Cheap & cheerful, not Chelsea!

Hello Friends,
It's a month or so since the Chelsea Flower Show, but I've been thinking about it quite a lot. I watch at least some of the TV coverage each year. I don't follow any sport, so it's sort of 'my' seasonal thing before the endless ping, pong, 'come on, Andy' (or whoever it is these days) of Wimbledon. As for footie, I couldn't even tell you when there's any going on, until the St George flags start appearing, of course. 

I always look forward to Chelsea. I've never actually been in person. I suspect the mere fact that it is Part of the Social Calendar & thus a Place to be Seen, plus rumours of £100 tickets puts me off. I enjoy the TV coverage of the plants & gardens, but not the 'celebrity' interviews. Over the years, there have been some fab gardens. I can't hope to reproduce them at home - I just don't have that kind of budget, but I do get ideas & sometimes I see a plant which is new to me, so there are always things to learn. One thing I don't like, is that the whole show garden concept seems very artificial. Most people don't go to the garden centre or nursery & buy in everything at full size & already in flower. The more I thought about it, the more I came to the conclusion that the only personal thing about these show gardens is the design itself. I would truly miss the joy of growing my own plants from seed or giving pride of place to a plant which is special to me, if not to anybody else. My garden is often tangled, in need of deadheading, full of weeds & it was 'designed' (& believe me, that's stretching it....) by me on a piece of A4 scrap paper with a tin of old felt-tips. One of the things that makes our garden special to me is that I have actually bought very few of the plants that are growing in it. This means it will always look like a muddly cottage garden instead of a 'Chelsea' garden, but it is worth it to look at so many of my plants & think about where they came from.........gifts, swaps, cuttings from friends, 'guerilla rescues', home-grown from free packets of seed, not to mention those stray seed heads which 'accidentally' shed a few naughty seeds into my handbag on a day out.

So here's a selection which have made their way to my garden for free......my favourite 4-letter word when it comes to gardening, & very easy to achieve.......otherwise my life would be pretty expensive.

This is a Hebe 'Heartbreaker' in front of a Heucherella 'Solar power'. I promise that this heucherella will be the only plant featured in this blog-post for which I actually parted with hard cash. It was worth it. The acid green sets off pink & purple plants perfectly. The hebe was a birthday gift this year.

More gifts - my nephews gave me this pelagonium at Easter a couple of years ago, the pink verbascum was among a planty birthday gift from my Mum, & the huge-flowered fuchsia from my sister. It looks thoroughly skankrous every winter, then miraculously reappears!

This emerging alium christophii was also a gift - I usually find these don't like the East Midlands soggy winters, but am hoping it will deign to survive - as was the cornflower-blue centaurea, bought for me on a family day out to celebrate my Dad's 70th birthday. It self-seeds easily, so my borders are now dotted with this lovely blue, in memory of a good day.

As soon as fellow gardeners know that you like plants (& I LOVE plants!), then the swaps, cuttings, saved seeds & random potfuls start arriving. Turn nothing away.......it could be something good. I love that I have plants from ex-colleagues & friends I no longer (or only rarely) see. An ex-colleague gave me this huge yellow scabious jobber, which flowers reliably every year at the back of a border, & also this purple aquilegia (she swapped them for a borage & a pink aquilegia, which was a better deal for me than her, as borage carks it at the end of the summer).

When keen gardeners know you are setting up a garden, especially a fair-sized one, as we're lucky to have here, the planty offerings start arriving. I've had some clumps of great stuff from my Mum (very keen plantswoman), including this pink hardy geranium & blue-tinged penstemen.

Similarly, my good friend Helen has provided me with some fab bits & pieces including this lovely purple iris, aquilegia 'William Guinness' (aka 'Magpie') & Poppy 'Tangerine gem', the orange buggers' I can't even get to germinate. When they appear each year, I think of her growing them for me in yoghurt pots on her kitchen windowsill & it's just a whole lot more personal than buying it all in fully grown.                                                           

 Then there's seed swapping.....endless possibilities here. These maroon coloured aquilegias came from seed a friend swapped me - she was fed up with these & wanted some of my pale pink ones. I lost the seed she gave me for several weeks & became convinced I'd accidentally fed it to Steve by using the seed bag to wrap a sandwich! I hadn't, & they still grew for me..........                                                                                                            

........& the bright yellow flash here is a poppy grown from seed from another ex-colleague, given to me when I left some time ago now, but they still pop up to remind me of times past, & I like that. It's what makes a garden personal.                                                                                                          

                                                                                                          

   

                                                                                                    

Don't forget there are often lots of free seed packets around - whether offers, or I've occasionally known garden centres give away surplus or out of date stock, & I never feel shy about asking people for a seed pod or cutting of plants I'd like to grow. My biggest supply of free seed packets comes from my Mum's penchant for buying gardening magazines. They give away more free seed than she can ever possibly grow, so much of it heads north up the A1 to the People & Cats Republic. My fab white foxgloves & huge scarlet poppies were grown from 2 such free packets.    

                                                                                   

                                                  

                                    
Another great source of free plants is, of course, saving your own seed. I always save calendula seed & so the flowers I get are real mixture of yellows, oranges, different shapes & sizes, including some double ones........

                                                                 

.....there's nothing to lose except a little tray of seed compost if your saved seed doesn't germinate. Sometimes, you will find an unexpected invasion of your garden (I mean other than bindweed, brambles & Albert Whiskers' enemies).......a few years ago, I spotted what looked like a stem of honeysuckle poking through the hedge from next door. One careful tug, & since then, we've had an annual show of fab flowers, which are just coming out of bud now..............................

   

........& will bloom for ages. When they're finished, it will almost be time for my annual blackberry crop, acquired in exactly the same slightly nefarious way.

I don't think I'll watch as much Chelsea next year. I do like it for ideas & the clever garden designs, but it just isn't how I (& I suspect most people) garden. A garden is a living thing which grows & evolves with us. It isn't something which is bought in already perfect. The most important ingredient isn't money. I think we are proof that it's possible to create a natural-looking, meaningful garden using time, basic skills & all the many freebies which are out there just waiting to be discovered. For the price of a stamp, a little pinch of flower seed goes a long way, so spread some planty joy to your friends & family...........FREE PLANTS.......now't like 'em!!

Coming up: Veggie garden tour/Tadpole Armageddon/Albert Whiskers' anniversary

Till next time,

C x