Boom, Boom, Pow we back at it again! Can you believe it Fergie?? The year 2018 in the garden was...
...what is the best way to say it?
....meh, very bloody meh!
So because it was such an "exciting" year, I'm going to wrap it all up in one amazing blog post.
It started with the 'Beast from the East' doing a fine job of making it a baptism of ice for my plants this year. My Red Star cordylines certainly did not like being drowned in all that snow. Luckily I didn't have too many tender plants in the garden at this point, so it could have been worse. I also lost a small fence panel and my mini greenhouse to what I imagine was some form of storm...but this was 4 years ago, and I'm old and don't remember.
I forgot to mention that at the end of the year before I bought a couple of cypress leylandii trees from B&Q. They were reduced and cheap, so I thought why not? What's the worst that could happen? Well... cypress leylandii's, as I now know, are one of the fastest growing evergreen trees, growing at a rate of a few feet every year, up to about 70 feet. Now that's amazing if you're always there to prune it and keep the roots in check, but I no longer lived at the house and couldn't risk that kind of a future problem. As a solution I dug them both up in the new year and put them in pots, so I could be in control of their total growth.
Among some other additions to the garden were a couple clematis climbers,
a potted phoenix canariensis palm, and a simple (temporary) parasol for the dining area. I say temporary because it was just supposed to do for one summer and then I ended keeping it for 4 years... c'est la vie.
One of my favourite broad leaf plants, and plants in general is the Fatsia Japonica and I was excited to finally get one into my garden. It is a very easy to care for shrub that also has the added benefit of looking attractive and exotic at the same time. So I planted that, aswell as two Agave americana variegata pups that I was lucky enough to be gifted in Brighton (Thank you Anu :) ). It's worth mentioning that at this point I barely knew what an Agave was, but I knew I wanted it and would damn sure make it work ...somehow. Little did I realise that the addition of the palm, Fatsia, and agave was to be the beginning of a new gardening journey that wouldn't really take hold until late summer 2020.
Back to 2018, in a continuation of trying to insert some of my own character into the garden I ordered a custom Manchester United engraved stone plaque from Etsy for the shed. I hung this up, as well as putting up a couple brackets either side of the shed door, in order to hang a couple of solar lights from them. This immediately made the unwelcoming shed a lot more ...err, welcoming. I felt like I had a vision for what I wanted my shed to look like down the line, and along with painting it, these were the first steps to getting there.
In essence, 2018 was a an important year in the evolution of my gardening process, albeit slightly uneventful. Gone are the days of just planting anything or trying to make things look less s#!t. Everything is significantly more considered and planned out. As a natural creative/ designer, my mind works 1000 miles a minute once I get excited about an idea and I could feel my brain putting on its Usain Bolt shoes.
The next couple chapters of this true story will not only define me as a gardener, but reconstruct me as a person.
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