This year has been, by far, the most successful in my gardening adventures. However, in a few spots I am gifted with some things that, without the tiniest bit of intervention from me, or even without having spent a single penny, have not only survived but thrived.
When travelling on the London Overground into town, I am always amazed by the tenacity of buddleia growing out of cracks in walls twenty feet up in a railway siding or out of a gutter. This buddleia is literally growing out of the tiniest cracks in the side of this old concrete path that leads down to the grass. Each year after it has flowered, I hack it down to ground level again but year on year, it comes back. I like to leave it despite its non-invitation as I like to encourage butterflies and bees into the garden. This year I have also discovered that it makes a great cut flower too.
A little further down the path, again growing out of a small crack, is this clematis. I'm not sure how clematis propagate themselves, but I have another freebie which I am going to train up to the top of the balustrade around the deck. You can also see that alchemilla mollis is happily self-seeding along the cracks too.
Down at the bottom of the garden, the brambles scramble over the top of my fence providing me with blackberries come late summer. I've been picking them every few days and my freezer is getting a nice supply which will tide me over the coming months as a compote for my porridge.
Do you have gifts from Mother Nature?
Looks like you DEFINITELY have a green thumb. We live in a high desert area and it takes tons of water for anything to grow. Your pictures are lovely!
ReplyDeleteBlimey. This is a very nice place to be. What was I doing away from blogland this long? I am clearly a woollyhead
ReplyDeleteI have a purple euonymus that's just appeared a few weeks ago and last year some white grape hyacinths appeared too. How lovely to have a clematis appear ;-)
ReplyDeleteBrambles and elderberries from the hedgerows are my favourites but I also have uninvited guests that I really don't want - like brambles inside the garden, and ground elder, and bindweed, and briony ... it has been a very good year for all of them!
ReplyDeletePomona x
Tiny little violas keep springing up in my garden, in the pots on my deck, every year. I love them. They may be self-sown, but they are very much invited.
ReplyDeleteI'm always amazed when things self seed in my garden and wonder where they've blown in from - wouldn't it be nice to follow the journey of a windblown seed and see how far it travels? The best self-seeded gift we've had this year have been runners from our strawberry plants which have given us more fruit than the plants in the containers.
ReplyDeleteThat's good to know, that buddleia makes a good cut flower.
ReplyDeleteScrumptious looking blackberries. I have windfall apples and damsons from the hedgerows here, we're still waiting for the blackberries to ripen.