Budget Blooms! 🌼 Creating a Dreamy Cut Flower Garden with Lidl Seeds | Sweet Peas + Cornflowers

Welcome back to the garden or welcome if it's your first time here. I managed to sneak in a couple of hours this week in the garden. It has been raining for most of the week and I was also a little bit under the weather. I had a bit of a cough this week but today I'm having a nice healing day in the garden. My phone is switched off. I'm tidying up but also we're gonna do a new cauliflower bed and this cauliflower bed is seed that I got from Lidl that you may remember that I sowed back in I think March and they are screaming to go outside. So I have a nice relaxing garden video for you today to enjoy. So grab a cup of tea and let's see what's growing. Also for reference I filmed this on the 26th of April so this is what the garden is looking like coming into May time. I noticed that the trees are after exploding this week with leaves. I think the combination of all the rain and then the bit of sun just made everything go poof. So everything is looking very lush at the minute which I love to see. Hands up who also gets nostalgia when they see honesty seed pods. These remind me of being a kid. I love when they go transparent and this is a self-seeded honesty but I think it's a biennial. I didn't have any last year but I did have some in the previous year. I also have loads of self-seeded aqua legia popping up in the front garden as well as the back garden which I love in May. I love aqua legia for giving you a little bit of height in the border in May time because May can be a funny one because your spring bulbs are starting to go and then you're waiting for your summer perennials to go into flower. So there can be a lot of foliage but I love the aqua legia for a little pop of colour for the month of May. I'm also just tidying up the grass. So I don't do no-mow May but I do leave patches for the whole summer. So instead of no-mow I have some no-mow summer. So in the back just around the pond area I let a patch grow just wild but to be honest I don't think there's a lot. It's mainly grass that's in it with some of my nemesis creeping buttercup. If you watched me last year you'll know that I did a no-dig mini meadow in the front garden and I trimmed that back in March. So I left it go all winter. I've trimmed it in March and it has loads of foliage so it'll be interesting to see what grows in that this year. Towards the end of the video I give a little look, a quick look and you can see what's growing in it. Definitely looks like there's loads of wild carrot in it. There's loads of clover which was in the grass already but I generally, they're my two wild patches and then I leave the dandelions that are grown out of the cracks in the front. But I love cutting the grass. I have said it before it's like free therapy and there's no shame or judgment here. It's really disappointing when I see people online. Gardening is fun so when I see people bashing each other for not mowing or mowing or it's just disappointing. If you have a patch of grass, fair play to you. Some people have a concrete slab and they have to garden in pots so this is a judgment free zone here. A job that I have left till the very last minute is pruning back these mophead hydrangeas. I usually do it early April but I just didn't get around to doing it. Mophead hydrangeas flower on new wood so if you cut it back too far you will get lots of foliage and growth but you won't get any flowers. Now this is just for this variety. If you have paniculata you can cut them earlier and you can cut them back harder. So I am just taking off the dead heads on these because touch wood on my sides of the island we shouldn't get any frost. Touch wood. And usually people will leave the flower heads on them just to protect them from frost over winter. And now it is time to make this year's sweet pea tea peas. So I have lots of just bamboo sticks. Last year I failed with sweet peas. The year before I thrived. This year I'm hoping to thrive again. I cleared out one of the cut flower beds that had some spring bulbs that had died back and in this I'm going to sow the sweet peas and I used the grow lights on these. So if you saw the video back in March I experimented with grow lights. I got amazing germination compared to what I usually get and these seeds they are crying to be planted outside. They have some roots on them. So the weather looks like it's warmer for the rest of the week. So I decided today was the day to set up this cut flower bed. I'm going to do the sweet pea tea peas and these are sweet peas that I just got a niddle. So I think they were like 50 cent or euro. I'm not too sure but I was like I'm going to try and see because sometimes people ask me like oh is there you know a difference with the cheaper seeds versus you know the fancy one. So let's see we'll have a little experiment. I'm also going to sow in some corn flour that I sowed again back in March under the grow lights and these are also packets of seeds from niddle. So I'm hoping these two plants planted together will give me a nice abundance of a colour throughout summer but also lots of cut flowers because the great thing about them is if you keep cutting them back they will keep growing until the first frost and I absolutely adore the scent of sweet pea. If anybody can recommend either a perfume or something that has that scent of sweet pea so that I can wear it and enjoy it all year round please let me know in the comment section. If you are wondering why am I only wearing one glove in this video I normally don't wear gloves in the garden but I had a blister on my left hand so this isn't a new gardening trend, this isn't Michael Jackson with a sparkly glove trend in the garden. I just had a blister on my left hand that I didn't want to get like muck in and placers usually slip off so that is why I am wearing the glove today. So as always let me know in the comment section how you getting on with your garden so far. I have moments where I feel quite behind but then I have moments where I'm sticking out seedlings and I'm like oh maybe I'm a bit further along than I thought but don't be fooled there is messy corners here. My seating area is an absolute riot of seed trays, pots, broken pots and things that I need to plant. If you saw last week's video I went to a rare and unusual plant sale and those plants are sitting in that area they need to be planted so don't be fooled if this video looks like I know what I'm doing, this week I do, next week I won't. Have you had any wins in the garden and any fails? So if you would like some longer garden videos or you just want to catch up on any of the ones that you've missed so far this year then do check out the cottage garden playlist where all of the garden videos are listed in order and you can check them out. So if you're only getting started in the garden this year don't worry loads of time you are not behind and if you're looking for some inspiration then I share my wins and my fails and my messy corners in the garden videos which you'll find on that playlist. For anyone who's interested in becoming a member you can also check out the members area where there is exclusive member only Q&A's that you can check out and you can also catch the videos ad free. It was like how would you say I treated it like an unpaid hobby I said no just there after Christmas because element and I am fighting back the tears I could fall in love with an absolute millionaire.