Kitchen garden - Autumn 2010

Taken from the bottom of the kitchen garden looking towards the old road. Plants are starting to die back now and I still need to find out what I can and can't cut back.

Burn-side Garden Autumn 2010

The garden has been a bit neglected this summer as the house has taken up so much time. I've done some weeding and basic clearing up and looking forward to spending more time in it now the house is nearly done. We've had Eryngium which has now died back. I think we also have Astilbe here too, a tall pink flowering perennial or it could be Rheum palmatum - who knows!

Wood store

Blair has done a fantastic job in building our wood store. It will hopefully store 3 years supply of wood but time will tell. The store is still to be finished and then the wood chopped up and stored. We've just purchased our trailer too - we've named it Angus!

Kitchen garden - summer 2010

I believe this is a geranium. I've taken this picture as I have a few of these plants around the garden and they are really bushy and need to know how to tame them! We've also found a plum tree in this area which is great - I love finding new things in the garden.

Burn-side Garden July 2010

The garden is a profusion of colour. It's taking me time to identify the various plants and I'm still working on this. This picture is taken from the top of the burn with a rowan tree in the foreground.

Butterfly

I was sitting outside on a lovely day and this little butterfly kept landing on my top. I decided to take it off and drape it over the chair and take a picture.

Basement Garden - August 2010

We had a lovely sunflower just behind the crocosmia. The hosta's have also provided a good show but I'm not looking forward to them dying back.

Road-side Garden August 2010

I've had to cut away a fair amount of fern from the road side garden - I'm not a big fern fan and it grows through the other plants. In late autumn I think we need to cut back a lot of plants here as its very overcrowded. We've got a thistle-like plant here - Echinops sphaerocephalus, which you can just see in the middle of the patch.

Burn-side Garden August 2010

Lovely pinks and bushy water plants. The burn has been relatively dry despite the wet summer.

Mushrooms

We went walking in Torachilty Forest in August and came across these wonderful chanterelle mushrooms. We went back a couple of times and picked more and have now bought a mushroom book so we can go foraging. These mushrooms were turned into a yummy mushroom risotto.

Front Garden - Summer 2010

I love the colour of the shrub at the front door - I've had to trim it back a couple of times but its really healthy. This patch of garden is outside the sitting room window and I can watch the birds on the bird feeder. We had a woodpecker on it a couple of times early on in the summer - amazing!

Basement Garden - July 2010

The hosta's are looking great. The flower buds are coming through.

Kitchen garden 3 - July 2010

Another view of the trellis.

Kitchen garden 2 - July 2010

The trellis leading from the basement garden to the kitchen garden. It's had lovely blue clematis and now lonicera (honeysuckle). The birds like the trellis as it gives good shelter.

Kitchen garden - July 2010

I've spent the last few hours clipping hedges and cutting back. The garden patch in the foreground needs a lot of work and I'll need to remember to tie things back early next year.

Burn-side Garden - July 2010

It's a jungle! This is the view of the burn-side garden as taken from the top of the garden on the old road. The burn is dry at the moment but the water plants have flourished.

The Mound

The grassy mound opposite the house runs below the train line. This piece of land does not belong to the house but is pretty much maintained by us (if you can call it that). We've planted some carrots in barrels and there are wildflowers and garden loosestrife. There is a cherry blossom where I hang seed feeders and fat balls for the birds and the nut feeder attracts siskin which are shown here. This view is taken from the sitting room window.

Slow Worm

We have 2 wormeries at the top of the burn-side garden. We were planning to build a wood store here and when Blair was out measuring the space he spotted the elusive slow worm (previously commented that one was at the front door!). Now that we know it houses slow worms we've had to change our plans as they are protected so its best not to disturb them. Later on in the afternoon I was weeding the road-side garden and there was another slow worm. I feel quite affectionate towards them, particularly as they eat slugs! I actually picked one up as I was clearing away rubbish when one fell out of an old black bag. It went rigid and I thought it was dead until I heard it hissing! I picked it up and put it back in the wormery where it slithered away.

Burn-side Garden 3 - June 2010

A view of the bottom of the burn side garden and bridge. Plants yet to be identified.

Burn-side Garden 2 - June 2010

Another view of the burn side garden leading up to the old road. Bamboo is in the foreground. There is also a Rowan Tree here and at the top of the garden. There also appears to be purple sprouting broccoli that was left to flower.

