Come into the Garden Maud...

Here's a garden that's open whatever the weather, 24/7. There's no problem with parking and your visit will be eco-friendly as you don't need to use any air miles to get here...

This scented basket of Surfinias will welcome you as you walk down the drive towards our house. However, you don't need to ring the doorbell, just go to the right of the house and through our side gate...

Walk through the garden nursery area at the side of the house and pass under the pergola at the end into the main garden, where we'll be expecting you!

So what do we have here then?

We'll do the grand tour first, followed by a closer look at two of my main year-round planting features of the garden, Heuchera and Clematis. My regular blog, Veg Plotting was mentioned recently in the Independent on Sunday's article on Heucheras, so it's about time I introduced them to you properly.

As our tour is a virtual one, there's no need to restrict ourselves to how the garden's looking at the moment, so I've made a slideshow to take you through the seasons. We bought our house from new in 1999, and were faced with a severely sloping blank canvas to work on. I thought you might be interested in how we came up with the garden's design. We can also get out of the garden for a while and over to my allotment just over a mile away. To complete the tour I've added a quick peek at our sheds. If you want to 'hear' what my garden sounds like as you complete your tour, do click on the Birdsong button on the Sidebar to the right.

I welcome your Comments - I do want to have a conversation with my visitors, just like you're really here. There's a separate Question & Answer section for anything you may want to ask about the garden, allotment or anything else on this blog. Please use that section instead of the Comments, so everyone can see these in one place. I'll endeavour to get back to you with an answer as soon as I can. If I need to do some research first, I'll let you know. I'll also be asking you some questions along the way - do leave your answers to these in the Comments section below where I've asked you.


Tea, coffee and cakes will be served in our spacious kitchen, though you're welcome to take your refreshements outside and picnic on the lawn, perch on a wall or take one of the seats on the patio (lower or upper).

After your tour and refreshments, there's the plant sales area and Guest Book to sign. This completes the first page of this blog. If you like the sound of any of the refreshments or Glut Buster ideas, I've added a second page, containing all of the recipes for you. The third page of the blog is an archive of articles from Veg Plotting - to include my Sing for Water experience thus far, a couple of earlier reviews I did of books included in the grand prize giveaway and finally some general articles to help with your orientation. I'm in the process of adding a fourth (and final) page to include plant lists for each of the beds and my monthly garden flower slideshows I've been posting over on Veg Plotting's sidebar.

Don't worry if you get lost on your way round here, I've summarised all the articles in the Sidebar on the right and linked to them, so you can quickly find where you want to be.

During the time my garden's open on the web, I'll also be posting some companion articles over on Veg Plotting, to update regular readers on there with what's been happening here. So far this has included my Sing for Water experience in London on September 14th, previous Open Garden prizewinners, plus progress re fundraising.

So, do follow me and let's go and see what's what!