hi welcome back to garden ninja and this is Mays garden tour here at garden
Ninja HQ now it's month two of lockdown we've had some ups we've had some downs
but most importantly the garden is looking absolutely fantastic and I've
been able to spend loads and loads of time here making it even better than it
was last year so come on join me as I take you on this month's garden tour!
Now probably a bit like you I found myself with a lot more time during on
them and one of the perfect activities for a garden with too much time with
sowing seeds if anything like me you'll have been digging out your old seed
packets when packing all your seed trays and pots and containers full of seeds
but to help pass the time and to block out the borders this year has been no
exception I was actually going to have a year off from sowing seed because I've
already got so much to do in the garden but if you look behind me you'll see
that I've got out although will the seed trays and recycling some of the old
plastic pots that I've had from difficult side jobs and I've decided to
go all herbaceous again this year but this time for the wildlife garden so
it's been a happy surprise originally I was thinking maybe I'll grow some
Tomatoes and a few bits and bobs but I've ended up growing somewhere near
50 100 and different seedlings - seedling plants that is - this year so do you remember
the not-so-sexy septic tank that I was gonna try and give a glam makeover to
well you'll be amazed at how it's turned out already if I go into a bit of a
let's go into a squat you can see behind me we've got things like new pins have
started to flower the hélène iums are coming up nicely we've got some bright
acacia jam in the background it's gonna fire up pink stems they fleabane every
girl is just colonizing as you would expect it to
we've got grasses and what's really exciting is that the distortions that I
popped in here last year just for a bit of fun a self seeded so you've also got
the station's growing and it shows just how powerful the nature is which finds a
perfect spot she will do her magic so he'll of leaving self seeded plants in
the garden I don't need them because they've already found the perfect
position and they're robust to resilience so leave them alone
and see how they go
so you may remember that last month I'd found some really large slate slabs I
was thinking about using them stepping stones now it took a lot of effort
because they're really heavy if you look behind me I've embedded them in front of
the house so now the link the house which has a slate roof to the stack with
phones to the gabions in the exploding atom garden and you can see that
repetition and I always bang on about it but using repetition in the same
materials or colors or plants or textures really helps bring cohesion
garden design it doesn't have to be expensive or huge amounts of work even
something so simple it's taking some of your pavers that you've used elsewhere
and embedding them as a path that or a set of stepping stones really helps
achieve that so I'm really pleased with these I've decided to offset them to
pull you into the garden because the garden and the house were a bit of a
funny angle which is probably a design flaw when it was built but you can
overcome at using subtle design tricks like offsetting paving so I think they
look really nice and they then lead the visit the visitors to the house out into
the garden
now a number of you if it asking me questions about how to improve your soil
and soil really is the building block of all life and without it nothing would
live humans animals vegetation it would all die and soil it's a living organism
shouldn't be confused with just dirt or rocks soil is very much alive
behind me is a really good example of how you can have different soil types in
the same garden I know that I'm gardening on a large scale what I've
noticed is that this bed here is far drier than the bed just to the left of
it there and the reason for that is when I've dug down further up there's
actually a clay vetting that runs across the middle of the garden which retains
my waist year so clay soils are usually really heavy and forge a difficult to
work with but retain moisture and nutrients far better then say the sandy
soil that I'm dealing with behind me and a good example of showing you how that
affects plants is behind me we've got the same specimens that we have over
there these plants are far smaller now the weight of Xfire is not to dig out
the soil and start again but to use top dressing and mulch so for this bed I'm
gonna give it a really heavy mulch with a really high nutrient moist to
retaining compost such as a baleful double-strength walk on the bed over
there I will still give a mulch to but I will give a much lighter sort of free
draining less nutritious mulch which will hopefully allow this one to catch
up and that one to stay in tip-top condition
now I'm not really that well known for blousey cottage garden designs but there
was a bed behind me that already had some roses in when I moved in so I
couldn't resist and I've gone completely nuts granny's garden style and planted
this will not last year and it really brings home that theme of a repetition
and working with Jasper so it's in full Sun pretty much all day so I've planted
up things like blue pins we've got delphinium which are really kind of
old-fashioned huge blue spikes flowers in the summer we've got some clematis
and roses that are already established so their roots are nice and shaded by
these other plants and because these plants flower so intensely they need
lots of food especially roses so I feed this I'm up to the bed every year and
I'll show you some close-ups you'll just see how incredible in our locks it's
like a Charlie the Chocolate Factory sweet shop of color now although the Sun
is cracking the facts now earlier on in the week we had some crazy gales real
vicious storms and wind if I come down here to this beautiful Avalon Kia you'll
see that a few of its branches have been damaged
now don't be tempted just to whip those off if you've got wind damaged plants
yourself get some sharp secretaries nip them back to the next clean
now a few people have also got in touch saying that they're too scared to start
planting the borders because they're afraid of failure now I want to address
this because there is no such thing as failure in gardening
if you plant something and it doesn't grow see them in the wrong place the
plant sale or it's not been looked after but that is not a failure on your part
it's a learning and we need to get into that mindset well all of these gardening
principles are all just learnings the more you learn the better you get
there's no competition the only person you can PC with is yourself so relax and
enjoy your gardens now in terms of things that haven't quite worked I'm
going to show you an example here in my garden just to show you all gardeners
matter how skilled are still learning now there's a small issue with this
garden in that I didn't account for how quickly this Copiah nest was going to
take or how much shade it was going to cast gives these a fastidious Riis the
long columns later we've got loads of an exposure to the Sun it's going to be
fine but I planted some achillea under there they'll kill Allah for some this
party's pretty much shaded for good spirit of the day so they're not going
to grow they're looking weak so I'm going to dig them out and replace some
of Punk's that will prefer a slightly baffled shade position so again it's not
a failure it's just trial and error applying your knowledge and seeing what
works sometimes the knowledge is correct and the work or the times mother nature
may have her own way but don't be too hard on yourselves keep going and keep
learning
so the gardens coming up to its two-year anniversary now and there are a few gaps
in some of the borders and we had a really wet winter last year which did
unfortunately kill off a few plants also some of the specimens that I thought
would work maybe haven't worked as well and that comes back to the point I was
making about best-laid plans being adaptable in the garden so there are a
few spaces and I've grown quite a lot from seed as I've shown you before so
Nilla then populate some of those spaces with a few more robust plants that may
be a more tolerant of excess water and also a bit more drought so I'm learning
a lesson of what's worked what hasn't and then I'm going to apply my knowledge
in different plants to those pockets that need some more plants hopefully it
will work better
and that brings us neatly to the end of the May garden ninja garden tour I'm
taking shade under this fir tree because it's gonna be a scorcher today so make
sure that you're always wearing Sun cream and you stay hydrated in the
garden if you've liked this video why don't subscribe to my youtube
channel where there are hundreds more different garden design hints tips and
hacks to help you make your garden awesome I've been gardening ninja happy
gardening!