Garden Transformation

We had a bit of a storm!

We have been living at Mulberry House for over 35 years now and have made a lot of changes to the garden. There weren't a lot of trees when we moved in but these conifers were here and are/were over 100 years old.
Over the years we have lost two and then when the storm hit, another went down. We were lucky the it didn't do any damage to the building behind or to the wall. You can see that it wasn't very deep rooted. We made the decision to have the other three conifers taken down as they too were in danger of falling. You can see the prop we put in after the previous storm as the tree leaned quite a bit
afterwards

6th February

The storm strikes

 18th March

They have to go

First one comes down

You can see from the stump how far from the wall first to come down was. We have never been able to grow any thing in that area as it's always so dry. This was then a good opportunity to redesign this area of the garden. To be honest, it couldn't of come at a better time as we are in lockdown and there were no excuses not to get on with it

21st March

Bit of clearing up to do

Clearing the site took longer than we had thought possible.
We were lucky in our timing that we were able to visit a local nursery before total lockdown. We ordered some trees to go along the wall to break it up plus two ornamental trees to give a bit of height to the new area.

We had a delivery date so - no slacking!!

25th March

Clear - now what?

Once the area was clear , we were surprised at the extra space we had gained. We hadn't moved any plants or shrubs, it was just a dead area. Looking at it we decided to sweep the lawn in a bit more to reduce the width. We were at this point, in the picture above, waiting to get some turf.

29th March

Trees go in 

The trees arrived. Five 'Pyrus callryana Chanticleer' in 60ltr bags approx 16 feet tall. They took some getting in. We couldn't enlist any help because of isolating but we managed. 

The dogs, I have to say, were not a lot of help!. The ground was very dry so the stakes took a bit of hammering in, that I left entity to Frank although I did helpfully hold it still while he bashed it.

30th March

Trees planted 

Nathan had taken up some slabs from his old house and stored them at work. Having asked Jo if she needed them first, we brought them back to build a patio to re-site an existing arbour. While I painted the arbour with some paint I'd bought for another job,  Frank laid the patio. We had enough slabs to make a path weaving through the border to the seat.

Planted up path to seating area

Gedney Bulb Company produce a wonderful range of perennials, some of which we sell in our spring season at Gee Tee, I phoned Phil up and he delivered almost 100 plants to our warehouse. A lot of the order were alpine and low growing paints to soften the edges of path and patio.

8th April

Arbour in place

Once the arbour was in place the planting began. we started to move some more established shrubs and also some larger shrubs that we had in pots. Having got those in place it was time to fill in the gaps with Lupins, Delphiniums, Scabious and Rudbeckia  (from Phil) as well as the dahlias and seedlings I'd had growing in the greenhouse. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed we don't get a frost.

Frank came up with the idea of putting trellis on the wall. Great - that meant I could grow clematis and other climbers. Not sure whose idea it was but it seemed a good one at the time - we painted them black. It looks stunning but not a job I would recommend

12th May

Black trellis

14th May

Filling up

 14th May

Looking Better

There are still a few plants to go in and we are at this point we are waitting for the peony and lupins to flower. The Dahlias are pushing their way through the soiled making good progress too.

13th May

View from the arbour

Windmill & Mulberry tree from the seat

It is a joy now to sit and enjoy the view of our garden from a different angle. Of course - it wouldn't be the same without a well earned glass of chilled white wine, after all I think we deserve it - Cheers

Finishing the Flower challenge

Well, I made it to the end of the challenge to paint 20 flower pictures in 30 days. The thing about this challenge was, unlike other daily challenges, you could take a day or two off. This I did do and kind of lost track of where I was.
in my last post, I'd got up to painting 14 so, here is

15 of 20

Double & Fringed Tulips

I found this double tulip incredibly hard to paint, it probably looks more like a Camellia. It was a good exercise in mixing pinks, Michael Harding's 'Brilliant Pink' came into it's own here. The fringed tulips look a bit dull but I didn't want to overplay them. In hindsight, I should probably just have painted the double.

16 of 20

Lily flowering Viridiflora

MMM!  probably the less said about this the better.!  Roos Schuring uses Gouache for a lot of her flower paintings and they look amazing. so, I invested in a few tubes.. First, I tried to use them like oils, then I tried adding water but used too much. They dried quicker than I expected them to as well. The frustrating thing for me was that the lights dried darker and the darks dried lighter. Definitely need more practice at this.
 I was encouraged to read in Roos' blog that she did not dare post her first efforts - (maybe this shouldn't be here?)

17 of 20

Narcissus in gouache 2

Narcissus in gouache 1 

Not one to be defeated by a tube of bl***y paint, I thought i'd give it another try. Same subject, different backgrounds. Slightly more pleased , particularly with the one on the right - third try lucky?

18 of 20

Marigolds & Orange

Back to the oils - phew!!
I was very pleased with this little painting.  At least I knew what I was doing

19 of 20

Helebores

 Slightly cheating here as I'd already painted this previously. The thing is, I'd learnt so much since then that I repainted areas that I could see I could improve on. Much more pleased with it now

20 of 20

Lysianthus 

Not sure if I spelt that right but you know what I mean
Final painting. Playing with background and texture. The aim was to graduate the colour . I painted over an old painting that was on a textured board. To be honest I think I prefer a smoother surface


It's been an interesting experience for me as I don't consider myself to be a flower painter but, having said that, I do include them a lot in my still life paintings. I'm now continually eying up flowers in my garden with a view to painting them.
Although I didn't take the paid challenge (whereby you got feedback and help from Roos) I feel I've learned a lot. Certainly, looking on Instagram at the #30days20 I can see a massive improvement in everybody's work as the days have gone by. So a big thank you to Roos Schuring.
I'll be looking out for more challenges in the future to keep me on my toes