One step closer (or rather, two!) to my dream garden. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this being in the ground 🤩 a big shout out and a massive thank you to my husband for helping me with this project, I truly could not have done it without you ♥️

I still have to hard prune to 30cm above ground, so the plants focus on root growth in their first year. It’s something I always hesitate doing because, baby plants 🥺, but it’s needed so chopping this eve after work it is. I was too knackered last night (we finished at about 7pm? – also, how wonderful to be out until then and it still being light out!). They’ll put on 40-60cm of growth on each in a year so not too worried ☺️

I’ll also put a ‘Florida Weave’ in place to keep them from blowing over in the wind. Once I’ve set that up I’ll talk you through it all.

It was definitely a passion project and one I should have started earlier in the day with, because by the end of it I was so knackered. I can really tell now that my mental health has taken its toll on my physical well-being too. A couple of years ago I would’ve been fine doing this. Anyway, something I’m working on ☺️

Here are the trays I used to make some sort of makeshift system to get the plants in. I worked on a system of planting them out in a pattern of 2-1-2-1-2-1-etc, you get the gist. Putting them per species on a tray like this helped me pick just one or two depending on where I was in the pattern.

 

Below is how it’s planted. All in one straight line – pretty chuffed about that, hardly any wobble in the line 🙌 – I started at the bottom and worked my way up. the first plant in was the cherry plum followed by 2x elderflowers and so on. the colours used are roughly the colour the fruits/nuts/flowers will be. I can’t actually wait until the autumn foliage sets in. I am truly beyond excited to have this now set up in the garden. In a previous post I listed a long list of all the benefits and i’m so thrilled i’ve been able to realise it.

Here’s to a good growing year!