Garden Dreaming

As the beginning of next year approaches I find my mind turning to the garden again. It appears that not a lot is happening  out there at the moment but there is a lot of promise of things to come. I squelched on down to the greenhouse this morning to grab a spade as I had a tiny camellia and a rose that wanted to go in. Even though it was gently raining, the wind has died down and it was a pleasure to be outside again and to soak up the inspiration I always get from being in the garden. Somehow it fuels my imagination and I came in all excited about the prospect of what I will grow next year.
I am pretty organised with my seeds (well I am a pretty organised man in general but I take it to extreme with my seeds) and as it happens I still have a lot of half packets all of which have best before dates on them for 2014 and a few that I saved from plants this year. That means I may as well plant every single seed and see what happens.
I then made myself a hot chocolate and had a happy couple of hours going through gardening catalogues indulging in a bit of day dreaming what I could do. I chose 10 new sorts of flowers I want to try (I don't need any new veg seeds this year as I have plenty) as Mr Fothergills has a buy 4 get a 5th free on all seed packets, plus £5 off orders at the moment. It meant that I got 10 pack of seeds for just £12 which is a bit of a bargain. Probably means I will have way too many plants, but I will enjoy it all thoroughly. I have bought Echinacia (so far I have had zero success with this), Chrysanthemum Snowland, Ageratum Red Sea, Morning Glory heavenly blue, Cornflower Blue Ball, Hollyhock Giant, Campanula, Geums and some Rudbeckia. The tax man has just sent me a substantial refund as I paid him far too much money last year, so I thought the least I could treat myself to was some seeds. My brother gave me the most wonderful Christmas present too this year: an electric heated propagator so I am very excited to try this out in a few months.
Now I will have the fun, over the next few weeks, of deciding where I will put the new plants, I will change my mind a dozen times and in the end they will probably go in new spots, but it is such fun experimenting. My brand new bed (the largest border in the garden so far) is, at the moment a quagmire of clay and manure with a few new perennials in there (and a small ornamental cherry tree) and so much of these new plants will be going in here. I will do more sweet peas this year as they are heavenly both in sight and smell, but I will choose these seeds another time.

My garden has gone from this:

to this, in just two years:

And from this:

to this:

So what will 2014 bring? Oh it is going to be such fun to find out.