Not a Show Garden View 1

Here is a cat's eye view of the rear garden towards the potager, seen from the 3m² area of strimmed daffodils and tulips. That was about a week ago! I spent three hours mowing my land yesterday. Over to the left are chicken sheds with no chickens! The brown areas are because about a month ago I used very old weedkiller to control clover in grass though hardly is it the style of an English lawn.  I thought the weedkiller hadn't worked but the evidence is that a lot of the clover appears to have died off but again it is creeping through!  The cut grass/clover was not allowed to be used as a mulch between roses to control weeds so have had to wait a few weeks and mows. Meanwhile it mulched itself!

Behind the camera and me is a stone wall - not my property. There are two plants of Rose Metanoia and this year I can begin to train them on some wires along the wall. I like the way they change from deep apricot to pale pink.

I am inclined to leave the wild dog rose (inherited with the garden) between the climbing roses. Along this wall are a few hollyhocks, lots of yellow raspberries running rampant even though I was brutal to them in early February, yellow Kerria also rather swamped,  a Clematis in hiding which is over-run by the growth of other plants and I can't yet get at it. There was a Passion Flower plant which I think has ceased to exist!  There are a few gladioli and there was Nigella (love-in-a-mist). There were bluebells that I didn't realise were there or were they grape hyacinths but much hidden under the growth of wild grasses and cleavers (goose-grass or sticky-willy being two other names!). There is some mint escaped from elsewhere and I have scattered some wild flower seeds to see what happens.There are two paeony plants... one here and the other by the 'not chicken' sheds.

Rampant raspberries by a bricked up doorway.

I really don't know how to manage this section of the garden!

 

Three nasty concrete plant troughs which were in the front courtyard were brought around to the back garden using the Italian workawayers' muscle power and mine. It was funny and even the French neighbour had a laugh whilst he stopped work in his potager!  I have six strawberry plants in one, lettuce plants in another and 'cut and come again' lettuces and radishes in the third. I even added manured shop compost and expensive garden shop straw which is cut into little pieces into the poor soil.  I haven't had the courage to ask anyone where I can get a small bale but problem solved now as I have used the grass mulchings.

The elder bush encroaches on the path and the washing line and this year bears flowerheads!

I like elderflower heads dipped in batter, preferably deep fried... hold by the stalk, dip in the pancake batter and you could shallow fry... I don't eat the central stalky part but the fragrant flowers are nice!
END OF GARDEN VIEW 1