THE ALTERNATIVE CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW

My Jubilee bank holiday weekend is being spent laying down and cementing in the garden path.  There is still a lot of hard landscaping to be finished in the garden, but the garden is coming along nicely.   Year Two in the Garden of Anxiety and lots of plants are in bloom and the roses are running rampant.

Keeping on the straight and narrow

Rose mish-mash

Poundstore roses

Rose profusion

Big fluffy Pink ones...

and Orange ones

and Cream ones

These start off yellow and fade to cream

Sambucus Nigra is just starting to flower

Ceanothus 'Skylark' poking through the trellis

Clematis

You can never have enough climbers.  Incredibly useful for adding height to your garden if you have limited planting space for large shrubs & trees.

Pot bound Rhododendron has flowered

The Garden Keeper

I'm not a big fan of garden ornaments, but instead of gnomes we have this little fellow.  We call him the Garden Keeper or Caretaker and like to think that at night he comes alive and in our absence takes care of the garden for us.  I'm not sure what the bowl is for - watering plants; picking snails?

He currently lives in the undergrowth, between the Japanese Maple and Bamboo.  This shady border, when the path is finished, I'd like to develop more into a Zen garden with stones, ferns, etc.