Garden Pictures - How Does Your Garden Grow?

While life has been manic one post that I have missed writing is my How Does Your Garden Grow post. The posts kind of got put to one side while I concentrated more on my food. But I have missed them. 

I have decided to start making the time again to go out and photograph nature again. I recently had a down fall with my depression getting worse and I stopped doing things which I loved to do before. Photography was one of them. Now my moods have balanced out again thanks to a new dose of medication I am gradually rediscovering "me" again.

I have decided to restart my How Does Your Garden posts again. But this time I will not be writing about the goings on in the garden. That is the hubby's area and if I am honest I did get stuck for things to write. So this time I am going to share pictures that I have taken in our garden.

There is nothing like a new toy to reignite my love of photographing nature. When I ordered my iPhone 6 a few weeks ago I also added an Olloclip lens to my basket. This will enable me to capture macro shots without lugging my camera around. This week I am sharing some of the shots that I captured in our garden over the last week.

This is how our garden has grown...

Sunday Picture

I adore seeing all of the bees that are in our garden at the moment. We do try to plant flowers that will attract them such as the lavender. We have also found, this year, that they also love the alliums.

Silent Sunday

Fun in the Garden - Blogger Competition!

For us, as a family, garden time is important. The garden is a huge focal point of our lives. When we were looking at buying our house a garden was high up on our must have list. The garden was what sold this house to us. As soon as we saw the garden we knew that it was ideal for us.

When the hubby and I were growing up we both had fond memories of fun play time in the garden and we always knew that we wanted our children to create the same happy memories. As the children have grown, over the years we have so many pictures of happy times and memories of them in the garden.

In the day and age of technology that we live in it is even more vital that we get our children away from the screens and out into the fresh air and enjoying outdoor play.

Our dream has always been to create a garden that the whole family can enjoy. We have a veggie patch where we grow our own fruit and vegetables as well as having chickens for eggs. We believe that the children have gained a better understanding to where vegetables come from. They watch as the seeds germinate, to being planted outside, to seeing the produce grow to helping to harvest. Then of course the fun part, eating what they have seen grow. We love getting the children as involved as possible.

My top tips for getting children into gardening are:

• Get them their own seeds to plant and care for
• Have sunflower growing competitions
• Give the older children their own area of responsibility in the garden or a set job like watering the greenhouse
• Take the children shopping and let the see the plants and allow them to select what to grow
• Let them get their hands in and muddy, kids love getting their hands in the mud!
• Get the children to paint and decorate their plant pots
• Hunt for garden mini beasts

Helping in the garden is not only great family bonding time but it also has great developmental advantages. It assists with physical development and their understanding of the world around them including life cycles and where their food comes from!

 

Growing fruit and vegetables is fun but all children dream of having their own play area.

In our family play area of the garden we have a trampoline, swings, balls, sit on cars and rocking horses. This year we have made a new addition to their play area. We have added a playhouse for the twins. This has become a favourite area of play and an amazing piece of play equipment. To personalise the house for the twins we have painted the house in fun, bright colours. We are still yet to paint inside the house, that is next on our to do list. The hubby has done an amazing job at creating the area for the twins. He cleverly reused some old pallets to become the base for the house. Then by adding some extra planks of wood he has made an adjoining decking area for them to relax on. When we moved some old edging we realised that it would go around the sides of the decking perfectly to create a mini fence around. As you can see with their own little path leading to their house they have the perfect play area that they can call their own.

If you are thinking of adding any piece of play equipment this year to your garden to keep the children occupied during the summer and school holidays we would thoroughly recommend investing in a playhouse. This has been one of the best toy buys that we have made!

If you are a blogger Waltons are giving you the chance to win your very own playhouse, like the one pictured below! Waltons provide high quality playhouses, climbing frames, sheds, log cabins, green houses, summer houses and more. To be in with the chance of winning one of these fantastic playhouses all you have to do is write a blog post similar to what I have written telling Walton about how you like to keep your children entertained in the garden during the summer months. The best post, judged by Waltons, will win their very own playhouse! There will also be a runner up who will win a £50 voucher to spend at Waltons. Check out the Waltons blog for further information.

