Hello again and welcome back to our garden. It has been a while since I last gave an update, but I can tell you that a lot has changed. You probably have read in one of the previous that we hired a contractor this winter to execute the plans I drew to bring more structure in the garden. But that meant that large part of the garden needed to be replanted. Luckily I managed to rescue some of the old planting, but nevertheless it was hundreds of new plants that needed to be added. Now that we have used our garden intensively with all the sunny and dry weather we had the past few months, I can genuinely say we are very happy with the result.

I will not talk about the whole garden in this post, but pick out some new elements and as mostly let the pictures speak and you can of course always ask me things in the comment section.

The new water feature in the herb garden is doing very great. We had bit of a green algue problem in the first weeks. With a right mix of plants, some starting bacteria and enough circulation of the water that problem solved itself. We added some toad and frog eggs and most of the developed into cute little frogs/toads. I didn’t want to add any fish in the first place, but the water was full with mosquito larva in no time, so I had to bring in Bambi & Lullu. The pond is still full of life at the moment and many of the small frogs have left the pond in the meanwhile. Hope they’ll come back to lay their eggs again and make a big offspring.

Another little project we did after the big works, was making a small BBQ corner. The BBQ was standing a bit lost in a corner behind a hedge, but still way too much in sight. So we used corten steel retaining walls and a planter to create a dedicated zone for it. A bit out of sight, but still close enough to the terrace and kitchen. A small bench makes for a comfy addition and the zone next to it is planted up with rosemary and thyme. Still need to sow some grass in front of it, but with the drought that is postponed to autumn.

Sometimes this Spring was a bit overwhelming with the amount of work that needed to be done, but I still managed to grow vegetables from seed. The tomatoes do very well and I think soon I will be able to pick the first ones in the glass house. This year I also grew 4 different kinds of basil to plant along the tomatoes and that worked out as well. In a new raised bed in half shade I made my ‘salad bar’. Here different salads, swiss shard, radish and rhubarb life happily together.

But not all was a success. Most of my parsnips, kohlrabi and some of the salads have been all eaten by the slugs and snails. With every rainshower they come out in masses and destroy everything on their path. It’s no fun, but there is not much to do about it. So I take it quite philosophically. Also new is a bed of green asparagus, they seem to do well, but the first harvest will only be in a year or two : patience is key.

In the new terrace zone I tried to tie in with the excisting planting scheme, but with the addition of the large Acer palmatum ‘Bloodgood’ some more shady beds have been created. So more ferns and shade loving plants could be added. As I want to go for a more natural look in the garden, it is always a challenge to find the right balance between structure and loose planting. I will probably have to tweak it a bit and get it on point the coming years. But for a first year it doesn’t look too bad.

One thing we are very pleased with is that we got rid of the strip of lawn between the house and the swimming pond and that the ground level was brought on the same level of the pond. This also made it possible to create some kind of rain garden for when torrential rains come down. A phenomena that seems to happen more and more. On the next picture you see a nice before and after of this zone and the raingarden in full working mode.

So this is bit of what has been going on … more in one of the next posts. Don’t forget to leave comments or remarks… always nice to have some interaction. Bye for now and for more updates you can always follow me on Instagram.