space where we can.

The garden is changing as autumn is upon us. We have seen the leaves changing colour on the blueberry bushes to a deep red, we've harvested a few final courgettes, Mr C has cut back some of the herbs and has started drying them, and the marigolds are gradually dying and going to seed. The honeysuckle in the garden is still flowering and the fuchsia is also clinging onto flowers and adding a bit of colour and life to the space.

I'm looking forward to watching the space change during the seasons and becoming more acquainted with the plants that are here and how they grow. I'm going to be able to do more than just container gardening which I'm really excited about and I am really looking forward to learning a lot more about gardening too.

The changes aren't going to happen over night, we have lots of plans to make, money to save, and as we are heading into autumn and soon winter it will be a while before we start making any big changes.

I hope that you will join me in my new adventure of gardening. I'm looking forward to learning new things and turning our new garden space into something pretty, productive and a garden we have created ourselves that we will love even more.

August and early September in our courtyard garden

In August our courtyard garden saw many warm days and also quite a lot of rain. For a week at the end of the month we woke to cool mornings hinting at the imminent arrival of autumn. However this week saw the start of September and we are back to mild temperatures and pockets of warming sunshine. I've loved what I've grown this summer in our containers. Mr C and I have made the most of our courtyard as much as we could depending on the weather. We have enjoyed eating lunches outside, using up the rocket and chard in yummy salads and enjoying the fresh air.

This week our tomatoes have started turning at last. I picked the big red one today ready to add to a lunch this week. These tomatoes have been the largest I've ever grown in our courtyard. We have lots of green tomatoes ready to enjoy, I think I may have to ripen them on our windowsill so we can enjoy our crop sooner.

The carrots are growing and I've started seeing small pops of orange through the soil. I don't think that they will be very large but I'm so pleased with what I've managed to grow so far. I did neglect them a little (oops!) and probably could have thinned them out more allowing a better crop but we wait and see what I end up digging up.

The courgettes have continually flowered and we now have a number of small courgettes growing.

We enjoyed these courgettes in a ratatouille we cooked this week.

We have a few courgettes still growing.

Even on the cloudy and rainy days our space looked bright with the few flowers left in our garden. Our geranium filled window boxes are still blooming as are the marigolds I grew from seed. I love that a packet of seeds for a few pounds has given us so much colour in our garden all summer.

The hardy geraniums in our courtyard are still flowering from time to time. I need to do a little dead heading to see if they will flower once again but I'm pleased with how they've continued to flower a few years after growing them from seed.

The chard is still growing with vibrant orange and purple stems. I love the purple veined leaves adding colour to salads.

The chilli plants are also grown from seed have just flowered. I think that they are a little late this year so I may have to wait a while to have a little crop of chillies.

Our little courtyard has definitely seen one of the most productive summers of container gardening ever. We've had the longest period of time with flowers blooming thanks to the marigolds. I'm delighted to have grown more than one courgette this year and to have a space I'm really proud of. How is your garden looking?

July in our courtyard garden

Our courtyard is really coming alive this summer with lots of pops of colour. I'm loving spending time tending to the plants, watering them and watching them grow everyday. Coming home after a busy day at work and pottering in the garden is one of my favourite things at the moment.

I've grown quite a few things this year from seed including radishes, lettuce, rocket, chillies, courgettes, potatoes, marigolds and carrots. Here's how our courtyard garden is looking during July.

The plants are sunning themselves in our sunny corner of our courtyard, this is where most of our plants grow really well. Our metal bench is temporarily being used as a pot stand to elevate the plants off the ground to get more light and out of reach of any snails or slugs.

I've got three courgette plants and all are grown from seed and are starting to flower. I can't wait to see if we get courgettes this summer. If you look closely you can see one growing already!

The chillies I grew from seed are taking shape.

My strawberry plants are starting to grow a few small fruits. I'll have to keep an eye on these in case the birds get a bit peckish!

The rocket is ready to eat.

The carrots are growing and I really hope there is something in the soil below all the greenery!

I harvested the potatoes a few weeks ago and I squealed with delight seeing that I had managed to grow so many this year...

I was convinced I'd have a really tiny crop of potatoes as I hadn't fed them as much as I should have and I neglected them a little too. The plants got so big they start falling over with the weight of the plant and went really floppy. I wasn't expecting many potatoes to have grown so before starting to dig them up I poured a cup of tea in preparation of a short lived harvesting session...instead these little beauties came out of our containers. We ate these all pretty quickly during the savouring the taste of home grown potatoes with home grown chives and mint.

The mint has finally taken off and smells amazing.

Our blueberry bush is trying to grow fruit.

I perked up our window boxes with some pink and white geraniums, they make me smile each time I open our blinds. The heat and sunshine got to them this week.

The tomato plants are finally flowering and growing fruit. I'm hoping for a good harvest this year so I can add a few to my salad each day.

These geraniums have been growing for a few years now and have delivered some gorgeous bright red and pink blooms. I love how they contrast with the blue pot. I have a little bit of an obsession with blue glazed pots...

I grew marigolds from seed this year and I can't tell you how excited I am by seeing each plant flower one by one. I have a few containers of these flowers and I am so happy with how they are growing.

The pops of colour are making me smile.

My fuchsias are flowering like crazy and I'm loving watching each flower open and elegantly display its stamens and display such pretty colours.

Our courtyard seems to be loving the warm and sunny weather we are having this year. I think that it is the best our garden has ever looked! I love getting outside and escaping into our little space. Are you doing any gardening at the moment? How is your space looking?

May and June - Our courtyard garden

Over the past few months I've been watching our courtyard garden grow. We've been really lucky to have some lovely sunny and warm days. I've taken time out to tend to our plants, keep them watered and I am spending more an more time in our courtyard garden space. Here's what has been going on...

For the second year in a row the geraniums I grew from seed are flowering, there are bright pinks, red and white flowers coming into bloom.

For the first time I've grown lettuce leaves from seed...

Our sunny space is blooming...the radishes, fennel, fuchsia and marjoram are loving the sunny spot.

The radishes grew in small batches, I've found that those at the front of the window box have been doing better than others...

This week I harvested what I had before they went into flower.

There wasn't any rocket left at the garden centre, so I decided to trying to grow rocket from seed...

...and after a few weeks the leaves are starting to take shape and look more like what you would expect.

The fuchsia continues to flower and is one of my favourite plants in the garden.

This year I moved it into a new location and it has flourished. This is how it looked today, there are so many flowers this year.

I've been a bit late planting up my courgette plants. I have three that I've grown from seed and they are getting themselves established. Tonight I got home from work and planted them into larger pots in the hope that they will grow over the next few months.

My tomato plants are starting to flower and I'm looking forward to another year of a home grown crop for my lunchtime salads.

These are the marigolds I've grown from seed. I've been growing them in my cold frame in a partially sunny spot. I started planting these up into bigger containers this evening... I'm loving the long evenings of the summer, I'm getting so much gardening time in my week!

The bay tree is continuing to grow and is having a growth spurt

and here are the potatoes! They have gone a little wild but I think that they must be enjoying this sunny spot. I'm waiting to see if they flower soon. I have everything crossed that I will have a crop and not just greenery!

These are the carrots I've grown from seed. This week I've been thinning them out.

I'm going to buy a few more flowers over the next few weeks, I want to have a few more bright pops of colour brightening our space.