Tag: meadow

Meadow in colour

Hi Chris – the meadow patch is blooming!! There are delicate flowers every where and more to come….. I know there are weeds in between the flowers, but thats a meadow, right? I know there are alyssums, nasturtiums, cosmos but no real flowers yet, there are phlox and marigolds and others I need help with. Take a look at how nice it looks now! It needs some sort of styling, but at the moment I’m just going to enjoy looking beyond the veggie patch and instead of seeing the usual bare ground, I’m looking into a fields of flowers.

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I am not sure what flower this is – but it is everywhere and stands tall and has various colours – really pretty.

[one_half]Phlox in various colours[/one_half]

[one_half_last]So pretty[/one_half_last]

[one_half]New flower – what can it be?[/one_half]

[one_half_last]There needs to be a path to the guava tree[/one_half_last]

I am like a child when I see all the flowers and have to stop myself from running through them. It needs a bit of “cleaning” and styling so that I can walk through this to the fruit trees without flattening the delicate plants. I’ll see what I can do this weekend – I was thinking of adding a small “path” through this with stepping stones or something like this and maybe a feature somewhere…… birdbath? or a bench?

I’ll hope to have some time this weekend, but it could be put on hold because of the weather or because my sister is here from Australia and we need to catch up on lost time! I’ll keep you posted!

Happy Gardening xxxxxx

Tags creating a meadow, flowers, garden, meadow

Annuals Barbie's garden Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

Meadow in May

I am so excited to see the carpet of Meadow green is now flowering – that is so quick! It seems like yesterday when I scattered a bunch of Winter Mix meadow seeds onto my bleak back garden patch. There are so many different varieties of plants that I will only know what is what when they start blooming. I am not worried about the weeds because Mother Nature doesn’t either. I want to let it look as authentic as possible. If there are some dreaded nasty weeds then I will spot them and pull them.

Christine suggested I plant a few of my bulbs in the Meadow – I like this idea and have put aside some Sparaxis and Ixias bulbs for this. But I can already see the flowering of the Alyssum and the Cosmos. The arrows will help:

Red arrow – Cosmos; Yellow arrow – Alyssum; Blue arrow – Marigold

This Meadow will be a wonder this winter! Happy Gardening xxxxx

Tags blooms, creating a meadow, flowers, foliage, garden, meadow

Annuals Barbie's garden Gardening Home page features Perenniels

Meadow update

Hi Chris, remember my back garden meadow I want to create? I spread the seeds at the beginning of April and the last two weeks I have taken photos of the progress. I am still not sure what flowers will come out so it will be fun to see how the whole area will develop. I can recognise marigolds and that’s about it! Oh yes – I also see clover and a few weeds, but thats all in the nature of a wild meadow. I really want to see some dandelion and milk thistle. These are great medicinal plants … and it would be nice to have a meadow of useful and beneficial flowers. Right now, I don’t know the difference between the grass, flowers and weeds. The first two weeks they just shot up, but week 2 there was little change.

The Day I Started

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Week 2 – 14 April

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Week 3 – 21 April

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You can see patches of lawn that have always been there, so hopefully this will fill out and become a colourful carpet of flowers and new grass.

It is a kind of “wait and see” experiment that will be fun to watch grow.

Can you identify some of my seedings?

Tags flowers, garden, gardening, grasses, meadow, plants

Barbie's garden Design Gardening Home page features Perenniels

Creating a meadow

Christine’s last post with her beautiful field of Anemones got me totally inspired! The idea of a meadow brings to my mind the memory of childhood in my family’s back garden. Tall grasses and sunshine and the smell of wild flowers! My Dad used to make hamburgers on the grill and my Mom set the picnic table with a checkered table cloth and paper plates! And then …

when I was reading my favourite gardening magazine, I came across an article on creating your own meadow – I was moved to action!

I had all I needed to start this process. A great area to work with under the 4 fruit trees (lemon, fig, guava and loquat trees). It’s patchy and unattractive. The soil is really not bad and with the wandering chickens giving it a working over from time to time, it must have enough nutrients to sustain a wild meadow!

We had a wonderful full day of rain and the back garden was waiting for a facelift. I had it ear-marked for this idea last year but waited for the rain before I tackled this project. The ground is clay and very, very hard (like cement) in summer, so little can be done with it during the hot spell. I had a packet of indigenous daisy mix and I also had a packet of Berea Lawn seeds (also indigenous). Together with this I combined another packet of garden mix with poppies, lilies and tons of other dainty flowers. A real pot luck of blooms! I added the seeds to a peat moss, compost and bone meal mix. I prepared the area by raking it all open to at least 5cm in depth. Levelled it all out and sprinkled the mix onto the prepared area and then watered it thoroughly!

The Area – before

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And After

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Ok, you can’t see much, but it was a lot of work!

A meadow brings to mind a wildlife friendly garden, imitating what nature really intends. Everything living in harmony together and the butterflies and the bees. It becomes self-sustaining and watering will be cut down once it is all established.

I will keep you up to date!!

Happy Gardening xxx

Tags anemones, flowers, meadow, wild flowers

Annuals Barbie's garden Gardening Home page features Miscellaneous

My extended back garden

When we moved into our house here in Philadelphia, we were so captivated by the rural feel and the long dirt roads where you can take long walks next to the wheat fields, that we added a gate to the back garden wall. This allowed us easy access to the meadow behind our house and to the long dirt road. Well, now that we have had to pen our chickens, so that they don’t run rampant around my newly planted garden, I feel so terribly guilty that I open the back gate for them for an hour every day so they can run wild – literally. I do supervise this little extra mural excursion! This has now become our extended back garden. We have made new friends now and they wait for us every day!

[one_half]The field behind our house[/one_half]

[one_half_last]The natural vegetation – lovely![/one_half_last]

[one_half]Our sheep friends![/one_half]

[one_half_last]Getting tired of waiting for us![/one_half_last]

[one_half]Our favourite friend – the yellow weaver bird![/one_half]

[one_half_last]Giving us the eye! Making sure we are looking![/one_half_last]

The yellow weaver bird is our favourite little friend who lives in the big Pepper Tree in the meadow behind our house. He is the first one to greet me in the morning when the chickens are let out to play! He joins them for morning breakfast! He is so busy with nest building that he has a monsterous appetite.

[one_half]May I join you?[/one_half]

[one_half_last]Buffy is happy to share[/one_half_last]

I am so fond of the wild flowers that grow here in the meadow. The daisies, the butter cups and the other colourful flowers – I don’t know the name of these. This is such a pretty place.

[one_half]African daisy – I think![/one_half]