Sunshine and warmth and perfecting my perfect garden

Those blue skies, that sunshine, the warmth......the watering 😄 us gardeners are never happy. I am trying to enjoy the amazing weather and not get too stressed trying to keep everything watered. Thank goodness David did some upgrades to the watering system this winter.

Having a totally tulip spring at home and in the nursery this year. Here are 5 from the seasonal pot display in the sales area

Evening light in the back garden, more of the tulips lol

From this

To this!

Today with much help from my helpers we created a new sitting area in the back garden. My new greenhouse is going where the table, chairs and pots were, so they needed a new space. I am so pleased with this corner, it's better than I envisioned it and makes me so happy to see my old plant friends in their new pots back in a garden of my own, and the tulips

Fritillaria pallidiflora

The Fountain area

Flowers on my Wisteria

Fritallaria pallidiflora

New items in our wee shop 💖

These gorgeous zinc leaf planters, will easily take a 2 litre pot or slightly larger, looks fab with those pink tulips, £55.

Ginkgo wreaths are back in stock, these always sell quickly, I will confess I have one myself 😊 £35.

Those that have visited the nursery in the summer will have maybe enjoyed the display of not so hardy plants in pots alongside the shade tunnel. These are my own collection and reside in the polytunnel or greenhouse over winter, I cannot resist an unusual plant lol. One of the most talked about plants there is my Pseudopanax ferox, a towering plant that quite frankly looks dead. With long serrated hard leaves in dull green or brown that hang downwards off the stem, you could be forgiven for thinking exactly that. Hailing from New Zealand, it is indeed an oddity and I do like unusual plants. Given all our polytunnel woes over the last 2 years, I've managed to keep it going, but it is too tall to fit in our new tunnels, and I wasn't risking a punctured tunnel cover already! So it sat in the shop area under cover for a few months, and then we got bad frost and I managed to fit it in our office. Over the past 4 months it has shedded almost every leaf and I really thought it had been too badly frosted and I had lost it. I've had it about 20 years and love it like an old friend.

So today I decided I needed to get it out the office and give it a decent burial. But lo it lives, there are tiny wee new leaves appearing from the top. One branch was definitely dead so I cut that back and am hoping it might shoot from the cut, making it more bushy.

So it lives to intrigue you all for another year.....c'mon the pseudopanax

What a week and how is it May already? The dry weather continues, which is lovely but it also means full time watering. Isabel finished off the monthly garden weeding in the Woodland garden, which is bursting with plants coming into flower and life

Isabel and I have been continuing in the stock beds, weeding, tidying, potting, labelling and top dressing, a big but very worthwhile job. I’ve also finished the shrub stock bed behind the office, much neater and lots of new shrubs we propagated last year growing on

Propagation continues at a pace, especially as we have been selling so many plants. Fiona is working through last years cuttings, potting them up, taking more cuttings and putting them in the new stock beds in our storage stock beds through the back of the nursery. Erin has been pitting up seedlings which have germinated in the gardens and Karen is sorting through plants behind the office, feeding and top dressing and putting them in the new stock beds

David is installing the new path system to the poly tunnels which is very exciting

Plants continue to come over from the farm tunnel to be potted, propagated or put into the sales area. The plants for stock are going into the new poly tunnels, where they will be permanently. I’m now working through all the shade plants that are coming over, so look out for more specials coming into the sales shade tunnel

We had a visit from the gardeners at Archerfield in East Lothian, they had an order to collect from us and we had a walk around the gardens and nursery. Always great to chat with like minded folk, share ideas and our love of plants and gardens

Every day there are more flowers coming out in the gardens, the trees and hedge have greened up and the whole place looks amazing. Wren has taken over the robin nest in the covered area, the swallows are back and the newts are about in the stock beds under trays and in the wildlife pond

We won’t mention the other full time job of all the admin and social media that goes on behind the scenes…… usually on the laptop, on the sofa in the evening with my glass of wine and chocolate bar ….. a vital part of the business, the admin not the wine and chocolate, although…….

It was a busy weekend at Whitmuir with the launch of the Reuse, Repair & Share Hub at Whitmuir and the craft fair on Sunday. Hubby David Dodds Author had a table at the fair promoting his debut novel and sold a good amount of books, well done David, so pleased it went well

Lastly and absolutely not last thank you to all the customers who are visiting Quercus, whether for the first time or returning. Its great to help you get the right plants for your garden, have a chat and see everyone enjoy what we have created here in the nursery and gardens. A massive massive thank you

In the garden at home this week

Back through to the sunny west on Monday, this time to see Jamie and Natasha. Great to spend time with them and see what they've been doing in the house and the work Jamie has done restoring my Dad's land-rover it was a special moment to see it running after all the years of it sitting in a garrage. Can't wait to see it out on the road. A bit of gardening of course and a BBQ to finish off the day

Gardening in the west on Monday

Clearing part of the back garden

BBQ for dinner

Another chunk cleared and levelled

The roofers are finished, yay. Although they've done a reasonable job, they were not tidy. My poor plants have had a bit if a bashing but will recover eventually. Lost count of how many sweets wrappers, fag ends and bits of old roof we picked up after they'd gone but on the bright side we have a completely new roof on the extension (the old one was in a bad way, worse than we thought) and a lot of fixed slates and new metal capping on the old cottage roof. Hopefully no more mould and condensation on the ceilings of the extension rooms along with new facias and smart black guttering it looks a lot more respectable.

The first photo is when we got the keys just under 3 years ago, just a wee bit of a difference.

In the back garden, dinner with our new table and chairs in the new seating area

Now to save up to replace the ancient double glazing

Now

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