Gardening with Nature on the Edge of the Atlantic

Category: Garden Design

  • Renewal and Renovations

    A deluded daffodil. The rest have not even broken ground yet. I have about three acres of land here but I ‘garden’ about half. The initial division of the land into garden and field is interesting (and not of my making). The shape of the garden proper resembles a leg of mutton with the long…

  • Proof – If Proof Were Needed

    I am becoming obsessed with the snails’ behaviour on my Hosta and started a small experiment earlier this summer. This is the result – the plant on the right lives in a pot outside the house where the snails have to traverse a gravel driveway and cement to get to their target. Child’s play apparently.…

  • Repair or Replace

    This a picture of a corner of the garden that I created shortly after I moved here twelve years ago. I was particularly pleased with the mix of formal planting and wildflowers which were allowed to seed themselves at will. Sadly, the last two winters have taken their toll and the corner is a sad…

  • Taking Time

    I discovered this plant eight or nine years ago in the bargain corner of a nursery. It looked like a small stick that was about to expire. I bought it and its companion for two euro with no expectation that they would ever come to anything. Years later they have grown to six or seven…

  • Winter Tasks

    The trees on my drive have been given a much-needed trimming to remove dead or dying wood and thin out the crowns so that they do not present a large top-heavy mass of branches at the top of the plant during storms. The branches are perfect for the birds when approaching the feeder and the…

  • Stone Walls Upon
    Stone Fields

      October 2021 Red sky at morning … Normality has returned at last. The wind is howling in the chimney and the rain is streaming down the windows drowning out the sound of the seals. (That is if they sing in stormy weather). It is still very mild, but at least the plants are getting…

  • Semi-dry-stone walls

    7 December 2020 I don’t know why I am consistently surprised by the weather because I have learned that the one constant here is that nothing is constant. Yesterday I awoke to a hard frost. The temperature reached a heady six degrees in the middle of the day. The robin almost pushed me out of…