A beginning

I've blogged on and off in one form or another for a few years but, you know, blogging is actually quite hard work! Since this is a gardening blog, I'll start with ... my garden

Our garden is about half an acre of light sand, fifty yards from the beach, often windswept and sand blasted despite an 8ft tall, 4ft wide and 70ft long pittosporum hedge along the west boundary. The garden is almost completely flat and is sandwiched between the beach 50 yards from the pittosporum hedge (green and growing) and a large duckpond over the granite hedge (loose stone wall) to the east. We have a very mixed garden with an area of fruit trees (five Bramleys, one James Grieve apple, one Conference pear and one Concorde pear), two greenhouses (the bigger Alton cedarwood is mine and the smaller Hartleys white coated aluminium belongs to our elderly uncle), three sheds, an oval island bed which sits in the middle of our circular drive, a rather overgrown patio, several diverse beds and a large expanse of grass.

Having two businesses means we (hubby of nearly 29 years and I) are kept pretty busy and a lot of my spare time is swallowed up by Open University studies. Oh, and we have two grown up offspring as well, both on the mainland, but for various reasons, still pretty firmly tethered to home.

I am primarily a greenhouse and container plant enthusiast, love propagating (which means I always end up with too many plants) and have the privilege of living in a unique and beautiful part of the world