Norma’s garden

I was visiting my friend Norma in a village not far from Edinburgh the other day.  She has the most gorgeous garden, which I love to walk around.  There is always something at every season to admire.  At this time of year the herbaceous plants are still looking great, and I just had to take lots of photos!

Looking from the back door you see ahead of you the garden shed, with this beautiful trough in front of it.  Turn to your right and the garden opens up in front of you, guarded by these guys…………………….

The large flowerbed is comparatively recent.  There was a large tree in the corner of the lawn, that had to be cut down so Norma’s husband created this bed around the old tree stump. 

Here are some of the plants and more of the quirky little ornaments around the whole garden.                     

The butterflies hadn’t  appeared yet to flit around the buddleia, but the bumble bees were buzzing around instead.

 

 

 

 

and this baby robin came to perch on the old tree stump, and allowed me to take several photos of it!   No red breast yet, just a speckled brown.  He was so cute!

 

The honeysuckle too was in bloom winding up over the old washing line pole.  The scent was delicious!

Looking across the large flowerbed are Norma’s two greenhouses, or as she says, her greenhouse and her detached conservatory! 

One is a working greenhouse where she grows seeds and plants cuttings, while the other has chairs and a table where she and Malcolm sit with their cups of tea to admire the garden.  Pots of fuchsia also sit in the sitooterie ( a place to sit out), along with this geranium with the delicious name of Raspberry Ripple.

 

 

 

Here’s the view to the large flowerbed from the greenhouse.  There are tomatoes too, still green, but accompanied by three large wooden toadstools!

To the left of the greenhouses at the back of the garden is a thin wild stretch where poppies had been blooming not long before.  The petals had fallen leaving just the pepper pot seedpods.  The Himalayan balsam is very pretty but has the habit of spreading its seeds in an explosion of the seed pods.  However, Norma has it kept well under control.

Soon the butterflies will have hatched out and be covering the buddleia.  I saw one in my own garden yesterday.

In front of the greenhouse is the pond, probably full of frogs, along with flag irises and reeds.  Norma has a lot of little garden ornaments in the rockery behind the pond, and hanging from the wiggly branched tree.  There she also hangs bird feeders.

In the corner behind the kitchen are the most gorgeous hydrangeas.  You can’t grow them in Peebles apparently but here they do extremely well.  More buddleias and some grasses help to adorn this charming corner. Then there are Norma’s bonsai trees, with their smaller than normal leaves.  The five fingered horse chestnut leaves here are probably six inches across whereas a fully grown tree would have leaves three times the size.

I hope you  enjoyed the tour of Norma’s garden as much as I did.  Next time I will be right in the centre of Edinburgh at night!  I wonder what you make of that!

Talk again soon.