Hupor's Hardy Horticultural Blog

[huporhaha]

At last I have taken the plunge and decided to put up a few pics of my garden which hopefully I'll add to over time to show progress or lack of it. My sort of gardening is a bit unusual because we are surrounded by quite barren countryside and it is very windy here. Everything's a bit of an experiment with successes and failures probably in equal measure but here goes anyway.....................

[GoggleboxUK]

With a view like that Hups, whatever you plant in front of it is only going to enhance what nature has already laid out for you.

Superb!

I'm glad you've done a blog, experimental gardening needs a good record keeping and I'm sure this will be an interesting read.

[huporhaha]

A few more pics taken this evening. I thought I'd better put a couple of pics up of my hub's patch. He likes veg gardening. We leave the ferns growing out from the sides of the raised beds as they look quite happy there!

The side bed looks a bit tatty as we have had a lot of wind and rain this spring. The Trachycarpus is probably dead. The Dicksonia antarctica is in a pot in the ground so it can be moved into the greenhouse over winter. The Gunnera is growing beside a deep stream (posh name for a drainage ditch or perhaps burn up here) and loves it there.

[huporhaha]

Thanks Goggle, its a big learning curve but an exciting one.

[Delboy]

That looks lovely Stephanie, and your garden is HUGE!!

It looks very natural, really well planted with a nice mixture of stuff.

Also, thats the best 'drainage ditch' ive ever seen lol, i would love a Gunnera myself but something that size would look a bit silly in my garden.

[huporhaha]

Thanks Del, that's just one side of the lower front garden - we've got another larger patch of front garden the other side of the ditch and then there is a front garden in front of the house which is probably bigger than most people's front gardens. Then there are two side gardens - the side shaded by the house is mostly fruit trees and bushes while the side that gets more sun is about half veg and the other half my stuff - in other words any exotics I can get to grow here. Then at the back there is the main veg patch and above that is more grass with fruit trees planted rather randomly. Most of the apples and plums have already blown off the trees this year but we can live in hope.

Property here is quite cheap - if we wanted to move we'd probably only get a 2 bedroom terraced house in the south of England with no garden for the amount this place is worth.

[Mr List]

you are lucky to have such a large space.

loads of plants (eg gunnera) i have ideas for but not the space.

[Trudytropics]

You must battle the elements daily, but what a wonderful garden you have and the views are stunning. The veg garden looks abundant, just like the good life . My grandfather lives in south West Scotland 20 miles from Stranraer, he has a wonderful garden but has always benefited from a milder climate thanks to the gulf stream .

Trudy

[The Codfather]

I knew it was big but that's unreal............WOW....... ............you could build a rain forest.

[huporhaha]

We had a really damp boggy patch of land which didn't improve very much even when we spent half the winter digging up the lawn and putting in our own "brand" of a drainage system. I decided to use some of the soil we'd dug out from somewhere else and make a sort of raised fernery/hosta/bog loving patch. As you can see, the soil is very poor and still needs to be worked on.

The logs were cut last autumn - Italian Alder - they are sprouting despite having lain around for ages. I'm not sure I want Italian Alders coming up just there though. The Kilmarnock Willow was a gift but it isn't there to stay I expect there will be a terrible mishap with a mix up between insecticide and roundup one day in the not too distant future or perhaps it will get spared and moved to a less prominent position (like the shredder or compost heap)

In March this was just a mound of clay soil which I enriched and worked down to make it a bit more hospitable - this is what it looked like last evening...................

[Dave Brown]

The garden is great, although I guess very challenging. If only I had those views.

The thing to remember is that Inverewe had loads of exotics for many, many years, with just this last killer winter being a problem. Hopefully for all our sakes, it will not be repeated.

[huporhaha]

Thanks for the encouragement Dave - at this time of the year there aren't enough hours in the day - with almost 24 hours of daylight - well 22 and 2 hours twilight, the weed growth is phenomenal. Sometimes I don't know where to start, just mowing the lawn takes the best part of two hours a day, four days a week. The other half moans when he has to do it because he has to avoid so many trees and not go in a straight line. Its strimming today which I hate because I have lost countless plants due to offspring and others not wearing glasses and being over-enthusiastic with the throttle. I've done it myself occasionally so I can't blame them for all my losses!

[The Codfather]

2 hours a day why 4 times a week ???? is that just to complete 1 cut ????

[huporhaha]

Yes - I'm not the swiftest and no, it's not a hand mower - its a petrol one but not a ride on or anything fancy. I suppose truthfully, it is four days out of every ten at this time of the year going down to once a fortnight by the end of August. I'd love to have more areas of say gravel or something but it is too expensive to do paving or anything like that. An alpine bed with loads of gravel would be nice but I can't see it happening any time soon.

[GoggleboxUK]

Blimey! And I thought mowing was such a pain I paved over my gardens. I can't even comprehend THAT amount of mowing in a year let alone every 10 days!!