the Toby Buckland garden..?

Really pleased with the way that the new garden is coming together. We've created a fragrant or scented garden. We call it the smelly garden. More accurately, in honour of my Nottingham roots I think of it as the smelleh garden.  Only locals can love our accent.

Path edging is finished in the main beds. Got peripheral stuff to finish but ran out of wooden stakes. Never thought a vegetarian would be crying out for more stakes.

view from kitchen window

And soil has arrived. Of course a hauliers' idea of good topsoil and an assistant gardeners are very different. 'This is fine, great stuff Rob. It's top gear'. Top gear? I was once described as being like Clarkson. Ouch. Back to steaks. Another ouch. You see how much thought goes into this.

This 'top gear' looks like soil when wet ... but dries to a pumice grey. Hmmm.

But thanks to Roger and his dinosaur 'Sir Alex', big buckets of this 'topsoil' were brought over saving me hours of barrowing. And Judith and Roger lent a hand to move it about. The head gardener expressed herself pleased on her return.

Then onto permeable membrane and more barrowing ... but this time of gravel for paths.

Don't let Baz drive 'Sir Alex'...!

Jill has lots of planting to do over coming months. We need to save up for a rose arch entrance. I aim to create a festival of insect hotels here too. I'd be disappointed if I couldn't push a loaded wheelbarrow with a deflated tyre over rutted ground and up inclines -my barrow itch will be scratched a-plenty as I push in wheelbarrows of mulch to cover the soil surface.

And, you know, there's a kind of serendipity out there. 

We have a garden devoted to scented plants. And have created a boundary to the garden with beautiful pheasant grass (Anemanthele lessoniana). And took inspiration from Cambridge Botanical gardens in creating our own.

In our 'down time' Jill's watching Toby Buckland in a recorded TV series called Garden Revival (?) proselytising about first scented plants and then grasses. We've got both in this garden Toby!!  And he once worked at Cambridge Botanical Gardens. Too many coincidences? Toby is a really effective presenter and in my view is the natural heir to the great Geoff Hamilton. He's got a great manner, a twinkle in his eye, is down to earth and full of useful factoids too. For instance - scented double flowers have double the strength of scent of their single cousins. We've sought out simple, single flowers as these are the ones easiest for insects to feed from. There's room for some doubles says the girl in the floral shorts*.

So, perhaps not the smelleh garden at all but the Toby Buckland garden...?

*£1 from CandA in 1980. And with pockets.