By Pete Langford, Lead singer and founder of The Barron Knights
I love watching Gardeners World and they confirmed that rainwater makes things grow better, which is something I have known and heard many times. And, of course, they are right.
The welcome rain, for sure, did boost the growth of almost anything on my patch. It was such a pleasure having broad beans, potatoes, and cabbage on my dinner plate, and lovely crispy lettuce as part of a sandwich.
I keep thinking I have cracked the rabbit problem by protecting my raised beds, and although that seems to work now, we have a big bunny burrow under our sage bush. I try to get it to run away which it does, but 30 minutes later, it’s back – so has no fear.
My wild strip has been such a pleasure to walk by and view all my new flowers. I’ve always had white daisies, poppies and cornflowers, and that created a very red, white and blue show, but this year I did sprinkle a new mix: Mallow wort is such a lovely blue: white lupins now giving me a second showing: Cosmo’s will flower until October. Although I’m not keen to do it, I pinch out the first bud and it produces loads of flowers.
I love to put at the back cow parsley and sunflowers, although the sunflowers haven’t given me a show yet. All along the front of the strip, I have English marigolds, love-in-the-mist and California Poppies. They don’t get tall but give great colour.
We had such a nice surprise two weeks ago. Outside our drive, we have a very large pond, at least 50 metres to the other side, and I saw three artists setting up their easels and wondered what they were going to paint.
After about an hour, I popped over to have a look and they were painting our house. They said they chose it because of the design of our shrubs and flowers, and the house was a good subject. They were two ladies and a guy who is a professional artist and he gave me his card. He is Andy Lee and if you go to his website aleegallery.co.uk you see pictures that are so beautiful you realise how gifted artists are to have such talent.
Enjoy your gardening: I love it.
