Hello my dear fellow gardeners 💚
What a strange couple of weeks it has been. The corona virus has spread massively through the Netherlands which led to schools and restaurants being closed from the 16th of March until the 6th of April. So I have been working from home since then, setting up exercises for my students on Microsoft Teams and Itslearning while answering their questions and trying to figure out how to adapt tests and exams so that they can do them at home. I'm worried about our physical but also mental health because this social distancing is difficult even in the best circumstances but could be disastrous for children who don't have a safe home. Luckily my students all found ways to relax and forget about the situation, some take their horse for a ride while others spend their free time skateboarding or playing video games.
But thankfully we have our gardens to take our minds of things! In my opinion, gardening is the cheapest form of therapy there is and a positive outcome of this pandemic is that so many people are tending to their gardens. Naturally, I did the same!
So I did a couple of things last week. First I pruned the rose arch. Our rose arch consists of two Generous Gardener roses by David Austin. For the last two years, I just focused on getting the entire arch covered by the plants, so I weaved every little branch through the arch and did no pruning. Last year, the arch was finally complete and look stunning! I looked online for some tips on how to prune an arch but couldn't really find anything, so I removed all of last year's foliage and cut back the top layer so there would be more room for new growth. Hopefully the blooms will be over the entire arch and not just on the top, fingers crossed!
I also removed all the dead foliage in the front garden (which took forever and unfortunately I met all the stinkbugs who made it their home...) and pruned the catalpa trees.
Then I sprinkled manure all over the flowerbeds and worked it into the soil. I got some organic manure at Aldi in Germany which was very easy to use and very nicely priced :) While I was there, I also picked up some Stargazer Lily bulbs which I will plant shortly.Since the pandemic I have only left the house to walk the dog and once a week to get groceries because we are advised to stay home as much as possible. So I'm not able to get to a garden center any time soon. I still have to move some plants and I also have a spot where I usually plant some annuals so I started looking at ways to get potting soil and some plants delivered. Luckily, I found a garden center which delivers perennials and potting soil straight to your home! I ordered:
- 2x Clematis princess Kate
- 3x Daisy "Leucanthemum superbum"
- 4x Creeping phlox "subulata"
- 3x Jacobsladder "polemonium caeruleum"
- 3x Yellow foxgloves "digitalis grandiflora"
- 2 bags of potting soil
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| Bottom left is the delphinium I showed you two weeks ago, now joined with some mystery friends. |
