Hello and welcome back to my blog 🙂
Today’s post is a shorter one, as I have been busy working on multiple projects in the garden. I’ll be posting about each area in due course, so that you can see what I’ve been getting up to!
I’ve also got a huge amount of bulbs and seeds to get planting and sowing, but I am pacing myself, so that things remain manageable and false Spring can pass! Over the coming weeks, I will be sharing the new bulbs and seeds I will be growing this year, so stay tuned for those posts.
Table of contents
The Fruit Garden
The patio area
Over the last weekend, the Mr removed the remaining nine paving slabs that made up a small patio area in one side of The Fruit Garden.
This wasn’t a patio that we installed; it was here when we moved in and I’ve just been working around it. It was actually going to be the original site for my greenhouse, because it is a very sunny spot!
The reason why the slabs were removed is because I didn’t like how they looked off centre, when taken in the context of a new fruiting arch that is going to be put at the entrance to that little seating area. The pots in the below photo indicate roughly where I think the arch is going to be placed:
The fruit trees currently in the pots (pictured above) are apple trees that I am going to train as espaliers over the arch. I am hoping in the new few weeks to get the arch and other new structures installed in The Fruit Garden, so it should become more apparent how the space is going to be used and then I can properly start developing this area of the garden this year.
Once the slabs were removed, I weeded over the area well:
After weeding, I then covered the area with cardboard to suppress any further weeds from growing. Bark mulch will simply be spread over that entire section of The Fruit Garden, on top of the cardboard:
The seats will also remain up in that area, as it is a very nice place to sit and enjoy the sunshine throughout the day. I’ve also found that I enjoy sitting up there and looking at the fruiting plants.
You may recall that I very recently planted out oriental lilies and crocosmia in the bed next to the wall at the back, so that bed will be able to be viewed close-up from the seating area:
To read my post about the oriental lilies and the crocosmia, you can click here: The Fruit Garden: Blooms for beauty and the bees
The gooseberry bush
Whilst I was up in The Fruit Garden, I also repotted a gooseberry bush we inherited in this garden. It has looked barely alive for a long time and I think it has probably been left in the same pot for years:
Here you can see a couple of new leaves, showing the plant is still alive:
I simply tugged the plant from the pot, cleared off the old compost, teased out the roots and added new compost to the pot before potting up.
The gooseberry has responded by putting out more new leaves, but I am not entirely sure whether we will be keeping it. I prefer to know exactly what variety of fruit or vegetable I am growing! I may be able to work out the variety in time, but for now, it will stay in the pot.
The pear tree
In other news, unfortunately, whilst I was digging up all the hazel hedging from The Fruit Garden a few weeks ago (it was transplanted to The Woodland Garden, where it is doing really well), I accidently caught the pear tree and it snapped straight off at the graft union!
I quickly improvised that day by cutting a new graft union and fixing it together with cling film, and whilst I was in The Fruit Garden sorting out the patio area, I decided to re-do the graft union with floristry parafilm. I have used parafilm for grafting fruit trees years ago and I found it works very well.
I also tied that fruit tree to the netting for extra security. We’ll see whether or not the tree lives after being regrafted!
That’s all for today. There are various wheels in motion for The Fruit Garden and I am looking forward to sharing the changes with you over the coming weeks!
Until next time, I hope you are all enjoying the start of Spring 2025 and happy gardening 🙂
The Charming Nook 
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