4th September here we come!

It is now only 3 weeks until the big day but I’m feeling ok. On Thursday we had another visit from our NGS area manager type person....Steven said inspection, I said visit and chat...but all in all it was better than expected. Janine is lovely and lives locally, but has this odd patch of gardens to look after that extends from Camberwell and Peckham down to South Croydon.  This large area mortifies me more that Camberwell is included in the same sentence as Croydon as I hoped I had escaped zone 4 for zone 2 grittiness.

A Camberwellian scene of beuty

Anyway, I was very good with my visit, although I panicked and took a half day to finish all my weeding before she arrived. I had worked out the route round the garden in advance, and she was suitably impressed with the bottom garden before I turned to my left and casually mentioned ‘and of course this is the new bit of the garden’ taking her up to the new territories where Ganesha is looking suitably imposing. She was a wonderful one for expounding superlatives and was suitably impressed, and she was even kind enough to re-word our NGS description to

‘A garden to surprise and delight with a pond, sunken terrace and bold, big leafed planting of exotics that reach for the sky in late summer, achieving a crescendo of colour with dark dahlias, ricinus, bananas and tetrapanax . New interest this year from a huge secret garden with more jungle plants, developing potager and cutting garden. Plantsman’s garden with lots of interesting and unusual hardy exotics and a greenhouse with carnivorous plants only for the brave to investigate’

This was very kind as it is very difficult to describe your own garden, and now knowing that all the descriptions in the Yellow Book are provided by their owners does add a rather egoistical dimension to visiting.

I pray to the NGS Gods that it will all turn out ok

An interesting dimension to all this NGS malarkey has been the panic friends have when I come and see their own gardens. On Saturday at a truly scrumptious BBQ in Winchester Jon seemed to panic and then get very paranoid if I looked towards any plants, and I felt that there had been a bit of anxious gardening before our arrival. He needn’t have worried, would I judge?!

The Gods are watching....grey panthers beware

So....all in all I’m ok, and on Sunday even managed to spend the afternoon on the outside sofas reading the paper and not desperately gardening as things are now all under control and it’s now just a matter of weeding and deadheading and praying that the flowers don’t go over and there is no freak weather or rain.... rain being the most likely. However we do have a plan b and if it is rainy we will cover over our terrace making a large water proof area for eating cake and relaxing, so do come visit!

Water Canna

Paulownia beginning to dwarf my greenhouse

We did do some digging to finish a couple of paths....these are all the evil bramble roots. Dont they look evil?

Unabused Rubbekia

Salvia confertiflora.....'lush' as they would say in Wales. slightly odd smelling and annoyingly brittle as I would say in Camberwell