Burn-side Garden - June 2010

A view of the burn side garden from the bridge. We've got some Rheum Palmatum (rhubarb family) and other rhubarb growing elsewhere in the garden. One of my favourites, Eyrangium x oliverianum (thistle like plant) is also growing up by the wormery. There is also wiegela - we had this in the garden in Glasgow but it was a young plant. The plants here are quite large. We've also got foxglove and garden loosestrife. The red shrub in the foreground has been badly attacked by slugs - it looks pretty horrendous at the moment.

Kitchen Garden 3 - June 2010

A great sun trap. There is a homemade bench seat looking out to this end of the garden. Plants are yet to be identified.

Kitchen garden 2 - June 2010

A wild section of garden adjacent to the crofting ground to the left of the house. A fair amount of sticky willy, nettles and fern lead down from this area to the bottom of the garden near the road. The path is currently completely overgrown and this area needs attention in the autumn.

Kitchen Garden June 2010

A view of the garden to the side of the kitchen. There are a fair amount of conifers here. At the very top of the garden (near the road) there is a rockery garden which has not yet required any work. In the foreground there is a wonderful clematis over an archway that leads from the basement garden. The clematis flowered deep purple flowers in May. At the moment there are delphiniums and also evidence of Lonicera x heckrotti 'Gold Flame' which has started to bud.

Basement Garden 2 - June 2010

Another view of the basement garden showing the view through to the far (burn) side garden. There is another small rockery here with a small water feature (not used).

Basement Garden - June 2010

The Hosta's are looking fantastic and have very little slug damage. Although I've always liked hosta's I've been put off them in the past due to them becoming unsightly due to the slugs. There are hostas in other parts of the garden, particularly by the burn which haven't fared so well. The light green bush in the middle is yet to be identified but at the moment has lovely fragrant white flowers. To the left of that there is a variegated grass which is quite silver in colour.

Road-side Garden June 2010

The bottom of the garden facing the main road to Kyle of Lochalsh. This area has been quite a challenge. It needed a fair amount of weeding. I have cut back the fern at the foreground of the picture as it was spreading everywhere and a lot of it had 'sticky willy' growing through it which had to be removed. The poppy is very bushy but has never flowered (the bud looks quite black). There is also a lot of mint here and there is garden loosetrife at the back of the bush. This area needs a bit of attention in the autumn once things die back.

Myrtle Cottage June 2010 - back

The rear view of the house showing the basement windows at the bottom. This section of garden is quite wild. Again, yet to identify many of the plants in this section - I mistakenly cut back a vine that was wrapping itself around some of the other plants only to realise it wasn't a weed but very likely to be a Humulus Lupulus 'Aureus'. There are also ox-eye daisies, lilies, lady's mantle, globe flower (which is all over the garden), euphorbia (one of my favourite plants) and what looks like garden loosestrife aka lysimachia punctata which spreads wildly all over the garden.

Myrtle Cottage June 2010

After a harsh first winter and cold spring in Myrtle we've entered summer. The garden is in full bloom: mostly plants which I have yet to identify. After the heavy snow in the winter I had to cut back a bush from the left hand side of the house - I didn't know what it was (thought it might have been bay). Apart from that the garden is untouched from the day we moved in - apart from a wee bit of weeding. We have berberis up the walls which attracts bees and some wild flowers. The bird feeders attract siskins, blue tits, chaffinch and even a greater spotted woodpecker!

Burn-side Garden - Spring 2010

After a good Spring tidy up the garden started to flower with daffodils and primula's. The yellow trumpet flowers (yet to be officially named) were a spectacle and develop into large green leaves.

Front Garden - Spring 2010

There are various types of daffodil and some tulips. There is a berberis in the foreground that attracts bees and the conifer to the right is the one that was grafted together after being split under the weight of the winter snow.

Kitchen Garden - Spring 2010

Even more daffodils. The holly to the far left needs some work.

Road-side Garden - Spring 2010

The woody plant at the left hand side needs to be removed. Plants were generally left to develop over the spring/early summer but this remained woody so its possibly another casualty of the winter. This needs to be removed in the Autumn.

Basement Garden - Spring 2010

The spring tidy up of last years Hosta's make way for the new shoots. There are various daffodil varieties throughout the garden.