MY TINY LONDON GARDEN / ALLOTMENT GARDENING UK

Right, I'm feeling a little bit unsure with these two. Now we're at my favourite place in the world that I can't seem to stay away from, the garden centre. I just stabbed myself with one of the thorns when I was planting that. Oh my gosh, it really hurts. Of course you don't go in right when I'm filming you. Why would the one I'm filming go in right? Good morning everyone, welcome back to my allotment diaries. Actually it's going to be my back garden diaries today. That doesn't sound very nice, hang on a second. I will come up with a nicer name, my garden diaries. Will that do? Sounds a little bit better doesn't it? So I'm currently in the back of my back garden. Lots of bees around today. I'm right at the back of the garden and we are currently in the middle of like really mixing up our garden and just doing it up because it's just become a complete mess. So we did our garden up maybe five years ago. Actually it was during the lockdown and my husband was on furlough and we just sort of spent the time doing the garden up because it was a new house, we'd just bought the house, it all needed doing. We did it quite well, it looked quite nice but now we're a little bit tired of it and also a lot of areas just don't work for us and we've gathered a lot of rubbish. You know how like when you don't look after your garden for a couple of years because you've got a brand new allotment plot and your garden kind of falls apart a little bit and you just kind of like let things go, so things become overgrown, rubbish has kind of accumulated, pots that haven't thrown away, stuff like that. And it's got to the point where the whole garden just needs a complete rejig and that's where we currently are. So today is Saturday and we've got a dump run booked in. We've got a lot of rubbish to get rid of from the garden and a lot of rubble as well. Let me tell you a little bit about this garden. So this is a Victorian terrace house which means the garden is fairly small but actually quite a good size for London. Down the road from where I live there's like a chalk, it's known for like chalk and there used to be like a mine for chalk which means that a lot of our garden is actually chalk. So what that means is that as you start to dig down into the garden you only get so far and then it kind of becomes like a chalky rocky surface which is not ideal for growing stuff on and what most people have done is raised their garden beds or grown in containers and stuff to combat it. It means it's really difficult to put any kind of landscaping in because the second you start to dig it just becomes like rock so it's really difficult but what I'm trying to do this year, this area up here doesn't work because it is just full of rock so I'm going to kind of go with it and I'm going to stone it over so there's going to be lots of little tiny garden stones here and I'm going to grow in pots and containers. I think that's just the only thing I can do right now. The rest of the garden I have worked, I mean we've got a raised planter there but I have worked really hard at improving the soil. It's just taking a very long time. These bags here, loads and loads of them, are full of the rubble that I've dug up. This isn't really growing soil. I can't describe what it is. I can't, I mean there's lots of rocks in it but basically if you get it wet it gets dry straight away. It holds nothing. It's rocky and crumbly and not even weeds grow in it and I think when when you can't even see any weeds growing you know it's really bad soil so we've got bags and bags and bags of it that I'm taking to the dump today. This is like 90% of what is going to the dump today. It's basically just bags of rock and rubble so don't feel that bad about it because putting rocks and rubble into a landfill doesn't feel as bad as putting rubbish into a landfill if you know what I mean. We've only got a little bit of wood to go into the actual landfill. Again don't feel too bad about throwing wood away. That's a bit rotten. It just doesn't feel as bad as like plastic but anyway I digress. That's where we are now. My husband's picking up the van. Okay let's go. Right I don't know if you can hear me in the van but we've just popped by the allotment plot picked up all of the rubbish that I bagged up in the shed so that's all sorted. It's all in the back. My shed is now completely clear so we're heading to the dump then we're going to head to the garden centre and get some supplies. Excellent. I've got like a little shop at the dump where you can pick up free stuff. I think it's free or maybe you pay a little bit. They've got a little garden supply area. Some little bits and bobs that people don't want so if you're looking for a little bargain it's a good idea to check out your local dump because you might have a little shop like this where you can get free stuff. There's loads of pots here. I'm not sure if I need any more pots to be fair. Now we're at my favourite place in the world that I can't seem to stay away from the garden centre. We've come to Morden Hall garden centre. See if there's anything here that we can just stick in a van and take home for the new garden. It's so beautiful here. Right guys, welcome back to my home garden. I'm going to call it the home garden now, not the back garden because it just feels a little bit weird saying that. We've been to the dump. All the stuff is gone. The garden has been completely cleared of anything that I don't want to be in here. So now it's time to start putting the garden back together. Now I'm not in a rush to do this because this is sort of my project, my home project, so I'm sort of happy to go at my own pace and just enjoy the process a little bit. It's not like the allotment plot where it's like a massive rush to get it ready for spring, though I