Flora - how lovely to see your green garden, as I sit here looking out my snowy 1/3 acres!! Thanks for sharing. I would certainly be interested in seeing your Spring pics!

Nancy.

Looks like a very charming cottage garden to me Flora, in fact two or three of your pictures I'd love to have hanging on my wall. I have seen pictures of my great grandmothers garden in England but not knowing much of my family's history I'm not sure which part of the country they were taken in. My mother was born in Standish and my dad was born in Long Clawson. They both immigrated to Canada with their parents when they were very young.
I too am looking to see more pictures of your lovely garden.

Annette

flora,
can you tell us more about the 'allotment'?
does everyone have one? what do you generally plant there? is it mainly for edibles? are the allotments all connected, and do people generally garden together or otherwise meet there or share space?
laurie in southeast usa

Flora, it sure like my idea of a cottage garden. I enjoyed seeing both your home garden and your allotment. Everything looking very healthy and lush and we are growing some of the same plants. I have the scarlet runner bean and after seeing
your Painted Lady, think I need to add that one too.

Please keep posting. My favorite garden show was a British one and I can't remember the title...two men and a blond gal who obviously did not wear a bra! I noticed the no front lawn and the garden being the width of the house and usually enclosed with a fence. I like the private feel of that.

Glenda, were you thinking of the program Ground Force with Alan Titchmarsh and crew, I enjoyed this program too, it was amazing what they got accomplished in such a short time.

Annette

flora, I live in Victoria BC Canada. Our climate is similar to yours. Victoria is sometimes called "more English than the English". We also have allotments. :)
Love your small garden.

Libby

That's a charming cottage garden. It has a lovely "aged" appearance with the old stone pavers and mature tree. Very nice to have a separate allotment garden where you can get some extra space for edibles.

How fun to be able to see across to your garden!!!!

Yes, please do post again and often.

Kathy

Enjoyed your garden. Very welcoming.

Me,too. I really enjoyed your garden. Thanks for sharing.

Xuan

Annette, that's it! I loved seeing the before and after. DH enjoyed it too....wonder why?

Thank you, Flora. I really enjoyed seeing your beautiful garden, which has a look that many of us on this forum are shooting for.

Glenda and Annette... Where might one get a look at this Ground Force show you speak of? It sounds quite enjoyable.

ThinMan

TM, you can find just about anything on You Tube, found this just for you :o). A

Here is a link that might be useful: Ground Force

Goodness me - what lovely replies. Thank you all for your friendly comments. I'll try and address some of your points:

louisianagal - allotments are generally owned by local councils and rented out to individuals. They are not gardened communally. I have had mine for about 17 years and the annual rent is £32.20 ie about $47. That includes water and maintenance of the outer grass and fences. I thinks it is a fantastic bargain for 12 months of peace, quiet and gardening. Much better value than a gym membership!
gldno - Painted Lady is a very pretty runner. The pods are not quite as long and shapely as some varieties but excellent flavour. (Remember we grow them as a veggie, not for the flowers) I save the seed and it comes pretty true despite other types of runner beans growing all around.
libbyshome - I have relatives in Victoria and also Vancouver and Port Hope, Ont. All due to Great Uncle Oscar jumping ship in the 1900s when he fell for a local girl.
gottagarden - you can remove the inverted commas. The paving is genuinely old. It's recycled town paving. The sidewalk outside the house is made of the same stuff. Our street was completed in 1820 so the garden walls and the houses are all made of old stone. The 'mature' tree, however, can have inverted commas added because I put it in about 17 years ago. It's a medlar and they get gnarled and old-looking quite young. They are very hardy and a bit Elizabethan-sounding I think.

One thing I wanted to say was that a lot of the planting arose by itself from self-seeding. All the plants in the paving got there like that. It is mostly Erigeron karvinskianus, violets, Waldsteinia, Primula veris and a few Cyclamen neopolitanum. I do a lot more judicious removal than actual planting these days. On the allotment all the nasturtiums, orach, fennel, chard and opium poppies put themselves there. I think that is in the spirit of the original cottage gardeners. After all they were hard-working people who didn't have time to fuss over their gardens. They grew what was easy, useful or pretty and didn't much worry about colour coordination or mixing edibles with ornamentals. You can see poppies in amongst my lettuces and nasturtiums heading for the zucchini. Strangely, some of the natural 'events' also look good. Like the burgundy orach and the pink poppy.

