The garden at this time of year can look a bit green. With so much dry weather and little or no rain, many gardens look a bit sad and green. But you are not alone in thinking only your garden is ' going over'.  There is a lot of dead-heading  and cutting back and if you keep feeding you may be rewarded with a secong flush. Bit like us humans really!

 The vegetable garden is very plentiful and regular picking ensures a good supply of fruit and vegetables as well as the promise of more to come. I get so excited walking round and seeing huge peppers which were once little seeds in a packet and all varieties of tomatoes from heritage to modern varieties.

My little cat  Twix is busy bringing me little ' presents' , either whole or in pieces! Toffee the dog is happy scaring any bird in his airspace and I am up ladders cutting back wisteria whilst finding abandoned nests and wasp nests!

There are so many gardens open at this time of year under the Yellow book scheme that are woth visiting, so if possible try and visit some to get inspiration  and see what is growing well in gardens near you.

There is nothing nicer than having something handmade and even better, exclusively for you. Apart from finding lovely little nurseries where specialist growers have spent hours nurturing young seedlings into healthy plants, I am equally excited finding artisans and craftsmen that make wonderful products from wood they have coppiced such as hazel and willow or hand throw clay to create pots in all shapes and sizes.

 Recently I have been travelling around to find local craft fairs and bought a hand made cleft gate with posts, hand forged hinges from a blacksmith, an oak curved bench and iron pergola. Each has been adapted and finished to meet my strict standards!

 Every piece becomes much more important and personal and is far better than any run of the mill mass produced object bought from a shop. The other thing is it supports all our wonderfully talented artisans in this country and surprisingly even though they are all lovingly handmade, the items are often cheaper than any shop bought 'copy'.

What a week. After the bat episode, I have been out in the dark with a torch trying to see if my little cat was alright following a terrible noise I heard. To my surprise a vast badger was lurking in the undergrowth and hurridly escaped out of my garden by opening the wooden gate! I was so shocked, I nearly trod on a toad and touched it on it's bottom to see if it was still alive. The toad immediately hopped off and I fell flat on my face into a pile of leaves full of midges and bugs! These are the joys of nightime gardens- they become alive with slimmy and unusual nocturnal creatures!

My daytime activity has been planting up containers for a stall at a fair. I have made some lovely arrangements with herbs. Black peppermint, grapefruit mint,sages, thyme,rosemary,african basil,feverfew and lemon verbena.I also did some arrangements with herbaceous plants in zinc and cream metal baskets.They all looked lovely and sold very well. I can supply a range of unusal herbs and plants in coir pots that can go straight  in the ground and many clients like me to do planters for them like this.

Now it's back to the drawing board to design a lovely garden on a slope!

Last night I had a big shock - a bat had decided my bedroom was the place to be and at 1 am it made unlikely manoevre and squeezed through the curtains. Usually it is my cat Twix that leaps through the bedroom window,up near the eaves carrying a terrified little vole which will either be saved by me if I can manage to drag myself out of bed half asleep or I will find in one or more bits on my carpet in the morning! But last night was different and quite scary as I spent half the time screaming and glued to my bed under the covers.Bats are small when the wings are closed but boy are they big when flying and diving up and down. My screams woke my daughter and we both spent an hour and a half trying to get the flying,diving creature out.We succeeded at last and blery eyed ,I had to change the sheets for during the hour and half session, hald a ton of bat poo was on my sheets! The joys of wildlife and gardening are sometimes such a delight!