A Hackney garden in summer – part 5

In August the runner beans were ready for harvesting:

and had developed what I didn’t expect: pink beans 

 

 By September the sunflowers were more than 2 metres high:

 

A Hackney garden in summer – part 3

Mornings in our garden in June and July are wonderful.
At the back you can see that the runner beans grew a meter tall and started to flower.

 Runner bean blossoms:

 A few wild flowers blossomed in the ‘meadow’ section of our flower bed: 

 A detail from our staircase garden:

Another wild flower, Borage:

 

Hosta flower:

 

 Star Jasmine:

 And our friendly visitor, the neighbours’ cat Stanley, who comes round every morning

A Hackney garden in summer – part 1

It has been a long time since I last updated you on my garden here in Hackney in London. The last you probably know, is that in April I decided to take part in the National Gardening Week. I cleared out the entire shared garden and started to plant seeds.
I can now tell you that the whole project was a success! Over the course of the summer the garden has gone through several stages , which I have recorded whenever I had a moment to take a picture. Observing the different plants develop was very fulfilling. Here is the first of a few updates : )

Step one, seedlings growing in a propagator:

 

My home-grown runner bean seedlings ready to be planted outside:

 

 

 

Three rows of freshly planted sunflower seedlings:

At the back, runner beans and marigold; at the front, dwarf godetia and five spot nemophila;
at the centre, nectar rich wild flowers to attract butterflies:

  A few weeks later: 

Lavender:

 Lavender, herbs and the flowerbed in the background:

 

National Gardening Week update – Seedlings in pots

As part of my £50 gardening project, started during National Gardening Week, I prepared the soil and unfortunately had to resort to snail killer (I chose an organic one which is safe for pets as our neighbour has a cat).
Over the last ten days I have been propagating flower seeds indoors. The seedlings are coming along nicely. There are Sunflowers, Marigold, Hollyhock and runner beans.
In year three of my urban gardening efforts, I am no longer nervously waiting for the seeds to sprout. I know, it is a matter of letting them be and watering them regularly  – they won’t grow faster just because I look !

I have to say, time has passed quickly and I am rather pleased with the progress:

Sunflowers: 

 Marigold:

Hollyhock:

 Runner beans:

 

 

Indian Cress:

 Updates coming soon

 

National Gardening Week – First Update after 4 hours of work….

I managed to get the garden into a better shape. It’s miles away from finished, but take a first look.

Before: 

I cannot say this enough, to whoever planted the bamboo in the neighbours’ garden, which grows its roots into ours, it was a really bad idea.
It took ages to remove the roots and it’s still not completely done.

There was also another surprise. I found a large amount of sneils. Eeeeh, I always forget about them and whenever I start to dig around the garden, the first few hours of seeing them are rather unpleasant. They started to climb up the pot walls….but I’ll spare you that

So I kept on digging

and weeding

As I was unearthing all sorts of bugs, a tiny bird showed up to take advantage of that

I also cut off the hydrangea:

and fixed the runner bean support net against the fence attaching it with cable ties to bamboo sticks that I had cut off while weeding.
You can almost not see the net.

So in 4 hours I managed to get the garden from this:

to this: 

I hope you like the progress

#NationalGardeningWeek #ngw

http://www.nationalgardeningweek.org.uk/