Five years ago we moved to our new house and after living in flats for years I went garden crazy. I dug borders everywhere and spent hundreds of pounds on plants to fill them. Fast forward a year and hours of weeding later and lots of my plants hadn't grown any bigger due to the terrible soil in our garden. I was a little disheartened but I plodded on regardless. Then I got pregnant with my first and the garden took a back seat for a while.
Last summer I was newly pregnant again and decided to have a bit of a sort out in the garden preempting my lack of energy towards the end of pregnancy and non existent time once the baby arrived. Realising the borders were rubbish for my plants I dug up some of the shrubs which weren't thriving and stuck them in pots full of nutrient rich fresh soil. One of the shrubs was a Camellia which in four years hadn't grown much more than an inch. I left the pots on my sunny patio and immediately forgot about them for the rest of my pregnancy.
Yesterday I was sitting eating lunch with the baby, looking out into the patio and I noticed something colourful on the Camellia. It took me a minute to comprehend what it was... A flower!
In fact the whole plant had at least tripled in size over the past year! I immediately snapped this shocking quality iphone photo to capture the historic moment for fear of the 3yr old discovering and destroying the precious flower I had been waiting 5yrs to see.
This is an example of how critical the quality of the soil is to plants. Really my borders need digging out and feeding with proper soil as they are basically made up of clay. Now I've noticed my garden again I can't wait to find some time to get out there and pay it some attention.
Linking up to How Does Your Garden Grow? #HDYGG over at mammasaurus.co.uk
