Its all about tidying the nursery Gardens for Spring

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The next big task in the nursery year is to get the gardens tidied ready for spring and the nursery opening at the beginning of March. The weather this year has been less than pleasant and its been a very wet second half of January and so far all of February. I've also been getting on with lots of behind the scenes jobs including designing new signs, placing orders, sorting our alpines out and getting everything ready for 7th March.

To cheer us all up in this wet dismal weather we have pots of snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis for sale. There are several bulbs in each 9cm pot and they are just in flower. They are £4.50 per pot and available from the nursery by arrangement.
All the snowdrops we have planted in the nursery gardens are coming into flower and I've painted all the varieties I've got growing in my garden at home.
You can also read all about snowdrops in the blog I wrote by following the link below:




Help! Up until now we’ve been self sufficient in cardboard boxes for our customers to take their purchases away in, using up house moving boxes and so on. Our usual supplies have dried up and we don’t want to have to buy in new boxes when re-cycling is very important to us. We would like to ask our lovely customers to help us with the following:

a. Bring containers, bags boxes for your purchases when you come to shop with us.
b. If you have a supply of boxes you don’t want please bring them to us and we can recycle them.
c. If you know of anyone else who has a regular supply of
cardboard boxes they need rid of, send them our way please 😊
We can take them from you any time, you don’t need to wait until we open just drop me a message and I’ll let you know when I’m at the nursery.
Thank you, this would really help us out, reduce waste. Help the environment and keep the recycling going.
Photo is our much missed much loved Bracken the nursery dog in a box 🙄 ❤



Thanks to Kirkurd WI for having me along to talk about creating the nursery and gardens and buying some plants too 😊

It might be wet and miserable these days but there's always plenty to do in the potting shed and greenhouse at home when I have the time. Sowing seeds, watering and tidying up the potting shed.


Despite the rain, sleet and occasional snow flurries I’ve been wrapped up in layers and my waterproofs getting on with starting to tidy the nursery gardens. The bottom terrace is the first to get attention, beginning with the winter garden. There is psychology in my choice of starting at the furthest point and working back to civilization 😃
There were a lot of leaves to lift this year, so a lot of barrows of material being barrowed up to the compost bins, it means I can go home and have my glass of wine and bar of chocolate with a clear conscience, I mean really who am I trying to kid, I don’t need no excuses 😃
Lifting leaves, tidying up the perennials, cutting back last years stems, trimming shrubs if required and making a note of labels needing re-written or broken ones replaced. It’s a good opportunity to get up close and personal with the plants and gardens as a whole and note anything needing fixed or replaced or attention of any kind……oh look the job list is getting longer not shorter, no surprises there!
The winter garden then the Cornucopia garden and finally into the Wildlife garden. The climbers on the arch got a tidy and I took the net off the pond, now all the leaves have fallen. Isabel and Shannon cleaned out and thinned out the plants in the pond last autumn so it will be good to see how well it does this year.

The Winter Gardern

Plant interest in the Winter garden




Ophiopogon 'Nigrescens'

The Cornucopia Garden




The Wildlife Garden










A long long time ago in the mists of time for 3 or 4 christmas Mhairi and I got a pelham puppet each. They were bought in the Jenners toy department. Who remembers that place of toy worship in the basement, with its big glass fronted wooden cabinets and shelves of every toy there was?
We used to build theatres, write plays and perform the puppets with friends for our family's entertainment, I use the word entertainment loosely, I'm sure it was awful 😕
Fast forward several decades and for the last 10 years or so I started picking them up in antique shops and antique fairs when I saw them. Many still have their original boxes which is great, some don't, some are in excellent condition and some are not. The two in the last photo need new strings and the wooden control bar which is in the post. Currently I have 32, the originals were the soldier boy, the horse and the mouse, David hates them.


Last week, what a was a wet week, some days were a two coat day and I am ever thankful for my waterproof trousers keeping me dry, mud free and warm. With a month to go until we re-open the pressure is definitely on to get everything ready so there is no luxury of working indoors on the wetter days, despite the amount of admin and orders needing done. I did not work out on Tuesday tho, even that was beyond my limits with sleet, snow and rain all day. However the garden tidy is progressing and I am working off the winter excess, so all good 😊

I started the bottom terrace on Monday, finishing it on Thursday morning, it’s a long winding garden with all those willow leaves to lift, perennials to cut back and the path to rake. Then on to the Scottish natives garden, this gets everything cut back and the borders topped with compost from our compost bins. At least the heavy barrows of compost are going down hill. Friday and the native garden got finished, including thinning out some parts of the rugosa rose hedge and tidying the bug hotel. I refilled some of the sections that have old Molinia stems folded up, simply by pulling off the stems I’d be taking off when I tidy, folding them up and squashing them in, you can see in the photo they are in several sections, more great recycling! I replenished the sedum roof with new compost and replaced some of the Sedum acre.

Then it was onto the stream garden and wellies on, starting at the furthest end and working towards the gates. Again, cutting back and topdressing with our compost and a great excuse for a paddle lol and not letting the weeding bucket float away.

Its such a satisfying part of gardening, turning it all from winter messy into tidy beds waiting for spring, seeing everything getting going and the first flowers emerging.

Meanwhile behind the scenes I’ve been tidying all our alpines ready for selling in spring, ordering in lots of new goodies for our wee shop, outdoor pots, designing new signs and printing out new plant description signs for the stock bed plants. Its all go!







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