My Dream Garden!

Spring is finally here and the garden is popping with colour again!

 If you didn’t know, Spring is my favourite season. Forget the pollen everywhere – on your outdoor furniture, on your car, in your nose, everywhere – I love Spring! All the beautiful colours and blooms popping out like a rebirth, like beauty out of ashes, it’s pure joy, like the earth is waking up from its slumber. Coming in a close second is Autumn, also for the beautiful colours. 

I am a bit of a romantic at heart. I dream of romantic gardens just bursting with beautiful flowers, cosy outdoor sitting, a water fountain in the background, and little birds high, high up chirping gaily. It speaks to my soul. 

I watch period dramas because I am guaranteed to see beautiful estates with amazing gardens. I am transported to another world with these lovely landscapes. I feel a certain excitement from imagining myself there. In fact, I could live off a little money if I could be guaranteed a charming little cottage with a little garden filled with an abundance of low-maintenance (because who wants to worry about watering?) explosion of plants and flowers, just like you’d see in an English cottage garden. Here are some periodic dramas that I as a garden lover simply love:

• 2005 Pride and Prejudice
• 2009 Emma 
• 2013 A Place to Call Home
• 2014 A Little Chaos 
• 2020 The Secret Garden
• 2020 Bridgerton

Have you seen any of these TV dramas? Well, you don’t have to be a period drama connoisseur to appreciate the sophistication and decadence of perfectly manicured gardens or the elegant romantic, whimsy, old-fashioned wildflower mix that takes you back into a turn-of-the-century English cottage garden with meandering pathways and beds overflowing with a visual panorama of colour that makes a garden pop.

Ok, let’s ignore my poetic descriptions here. But seriously I would most definitely retreat, disappear, vanish to a small English cottage surrounded by a magical garden space anywhere that ends in….shire: Berkshire, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Yorkshire, Wales, Cotswold (OK the last 2 don’t end in shire )…stripped back to basics and miles away drama, routine, and smartphones. Only in my dreams. But for now, I would seriously like to transform my own backyard into an enchanting and romantic paradise, working in and on my garden and cleverly combining plants that work well together, picking/fresh cut flowers from my own garden for my kitchen and dining table, enjoying it (no big birds or snakes), all the while harvesting juicy tomatoes and hot peppers too. 

They say Petit à petit l’oiseau fait son nid, and so petit à petit, I hope to accomplish this dream jardin with a mix of my favourite David Austin roses, some cheap annuals, lasting perennials, and herbs.

A huge thanks to my other .5 who supports me in indulging in these simple pleasures 

Slowly but surely, I should make this dream come true.