Summer flowers, City street food and the Picts

You have been warned, there will be a lot of blogs landing this week as I try and catch up, yes I have three sitting waiting to be edited and finished! Life has been so busy and I am spending any lovely evenings in my own garden while the weather lasts. The nursery has been busy and as always there is plenty work to do in amongst helping customers. The great summer weather has resulting in great growth, lots of flowers and abundant wildlife, insects and butterflies, which is fabulous.

The front garden

There are so many plants in flower in the nursery at the moment, its hard to keep up with all of them. Here are some of the pretty pinks, especially the Papaver somnifera which has been covered in hover flies all week.

Butomus umbellatus, Rosa mundi, Papaver somniferum with hover flies, Sempervivium tinctorium

Snippets from the garden at home - Our herb garden in the nursery is a big area, much more than most people have available. In my small town garden at home my herb garden is in a raised bed in the back garden. It is 1 metre wide and 3.5 metres long and approx 60 cm tall, so just over 3 Square metres. In this space I have planted Sage, purple sage, chices, Everlasting onion, wesh onion, tree onion, Crispy golden origano, 4 different thymes, winter savoury, chard, prostrate rosemary, lavander, kale, marigolds, french beans, lettuce, parsley, nasturtiums, cornflowers, rocket and lemon balm! There are also tulips planted for spring interest. So you really don't need much space for a comprehensive herb (and veg) garden. I also have a smaller raised border which is 2 metres by 40cm and 30cm high. In here I have strawberries, broad beans, feverfew, more kale, runner beans and more marigolds.

As well the fruit in these raised beds I have a wee fruit border which has a black currant, red currant, blueberry and 3 types of rhubarb!

Plenty to keep us going in fruit veg and herbs through the year.

The herb raised bed

Strawberries and runner beans

Broad beans

Fig tree

The fruit border

When we moved here three years ago the front garden was all grey gravel and slabs, a set of steps falling apart and a metal hand rail. The large shrubs along the roadside wall were there, but over grown as was the space underneath them. We lifted and removed 100 slabs, cleared out under the shrubs and I created all the borders and planted plants into the grave to soften it. Shade plants under the shrubs and sun lovers in front of the house. Three years later it is a riot of colour and full of insects

Our Quercus team is just the best. Despite it being a very hot unpleasant day (if you had to work) we still had a laugh AND the great annual stock bed tidy is finished huge thanks to Isabel for doing a massive chunk of it, I felt I was getting no where over the past few weeks and to Fiona for helping customers while we got over the finishing line. Lots of plants potted and now we work through all the plants left behind the office, potting and sorting. Never finished

Maisie sunbathing

Rona and Isabel with the completed stock beds

Rona, Fiona and Isabel

Honestly can’t even keep up with the end of the week post lol. I have had a lovely couple of days off though and now that the annual stock bed tidy is finished we are raring to go on all the tasks that get done in the second half of the year

This last week was all about finishing off some of those big nursery tasks. Fiona and Erin finished potting up all the seedlings and cuttings done last year and in the spring and the new field stock beds are filled already

Isabel and I finished the annual stock bed tidy, so everything is now weeded, fed, potted up, top dresses, labelled and sorted. Of course this is never ended as we are constantly potting new stock, keeping on top of the pesky weeds and propagating

The gardens are looking fabulous, even if I do say so myself. Now that it is maturing the borders are full and a glorious riot of colour. You can pick up one of our garden leaflets to see what to look out for

Its been hot again and we have in the main managed to keep up with the watering, trying to enjoy the summer weather and not get stressed is a fine balancing act for us gardeners

I am working through alpines again, re propagating to replace all the ones we’ve sold already and then I will do the same with herbs. This means we keep a fresh supply of them coming our into the sales area through the season

We had a lovely visit from the Strathaven Garden Club on Thursday who all enjoyed their visit, bought plants and had lovely weather for their visit too

The pseudopanax has sprouts where I cut the dead branch off, which I am delighted about. It’s the dead looking very tall plant in our exotics corner incase you are wondering. I nearly lost it in the winter freeze but it lived and I cut off one dead branch and now its sprouting 3 new ones from the cut yay

The recovering pseudopanax

A new planted pot

In the herb garden

I've gone on a complete nostalgia trip for my birthday this year with my gift from David. Bought early so we can enjoy them in the summer weather we've got 2 proper old school deck chairs from Southsea Deckchairs. I remember the ones my parents had and sitting in them in the garden in Linlithgow when I was wee.

A lovely evening in Edinburgh with Becky, enjoying some Edinburgh street food and catching up

On our day off we headed north to see the Aberlemo pictish stones, long on our list of things to visit. Three of these stones stand on the road side opposite the village school (the cross slab has been removed for conservation) and one is in the church yard just a short walk down the road. We got the best of the weather and managed to have our picnic in the sun before the rain arrived with lovely view across towards the southern Munros of the Cairngorms.

We walked down to the church to see the stone that may commemorate the Battle of Nechtansmere, which was once thought to have taken place near Dunnichen, 10km south of Aberlemno, in AD 685. King Ecgfrith of Northumbria was killed in this battle, ending the Anglian occupation of Pictish territory. The location of the battle is now debated and may actually have taken place much further north.  On the other side is a fine cross with elaborate interlace decoration on a backdrop of interlaced animals.

On the way home we stopped in at Rait Antique centre for coffee and cake and a browse around the antique shops where the rain finally caught up with us. I also got a chance to drive David’s new car

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