Time for some garden fun. God, my garden is amazing. I had no real clue what to expect of it when we moved in last December. I was happy that my garden had four old apple trees, and two plums – ‘zwetschgen‘ as they say here in Bavaria – and a large Magnolia. You can’t really go wrong with a bunch of trees in any garden. I love them. The stuff that was planted in the flower beds identified as dark brown snotty sludge at the time. Despite my green thumbs, my best guess was ‘might be peonies, or might be potatoes – no clue’. I saw that there were a bunch of roses, but let’s say that they needed some tender love and care. I gave them some and they now look pretty good. A few more weeks, but there will be plenty of flowers.
This spring was a nice surprise. The beds were full of snowdrops, daffodils, muscari. Oh and weeds. They were everywhere. The previous tenants had had little time to work in the garden in the past year, and that always comes with a price. I don’t mind most weeds, to be honest. Almost everything deserves a place in my garden. But there were some nasty ones, that were invasive or otherwise useless in terms of their added ecological value. They had to go. We’ve been battling the worst weeds for months now and we’re slowly getting stuff under control.
While taking on the carpets of weeds, and as spring slowly (very slowly) warmed up, I freed up space for beautiful plants that lay dormant in the soil beneath. I had no idea. Hellebores, peonies, various cornflowers, forget-me-nots, different types of Allium and pretty much every lamiaceous herb you can think of grows in my beds. All of it came for free with our house. You guessed that right, it makes me very happy. (Whether it’s the flowers or the fact that it was free is debatable. I’m Dutch, we love cheap and we love flowers).
For today, just some quick snaps of flowers, because who doesn’t love some good flowers?
Robin Heinen 