The Charming Nook

Hello and welcome back to my blog! It has been a busy week here, with our rescue cat Teddy being admitted into the vets on Thursday unexpectedly. It all turned out to be an error with a routine blood test, and he is fine and back home now!

If you want to follow Teddy’s recovery, you can follow him on Instagram at Teddy_is_loved

Today’s post is therefore a shorter one, showing you different areas of the garden where things are growing well and some small planting projects, as I am still working on two major projects in the garden at the moment.

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The Cherry Tree Avenue

The avenue of cherry trees I planted this year in one of our front gardens is starting to show blossom buds! Here is how that avenue was looking in January 2025:

I almost thought we wouldn’t see any blossom on the tree this year, but the blossom buds have started to emerge in the last few days:

The trees are also starting to leaf out well:

In the next few weeks, we should see some real progress as these trees start to mature. I will post updates as they continue growing!

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Potting up bulbs and fruit

Some of the smaller planting projects I have been doing this week included potting up my peacock orchid bulbs and fruit canes.

You may recall that I grew peacock orchids last year:

The peacock orchid bulbs are not frost-hardy, and they are typically treated as an annual. I’ve decided to ignore that consensus, because I don’t like the idea of replacing them every year. I brought these bulbs in before the frosts last year and stored them indoors in a cool place:

I am going to see how they fair again, planted up in pots:

I have planted the peacock orchids in larger pots this year, to help reduce the risk of them drying out so fast. I had them in smaller pots last year and I struggled with keeping up with watering, so these larger pots should help.

I also potted up five raspberry canes, ready for planting out soon in The Fruit Garden:

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The Wild Borders: the peony and the Japanese anemones

The peony in The Wild Borders finally looks like it is going to flower this year:

I have had this peony for about 3 or 4 years, but it has never flowered. It lived in a large horse bucket back on our balcony up in the North, where it was doing well, until a pigeon decided it was going to next in the bucket and trampled the peony…

I planted out the peony a few years ago in The Wild Borders and have just left it undisturbed, with occasional feeding in Spring and Autumn.

I will post updates as this peony (hopefully) shows us flowers for the first time!

In the shaded corner of the left-side border, I also have a group of Japanese anemones planted, which are finally growing well, after initially being nibbled by slugs. These were grown from seed purchased from the RHS seed scheme:

I used an organic slug trap filled with beer and wildlife friendly woolen slug pellets, both of which have done the trick of protecting these plants.

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That’s all for today. I will be back on Wednesday next week as usual! Until then, happy gardening 🙂