Morning welcome to my second blog. Haven’t had time to do much in the garden this week so have had to make do with dreaming up projects and researching future plant buys on Google. I did manage a little bit of gardening last Saturday and a cheeky 2 hours today when I was supposed to be working from home writing manuals. Don’t tell work.

1. Orostachys!

Orostachys! I have an unhealthy fascinations of Orostachys so imagine my delight when I had a spare hour and went to the Greenwolds Plant centre at the Royal Quays Outlet Centre in North Shields. Of course I had to buy it….4 Sempervivum and 2 Saxifraga as I can never buy one plant. After speaking to the owner of the Garden Centre he gave me some sound advice…..always put in extremely well drained soil (gravel) never get wet (soaking) and not to feed after midnight so I am going to call it Mowgwai after the Gremlin not the Scottish post rock band. Will keep you posted during the coming weeks.

2. Trough planting

My main project this week was planting up the planter I bought last week. it has been cold but I wanted to plant it this week before the growing season started. I have planted it with Sempervivum (non descript), Sedum Purple emperor, Sedum Cape Blanco, Thrift, Thymus and Sisyrichium. Looking forward to see how this takes shape.

3. Sisyrichium

This has to be me my favourite flower. Small is beautiful as they say and the blue eyed grass maybe tiny but is one of my favourite flowers and last year it just kept on flowering non stop. Dived it into 4 separate plants last weekend so I could put it in more parts of the garden.

4. Echevereia Worfiield Wonder

This mother Echerveira has seen better days. I brought this Worfileld Wonder Echeveria last year and it was an absolute dream plant. The flowers fascinated me the way they just kept queuing up and they were even popular with bees which surprised me . Unfortunately I have got a small garden and no room for a greenhouse so I had to leave it to the elements and the weather has got the better of it. Fortunately I have managed to get some babies from it and they are healthy. Hoping I may get some more babies from it this year. A pretty horrific photo but you have to take the rough with the smooth.

5. Cheap Clematis

Another wee project on the go. As you may have read last week I bought 4 Clematis from Dobbies for £4.05 each. I have planted 2 beside this east facing fence. I have grown Clematis here before but one of the 20 year old ones I had was destroyed by some over exuberant gardening last week. The 2 Clematises are Rouge Cardinal and Mrs Bateman. Will trim back the ivy a little more but it is pretty slow growing so shouldn’t be that bad. Going to remove the cheap trellis for wire and eyelets.

6. Alpines

The alpines I bought this week. I bought some “vintage” terracotta pots off of Gumtree last week so I am going to plant them in these. One of them is a yellow saxifraga but I have lost the tag so will have to go back to the garden centre and find out to stop my OCD kicking in!

Thanks for reading unfortunately I am working next weekend so there may not be a blog next week. If there is it will just be a quick update.