do want it to be nice for when the weather's nice and the weather is getting nice as you can see but I'm happy to kind of take my time a little bit and just make sure I'm making the right decisions. This area here is the one that is playing on my mind a little bit and I'm not entirely sure what to do with. It's this section here right in front of my shed. The soil is really poor and it's not great for growing stuff in. We also need to get access to the shed. So we've got this pathway here which is stones and my idea was to continue the stones into this area here. It's obviously quite a big part of the garden and I do need to decide pretty quickly what to do with it. I think what we're going to do right now is dig it out a little bit, level it over and put some weed membrane down and just sort of make the space accessible basically. I'm thinking stones but we'll find out together what we're going to do with it. Right let's just start to clear it and figure it out. It's just a very very tricky area to work with. It's just absolutely full of rocks and it's just really difficult. Let's get the ground sheets down. I've just started to bring some of the pathway over and yeah can you imagine that whole area being stoned? I think I'm being stoned. You know what I mean. I think it looked really nice and I really like the lawn going into stone. I think it's nice to have different textures and then we've got a patio up there as well. So we've got grass stone patio. Walking barefoot from grass stone to patio will feel so nice in the summer. So yeah I'm happy. All right so we just need to get some stones. Cool. So so Picked up some plants the last time we went to the garden centre. A very eclectic mix of them to be honest. Got a couple of these erysiphyllum. You might see these a lot at the moment in garden centres. They're quite popular at the moment. They're sort of in season and they're all flowering. It's got a couple of these. Also picked up this lovely rambling rose. This is a russoliana. Russoliana. What a lovely name for a rambling rose. I'm not quite sure where she's going to go but you know what she's going to go somewhere. I also picked up this for Cynthia. I've always wanted a for Cynthia. They're very expensive when they're big but this one was only 14 pounds so I just thought well I'll buy them small and hopefully grow nice and big for me and then this is the biggest plant I've ever purchased in my life. It was 50 pounds. I've never spent 50 pounds on a plant before. Actually that's a lie. I brought, no I haven't. I actually haven't. I brought the prunus tree at the back and it was only about 30 pounds from B&Q. That was five years ago. This was 50 pounds. It's a plant called irish luck and don't ask me the proper name of it because I won't be able to pronounce it but there it is. Just in case you want to screen grab that if you can see it. One absolute beaut. So in the garden centre they told me this would have been growing for about five years so for 50 pounds it's pretty good. It's pretty big shrub and that's what I really want this year. I want proper established plants. So we're gonna find a home for all of these lovely plants and pop them in. Right I do actually have three dahlias waiting to go into this bed so I don't want to fill it up too much because I'm really really putting all my bets on the dahlias this year which might be a huge mistake but you know what we're going to do it anyway. So what I'm going to do I'm going to put a couple of these in here at the front and we'll have the dahlias at the back. So these are the plants I'm going to do because they're new and I'm off. Clever me. Right I'm sort of thinking here for the rambling rose and then it can ramble all up here over this lovely trellis. And if you're wondering my neighbour is really lovely and he doesn't mind me growing stuff up his trellis so it should be fine and also it's a really beautiful rose. Who could hate on this rose? I mean look at her she's going to be a stunner. Right I'm quite busy. I just stabbed myself with one of the thorns when I was planting that. Oh my gosh it really hurts. You can see the blood and everything. That is really sharp so keep your kids away from rambling roses. That's what I say. Now these two are a little bit of a mystery I'm not quite sure where to put them. By the way if you're wondering what all that noise is just over there where those big buildings are they are knocking something down and it is incredibly noisy. I do apologise for all the you can probably hear all of the destruction in the background it's just it's a 10-year project apparently so. Right I'm feeling a little bit unsure with these two and I feel like I should probably take my time and wait and move them about a bit and see where where I feel like them going. A lot of this here is all perennials and it grows up really tall so the only thing is this is a Clematis Montana and it really needs something in front of it because its roots are very exposed. So I'm sort of thinking this sort of on the forget-me-nots that's just forget-me-nots there so I can move them. I quite like it there. You know what I'm going to take my time with it a little bit because this is not an allotment this is my garden and like I said I want it to be like a long-term project that I sort of enjoy pottering around and figuring stuff out and I also want to get it right this time and not make rash decisions. So I'm going to leave it there today. I hope you've enjoyed my little garden vlog. What I will do is I will do another one in a couple of weeks time and show you the progress as I go because like I said it's slow and steady so as soon as I have something to show you I will show you. Anyway hope you've enjoyed seeing my little garden renovation and I'll catch you up next time. See you next time guys. Thanks for watching. Bye.