
I do love how my hanging baskets grow. They build up and then splurge like a firework exploding in slow motion. Petunias (Surfinias) and Begonias are the main flowers, then small flowers and trailing small leaves. There are also fushias in some of the other baskets.
I rely on the small nursery where we buy them to create a wonderful summer spectacle. They never fail to give me joy over the summer. I usually plant up other flowers to fill in the gaps around the yard, although my touch has been lacking with everything that happened over the last several months. My hubby has added some extra plants, sunflowers, clematis, montbretia, a few osteospermums. Missing are pelagoniums, I think they were bought before I even thought of getting some. Still it’s been a good display. I will try and get some closeups if I can safely get out of the back door.


six weeks ago I ordered our hanging baskets from a little nursery in the countryside. It’s actually based at a small farm near Silverdale in Newcastle-under-Lyme. It’s set back off a country road and is basically a little parking area surrounded by greenhouses and shaded concrete platforms, each of which is covered in garden plants. Most of the normal plants seem to have been sold but we took some clematis, begonia, a rose and other plants as well as the hanging baskets. We have been going there for about six years, and each year we get what we need for the garden. Now it’s a case of rearranging plants and hanging the baskets up. You can see we’ve gone a bit mad. But as we haven’t been spending much lately it did mean we could afford it.