Anyway - you have emboldened me with your kind comments so here are a few more pictures. I don't have many so they are maybe not great quality. Now I know you are interested I'll try to take some more as spring arrives. If you've read this far, good gardening, Flora.

Here is a link that might be useful: A little more ....

Flora, the medlar fruit looks very much like our American Persimmon which is squishy as well. Do you make anything with the fruit?

Glenda

Thanks, Annette. It was just as you described. :-)

TM

Flora,

Your gardens and allotment are wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing your photos with us. I hope you'll be a regular participant here on the forum

Cameron

Charming and beautiful - thanks so much for posting and please do stick around!

Yummm... medlars. I was in Spain several years ago, and as our local guide took us through the narrow whitewashed street, a lady had her 'garage door' open, and was selling a few fruits and vegetables, most of them not common to North America. He purchased a piece of orange fruit for each in the group, and then demonstrated how to eat it. We peeled it from the top - the flesh was peach-like and quite sweet and tasty. Sorry, memory not so good here, I think it had one large pit, or five smaller pits - 8( not too sure. I checked out Google on this, and the pics there look nothing like I remember. Is this like your fruit tree?

I also remember an episode of 'Midsomer Murders', where the background story was about medlar jam, and how the fruit had to be slightly rotten, or over-ripe, and that there are some historical quotes about the rotted fruit.

Anyway, lovely curled tree.

Nancy.

gorgeous. If I were younger I'd love to move to your country and garden. Everything is so lush there.
Thank you for sharing and please feel free to share more.

Jim

Nancy - I don't think the fruit you had in Spain were medlars. They are not orange and you eat them 'bletted' ie starting to decay. Personally, I think they taste like gritty, slightly mouldy apple sauce. You can make them into jelly but I should think that jam would be very gritty a unless you spent a lot of time sieving the fruit pulp. There has been a discussion of medlars on the Orchards forum and I posted a couple of pictures of the fruit there. The blossom is like a large apple blossom and the leaves coulour a beautiful buttery yellow in the Autumn.

ps I can take not credit for the lushness of the garden. That's down to the weather.

Here is a link that might be useful: medlars

Medlars :o), I was down judging a little parlor show at one of the garden clubs on the island, breezing right along giving out the firsts seconds and thirds when I came across a plate of Medlars, a fruit I had only heard about but never seen. Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered they were related to quince and apples and in the rose family. Did you know you can graft a rose on a apple tree, one of our club members had actually done this. As I stood there pondering how I was going to judge this plate of Medlars which I have never seen in all the years I was judging, I decided as they were uniform in shape, no blemishes to be seen I gave the plate a first, the exhibitor was very happy but soon as I got home I started researching Medlars LOL.

Annette

Flora, yes. I did some research after I posted. Duh. So, I wonder what it was that I ate - it sure was yummy!!
As they say, we get too soon old, and too late smart!!!

Nancy

Flora ~ What a wonderful bit of paradise you have created at your home and in your allotment. Very cottage looking and
'higgledy piggledy and informal' never looked so good. Look forward to seeing more from your gardens. It is always wonderful to get glimpses of other gardens around the world. Yours are lovely.

FlowerLady

I recently wandered out with my camera and thought I'd take a few pictures of my garden and allotment at the turn of the year. As you can see, England in December is coloured grey, green, brown and all those muted shades. Seldom is it white. The ice on the little pond has only happened twice so far and was gone by lunchtime. I deliberately left things as I found them so you can see the rotting leaves, the seed trays, the weeds, the snail damage and the general decay of Winter. But you will also see the tough characters which keep going all through and the signs of new growth which start quite early here. Some of the photos are not very well in focus but you can get an idea.

Here is a link that might be useful: Solstice in the garden

Oh how lovely. Nice to see green. Everything here is white, white, white. Which is also OK.

Nancy.

Just when I was resigned to my winter hibernation, then I see your photos of sun and green things. Only two more months to wait though. Did I just say that?

I noticed today that the shastas I divided this fall have started putting out new growth. That was when it was 32 degrees. It looks like they're trying to replicate again. I planted them last spring, so I hope to get some flowers this year. Even a couple would be nice. I'm impatient when it comes to filling space, otherwise I wouldn't have divided them.

There were two photos I really liked, the painted lady hanging on the vine and the wheelbarrow. Just really pleasing photos to look at.