The Garden Year: June 2024

Welcome back to this month’s Garden Year linky - if you were here last month, it was great to see you. If you’re joining for the first time, you’re very welcome. The linky will stay open for the whole month, so I hope you’ll pop back during the month. I’m looking forward to reading about your garden projects and garden visits.

This month I’m looking forward to enjoying our garden, we had a week away in May and spent some time exploring the Gargano Peninsular which included a couple of nights in the Foresta Umbra - look out for some posts about that, and our trip as a whole, and let me know what you’ve been up to garden-wise, what’s going on in your gardens this past month, or the gardens you’ve visited.

Have a good month!

Advice, inspiration and places to visit

“TheGardenYear

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Post Comment Love 31 May - 2 June

Hello there, and welcome back to this week’s #PoCoLo - a friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed from the linky, and if older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here this week we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

I was away last week in Italy, we explored the largely unspoilt Gargano Peninsular which is the spur on Italy’s heel. The weather was mixed, but thankfully dry during the day when we were walking. And boy did we walk, we had organised routes as part of the trip with our bags transferred between hotels but in that week we walked just over 57 miles, with a lot of hills ups and downs!

It was great to be away - our first time abroad since the pandemic - and I’m already planning our next trip. I’ll share more about our trip here, and also over on Instagram if you want the shortened version. The flight got back to the UK late in the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday, and it was 4.30am by the time we stepped through our front (or rather back) door.

I’m glad to be back for peony season, and I couldn’t resist these when I popped out for a post-holiday essentials supermarket shop!

Have a good week…

A close up of the pink peony flowers in a vase

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Escaping seasons of the mind

* I was invited to the press preview for and provided with a pair of tickets to Gardeners’ World Live so I’m marking posts from the show as 'Ad’ - as usual my views and opinions are very much my own. Be sure to check out all of my posts from the show.

In the last of my posts from last year’s Gardeners’ World Live I’m sharing a reflection garden which for me was one of the most thought provoking gardens at the show. It’s designed by Lilidh Matthews and John Tallis and is exquisitely beautiful, even more so when you understand the meaning behind it.

A series of increasing height corten steel posts form a circle around the garden representing time

There are eleven corten posts which represent the ubiquitous architecture of the cityscape, and the garden takes you on a journey through the seasons, illustrating the passing of time. This is done, not only by the change in height of the beautiful corten posts, but also through the changing colours of the planting again representing the seasons.

A closer look at two of the corten steel upside down L shape posts with purple and white planting beneath
Two further reverse L shaped corten posts, these are much smaller and the planting around them is yellow and green

“The garden was inspired by two facts:

  1. 90% of our lives are spent indoors. The central space portrays how we are trapped in a void of our own four walls.

  2. Most suicides happen in the autumn.”

The cracks in the paving slowly grow closer together as you pass through the garden and arrive at the 12 o’clock point; a bench in summer where you can admire all the beauty of the four seasons.

entry and exit to the garden is across three calm stepping stones surrounded by water and edged with small box plants, the centre section of the garden is also paved with a raised central area

It is a stunning garden full of symbolism, but even without knowing the symbolism it would be a great place to spend some time and exactly the sort of space to nourish your mind.

I can’t wait to see the showcase gardens, beautiful borders and everything else that this year’s show has to offer. I’m planning to attend on the first day, and I just know my phone will be full of photos - I’ll share some shortly after our visit on Instagram, but will also start another series of posts from the 2024 show just as soon as I’ve sorted through all my photos!

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was as fabulous as ever!