Photograph courtesy of  Waltons

Disclosure: This post is in collaboration with Waltons. All views and opinions are my own and 100% honest. I am in no way involved with the running or judging of the competition.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Week 18

This last week we have seen all sorts of weather. It has be gloriously sunny and hot one day then cold and wet the next. We have even had a couple of frosty mornings!

The garden certainly did need the rain and I love the seeing the plants glistening with water droplets. Plus it gave me the perfect excuse to grab my camera and capture their beauty.

Our garden is full of colour from the various wallflowers that the hubby planted last year. We are amazed by the size of some of them, they are doing so well. The Allium Purple Sensations are in bud and as these are a favourite I cannot wait to see them open up! Last year we bought a couple of reduced Clematis to grow up the front of the house. This year one is still small but the other one is covered in buds and is starting to open. Many of the plants in our garden are ones that we bought from the reduced section and we have shown that with a little TLC these plants can thrive.

This is how our garden has grown this week...

How Does Your Garden Grow - Week 13

At last there are true signs of spring and colour in the garden.

When I look out of the front window I can see blossom starting to bloom on trees. It is such a delight to have some colour return. Colour is the one thing that I miss seeing over the winter.

We now have a mass of yellow flowers from the forsythia and daffodils that are continuing to open up and buds are forming on the shrubs and fruit trees. Some of our plants seem to be behind others. I have seen pictures of magnolias and camellias flowering but ours are still tight in bud. However I know that soon they will be gracing us with their beauty and colour will be everywhere!

This is how our garden has grown this week...

How Does Your Garden Grow - Week 12

This week has seen the hubby dead heading the hydrangea. I love hydrangeas and even as they are dying off they have a beauty about them. Therefore I feel sad seeing it cut back but I welcome the beautiful, green new growth that is shooting through. As the hydrangeas were cut back we were able to see the new peony growth coming through. I always love the front of our house in the summer and this year I will love seeing it develop even more. Last year we added a lot of plants that were from the bargain section so they didn't do much, but this year they should bloom. We also moved my beloved magnolia to the front. At the moment it is still tightly in bud but it is covered in buds so it should be full of flowers when the time comes.

As for the back garden, well what can I say, Opie and Jax, the puppies of anarchy, have well and truly taken over. They have recently discovered that they can dig. Thankfully at the moment they are digging in the area where we are going to be extending but we do not want them to carry on. We have found a lovely holistic dog trainer who has been to see us and she has given us a lot of tips for how to stop this so fingers crossed they will stop. Failing that the hubby will be building them a sand pit!

Anyway, this is how our garden has grown this week...

As always I am sharing how our garden has grown with the lovely Annie from Mammasaurus.

How Does Your Garden Grow? Week 11

At the beginning of the week I looked out into the garden and wondered what I could post for this weeks How Does Your Garden Grow? Then we had a rainy spring day that left the garden looking so pretty. So I grabbed my camera and captured rain drops on the plants.

The path has now been finished and looks great. The twins even have their own personal path leading to their playhouse. We have recently found that the puppies have discovered gaps in the bottom of the conifers so they have been escaping into the vegetable patch and even our next door neighbour's back garden. So the hubby has a task of blocking up the gaps. Next week I will be able to show you the results. The fruit cage is now ready for the netting to be added and all of the delicious soft fruit that will grow in there. The big jobs that needed doing have been done so now it will be time to get the seeds sown for our vegetables. It is great getting things ticked off the to do list!

I saw the beautiful tulips at the end reduced to clear so treated myself to a couple of bunches. They have added some lovely colour to my kitchen window.

Here is our week in pictures...

As always I am sharing how our garden has grown with the lovely Annie at Mammasaurus.