White is out

Who needs white when you can have colour!

Big does it for me

There is something special with perennials with huge leaves. In a shadowed corner of the garden you can create a jungle, even here in Finland. I moved some of my rodgersias ( liuskavaleangervo in Finnish)  from the cottage to Vårkulla and they are starting to grow to their full measure. Beautiful! It is not all about flowers...

Eat it up

Flowering fruit trees are a treat. Even if you don't manage to pick up the fruits before the birds, you'll get to enjoy the spring flowering and the fruits don't look half bad when ripening. The damsons (kriikuna in Finnish) were the first ones to flower this year. We are still waiting for the cherry and apple trees to start. Our cherry is a late one and it flowers with white flowers that are quite similar to those of damsons. I'd love to have a cherry with lovely pink flowers but I think our windy yard would be too cold for them so I'll make do with the white ones.

Home sweet home

Aspens (haapa in Finnish) are not my favourite trees for the garden. If you fell one it grows a thousand shoots and if you don't fell it then your garden is bound to have a lot of rubbish during most of the year - the seed pots are large and have to be raked, the leaves moulder really slowly so they have to be raked and the big trees fell a lot of branches that have to be raked. I guess you've got it - if you have aspens in your garden, you have to rake a lot, all the time. In addition to this, almost nothing can be planted under them as they need a lot of energy and water. There is one thing speaking for them though: the big trees very often have holes in the trunk and birds love to nest in these. Here is an example...we can't go and fell someone's home, can we?

Poppies next

The poppie buds are like some small prehistoric animals. Depending on weather they'll open in a a few days or a week. Can't wait for the orange fireworks! As these grow near a house wall that has to be renovated some time soon, I have tried to move some of the poppies elsewhere. But there are still hundreds of them left and I can't stand the idea that they will go to waste. So more work ensues..

Backyard memories

Once again, I bought summer flowers early in the spring to get some colour to our yard. The Easter daffodils are still looking ok but I guess I have to change them to some new flowers soon.

Holiday fun

What did we do during our week long holiday? We worked in the garden of course. We started to work with the first level of the slope and got rather far. It now looks more like a garden than a waste dump! We moved some plants from the cottage to the new border. Now we only need a shrub or two on the top of the slope and to the left side of the slope. My husband will oil the blanks black. The gravel I'll cover with sedums (maksaruoho in Finnish) that we have a lot of here at Vårkulla. So I just need to dig some plants up, divide them and replant in the gravel. It is nice to have your own nursery (or two)!