Garden update - January 2017

I can't have a garden without roses and herbs. They're the first things I planted in my previous garden and now in my new home in Featherston, history repeats itself. At least this time I had the perfect spots already prepared. Like in Tawa, I chose to plant my roses along the front of the house and there were two large rose bushes already. The other existing plants were overgrown and straggly and needed to come out anyway, so it was the perfect spot.

I have to admit that I didn't do the hard work myself. I'm not as able-bodied as I was in my twenties and ripping up brush and digging holes is really hard on my joints, so I got a professional in to do the hard part for me. What she achieved in three hours would have taken me days otherwise. I got the roses online (you can get just about anything online these days) from South Pacific Roses. They arrived in excellent condition and I doing really well. I ordered the most fragrant ones I could find in each of the standard rose colours. I can't wait for the flowers to open! Keep up to date with my Facebook page, you'll be sure to see pictures of the roses there.

The new rose garden

Wednesday morning was gorgeously mild and still, and quite conveniently the herbs I ordered from Awapuni Nurseries (I love shopping online!) had just arrived that I decided to postpone my office work and instead get stuck into planting my herb garden.

I had already cleared out some of the weeds a few days earlier, so it didn't take me long to dig out the rest of the weeds and prepare the bed.

The prepared bed

Meanwhile Trixie worked on quality control making sure all the newly-arrived herb plants were up to scratch by tasting them!

I like buying plants from Awapuni as they come bare-rooted wrapped up in newspaper. Not only does this help cut down on plastic container wastage (they reuse them by sending you the plants only), it makes planting a breeze as you don't have to spend time and effort getting the plants out of punnets. And you often find one or two extras thrown in for good measure ;-) In next to no time, the bed was all planted up and ready for a good soak with the hose. The heat of the day had arrived and I was happy to now go back to doing office work. Aaah, the joys of working from home!!

All planted up