Tea Blog

Ivy is a very good plant for growing over things that you want to hide. Unfortunately it can get very out of hand as I found out last year. We have a brick wall in our garden that acts as a boundary with the field next door and last year I looked at it and thought “Where is it?” The whole wall was covered in so much ivy all I could see was green! The garden is quite large so I have a friend who comes along once a week to help out and she and I started to tear it down. We gave the eviction notice to all the spiders and insects that live in the ivy and prepared to do battle. Oh my goodness, it took us two days, we used a saw! We were covered in bits and itched all over! We both spent time under the shower those two days (separately I might add!). However, the wall came out of it ok and the ivy was burnt to a cinder! Before and after photos here.

The ivy is down but oh it is not dead I assure you. It has started to grow back already but we are keeping it in check and also we have planted roses and honeysuckle along the edge of the wall so that they can grow up and produce some colour with their flowers. This Summer is going to be colourful I am sure and you will be amazed by the photos, I hope!

Don’t you just love the Spring time with all the buds and the bulbs sprouting? We have a lot of colour in the garden just now but unfortunately Spring bulbs do not last all year so the garden is an ongoing project that needs re-planting all the time. To this end we have sown seeds of annuals to give us some colour all Summer long. These seeds are now coming along nicely and this week I will be busy pricking out the seedlings into trays and pots and then the perennial problem of where to keep them until they are big enough and the weather is good enough to plant them out. Every spare place in the greenhouse and conservatory is put into use for bringing on seedlings and hopefully we will succeed in keeping everything healthy before planting time is here! Planting time here in the UK  will be the end of May, when all fear of frost is gone. Watch this space!

Editor’s Note: while Julia works on her garden, enjoy one of our Organic Tea Samplers in honour of last month’s Earth Day! We have an Organic Loose Leaf Sampler and Organic Favorites Loose Leaf Sampler – Cheers!