Victoria’s Verdant Wandsworth Wonderland

I was trying to think of a title all with v’s, but I could only think of Victoria’s Verdant Verges which didn’t seem quite respectful enough!

I am a relatively recent reader of Victoria’s blog, discovered whilst idly clicking on names on another blog. As a resident of SW London myself I kept reading & was interested in her writing. So it was not far to go when she opened her garden on Sunday as part of the ‘Yellow Book’ garden openings, aka NGS. I love having a good nose round other people’s gardens, particularly small ones like my own, to see what they have been able to achieve with a little imagination & much hard work.

Victoria’s garden is larger than mine, not that I am jealous of course, & I found a delightful & very calm green oasis. Again, not like my busy crammed space.

It had many large tropical or tropical looking plants which gave an exotic feel.

A huge phormium was very dominant.

I loved the fact that there were several places to sit out. My favourite was the pond which was a good size, high enough & with a wide edge so it could be sat on comfortably & I thought he box balls at the base of the pond were a nice touch – but then I do like box balls!

I suppose I have always had a (very) vague fantasy that one day I could open my garden, but in reality, even if the overall design was adequate, the effort of getting it into a tidy & respectable space would probably be beyond me! Mr B would hate it too! But I can still dream of people admiring my little space. We all have to have our little fantasies & in the meantime, respect to Victoria & others who do put in all the effort, raise money for charity & let us have a little snout round other back gardens.

I spent the evening making alien ears & antennae!

I had hoped to write at length about my recent visit to Great Dixter accompanied by beautiful photos of the glorious planting............


Unfortunately 45 minutes after joining the M25 we decided it was probably best to leave at the next exit (M23) & go elsewhere as we were going nowhere extremely slowly! Wakehurst Place we thought: always an enjoyable place to visit (Kew in the countryside), the M3 was remarkably clear..........

Surprisingly, as we left the M3 we hit another jam, so slowly round the roundabout & back onto the M3 (such a delightful motorway) deciding we might in fact go down to Brighton but left at the next exit to make a 2nd attempt the Wakehurst trip. This time it was not too bad, until we hit another queue of other vehicles obviously leaving the jam we were avoiding. I hope you are all keeping up!

We did get there, just in time for a pleasant lunch of watercress soup, bread, local cheese & an apple before avoiding showers in the grounds. At one point we sheltered in the house where there was a fascinating fireplace: from cherubums to mammarymums!






After more sheltering which involved a cup of tea & a delicious piece of cake we decided to return home at least noting that the weather had not been suitable for a trek to Great Dixter.


Anyway, enough of fascinating days out, I am sure you all want to know about the alien's ears! Or probably not. My daughter is about to move down to 'sock country' shortly to spend 3 years doing something terribly useful which will not equip her to keep her aged parents in the manner to which they have become accustomed. Before this she is off to 'Bestival' on the Isle of Wight, the last night of which is a fancy dress night, this year's theme being space. Daughter & friend are going as the aliens from Toy Story. Daughter may be artistic but she is not practical whereas I love making things & will even cast aside the Lazy Trollopness if I have a little project to do. Hence last night was spent making a set of alien ears & antenna, modelled below by another family member.

The re-vamp continues at snail's pace.....

If you have read this blog before, you may recall I was so enthused at the Hampton Court Flower Show by Phillipa Pearson's planting in her Sadolin Nature to Nurture garden that I decided to re-vamp one of my flower beds along similar lines. Well as near as I can get!

Here is a reminder of what I am aiming for......

Now there are difficulties involved in this project: I only have a fairly small garden so the bed in question is not huge & is surrounded by fairly large shrubs & a fence none of which can be shifted of course so first off the potentially glorious planting will not be surrounded by invitingly wide grass paths. There will be a lawn in front. That will have to do!

This is my starting point - not at its best & lots to do!

The change will involve moving most of the existing plants out of the bed, some of which can be split up & re-planted but others will need re-homing. Does anyone want a pale pink blowsy peony for instance? Deep down I am quite glad of a good reason for getting rid of it as it has not really performed since I moved it to its current position from another spot, & it was a client cast-off in the first place. (BTW don't believe the 'peonies don't like being moved' stuff; Lazy trollop gardening advice is that you may leave a peony in a carrier bag for about 6 months with a bit of watering from time to time whilst the LT ponders its future & still flower when eventually planted.)

So you will see that the apace of the title has not involved much actual physical progress, although a bit of weeding in that bed the the other day could count, but there has been plenty of that pondering business. However, last weekend a little HRT was indulged in to move things along a tad. We were having a wander round Wisley & as usual found ourselves in the sales area on the way back to the car park. Luckily Mr B finds spending money pretty easy & so some essential plants for the project were purchased: achillea, crocosmia, ecinacea & helenium.

I suppose I must really move on from this lengthy pondering stage & make a bit of an effort now!

Shame the harpist had white wibbly wobbly arms!

My last entry was about my birthday, & so too is this one, but only in order to introduce something of, I hope, slightly more interest. A couple of months ago my sister told me to make sure I was available to go somewhere in the late afternoon of Friday 14 August. My present from her was 2 tickets to an Evening Soiree at Nymans gardens. So that is where Mr B & I found ourselves on Friday evening.

Unfortunately it was a slightly longer than ideal journey: going towards the south coast on a late Friday afternoon in the summer is always a potential traffic jam although in fact it was not too awful. On arrival we were greeted with a glass of wine, asked to choose our dishes & then were allowed to wander round the garden until the meal was served at 7pm. It was actually very lovely: the sun had come out after a day which I could liken to sitting inside a plastic box, it was just setting giving a lovely light, the gardens were of course almost deserted which is always a plus so it was a very an enjoyable experience. Sadly it was all too short & we had to go for our meal.

The food was pleasant but not exciting & was served to the accompaniment of harp music. That was also pleasant but not exciting & luckily I was sitting with my back to the harpist. Why luckily? Well, because I, & indeed Mr B found her upper arms most mesmerising & I must confess, not entirely pleasant! The lady in question was very pale & was wearing a black strapless number which I am sure looked delightful in the mirror, but the way we saw it was as she was playing the harp so we got a great deal of white wobbly upper arm, under arm (not wobbly) & finally back, slightly overlapping top of dress!

It was actually a pleasant enough evening. It would have been improved if we had been able to have a longer meander & if it had been nearer to home. I wonder if Ham House do something similar. Am I sounding ungrateful? I don’t mean to because it was a lovely thought from my sister.

And finally, my cherubums……………………………

“It’s not a very nice message”

This was the laughing greeting of the young lady at the door yesterday morning holding a large box tied with a pink ribbon. Now I would not normally blog about my birthday, after all how can I follow all those wonderful blogs in honour of JA-S, but the message was in fact just perfect: “With love to the lazy trollop”. The content of the box was possibly even better, just glorious!

Now it just so happened that I was just completing some similar comestibles to take to one my places of paid employment, where strangely enough I am not a lazy trollop. You can see how inadequate I felt.

With thanks to the 2 plotting protagonists.

Oh yes, and they do taste as good as they look!