Easter & The Garden

I love the new life springing up in our garden,

the lush greeness, the exuberant efflorescence, the wafting scents in mild evenings.

Isn't Spring filled with so much optimism and hope?

And, to me, Easter feels like the absolute pinnacle of all that I adore about this time of year.

The ultimate meaning of new life.

I am so grateful for the eternal hope that I have because of my king, Jesus, through his agonizing death and
glorious resurrection.

Although I don't often talk explicitly about
my Christian faith on Modern Country Style,
it's absolutely central in every aspect of my life.

I hope you have a wonderful Easter.



Outdoor Prettification





Hello there, chickadees.

I hope you had the most marvellous weekend,

luxuriating in the longer, lighter evenings.

One of my very favourite things to do in the whole world,

is to sit on the swing seat at the end of the garden, with Mr Modern Country, once we've tucked our littlies safely into their beds. We sit, holding hands, and chat about the day together with cups of tea by our sides.

No matter what kind of day I've had

and, not to gloss too much over the glamour of my everyday life,
I will let you that the know that one of my children gave another
a wonkily haphazard haircut this weekend

(oh, the joys of parenting),

this somehow puts my whole world to rights.

This picture rather perfectly captures the feel of what I hope to create in the seating area just outside our backdoor, where there's a paved space just begging to be prettified.

The hunt is on.

Image unknown

Inspiration Week: Al Fresco in the Garden

Hello my lovely-jubblies,

Welcome back to Inspiration Week at Modern Country Style.

I'm so looking forward to the Inspiration Journey Linky Party here on Friday! I can't wait to see the gorgeousness that I've been hearing all about from lots of you.

Well, yesterday I promised you a garden trip and here we are! Thanks so much for coming out into the garden with me for a bit of fresh air.

Garden heaven, here we come. ;-)

Today I'm thinking about al fresco dining in my garden.

Yeah, thinking, *not* doing. It's sunny today but still a bit too cold to think about eating outside by choice.

We currently have a circular paved area, just beyond where this path leads in the photo of our garden below. Plus a covered terrace outside our back door. And a patio right at the back of the garden.

So I'm on the prowl for ideas for how to use them more than we do now. I'd love to create more space for easy entertaining outside like these dreamy images.

A beautiful veranda in place of the structure we have at the moment would be perfect. With a glass roof to let the light into the house.

In a muted green-grey.

{This next one is my favourite. Yum.}

That would be for spontaneous tea-times in the garden as a family.

Or casual suppers with friends in the summer.

Then further up I would like a gorgeous table and chairs for casual coffees with my girlfriends.

Yes, that's you.

And right at the back of the garden, we'd love to put in some kind of summerhouse/den/playroom/haven't-really-decided kind of room.

That's the long-term plan.

Those are the images that are helping me along on my Inspiration Journey. I could very happily sit and stare at them all day long.

That's the short term plan. ;-)

{Yup, hilarious is my middle name.}

Today is Pancake Day in the UK so I'm scurrying around preparing for some flipping-action this evening. Mmmmm, I love me some pancakes.

So then, this week we've had gorgeous crafty inspiration and al fresco dining loveliness, which leads me onto sharing my very favourite Modern Country Interiors.

I'm thinking Belgian: my new Style Crush.

Very exciting indeedy.

I'm linking with lovely Lisa at:

Images via: Unknown, unknown, Homes & Gardens, Breckonridge Conservatories, Our Garden, Unknown, Unknown, Breckonridge Conservatories, Giner Ella, Unknown, Shed Chic, Birmingham Mail, Shed Chic

I'm linking to my favourite parties in my sidebar.

My English Garden Linky Party

Welcome to My English Garden Party!

And some ground-breaking news too. It's an exciting moment for me at Modern Country Style....I've just set up my very own Facebook page.

I'd LOVE it if you'd click on the little Like button over on the right on my sidebar. It's a special button that allows you to Like Modern Country Style without being whisked over Facebook.

It's the perfect way to have a bit more of a chat with me and each other than blogging allows. You'll be able to hear the inner workings of my brain.

Frightening.

Will you join in? It's just to your right? See it? Yup, that's the puppy. Now, just a little click and you're away....

There. Simple, eh?

**********************

So.

This is my garden in about May/June, looking away from the house.

I love scent in the garden. When I walk out of our back door, I want to be embraced by the heavenly fragrances of my favourite flowers wafting towards me. In May, that comes mainly from the roses and honeysuckles that you can see here rambling their way over our fences.

The back part of the garden is jam-packed with fruit. Yup, I said JAM-packed. Ha!

We have redcurrant, white currants, black currants, gooseberries, raspberries, strawberries, plums, apples, peaches, loganberries and tayberries. All fairly easy to grow in England and all so utterly delicious. I can feel my taste buds perking up at the thought of all that plucking fresh, plump, juicy fruit.

We generally manage to eat it all but what little there is left over, gets made into jams and ice cream.

This is one of the flower beds about half way up the garden, near where we have our table and chairs. I'm on the lookout for some nicer ones this year...now that our twins are hopefully old enough to stop wanting to push them to one side and use the paved terrace for tricycling. 

So are you ready to link up your gorgeousness of the flower/ plant/ garden variety?

Here are three things I'd love you to do.

1) Follow Modern Country Style if you're liking what you see here.

2) Like Modern Country Style on Facebook. 

3) Link back to me in your post so other people can come and share the garden love.

Not rules...but I'm hopeful. ;-)

Now, take it away.....

I'm linking to my favourite parties in my sidebar.

Spring: where are you?

Hello sweethearts,

I don't know about you but I'm getting to that time of year when I'm longing for Spring. Longing, yearning, craving.

I thoughtyou might like to see a photo of our garden at its peak. 

Oh garden, I miss you.

But seed catalogues provide their own special brand of cheeriness for me in mid-January.

So much temptation!!

It brings Spring that little bit nearer...

Scented flowers for the house.....Acidanthera Murialae

I haven't done any kind of garden post in a long while but I simply had to share with you my latest find. You will love me forever, and I do mean forever, once you've discovered this too.

Two words: Acidanthera Murialae. Okay, not the easiest words to say (also called Gladiolus Callianthus, as if that was meant to sort out the complicated name problem....) but their fragrance more than makes up for it. One of the great joys in life is being able to pick an armful of flowers in the garden and bring them into the house. If that floats your boat too, then these are the babies for you, my friend.

I first came across these at RHS Wisley and was instantly transfixed, intoxicated. They have a powerful, heavenly scent (in the nicest of ways) AND, the best news, they are everything you could want from a cut flower. Yes, it's easy to bring them into the house once they are starting to flower so that they can waft their loveliness all around.

They look great, and are pretty cheap too! What more could you possibly want for your flowering needs?

If you plant the small bulbs in succession: a big pot in April, one in May and one in early June, you'll have a long season of flowering to take advantage of in the late summer and autumn. Imagine huge bunches of scrumptiously-scented, ethereal-looking acidanthera adorning the favourite spots in your house, its exquisite scent rising to meet you whenever you pass (and then you pause, because you will so want to, and bury your face into their pale heads. Aaaaah...).


The flowers are delicate-looking, whitest white with deep purple markings in the centre (although some of mine seem to be purple all over). The leaves are similar to day lilies or crocosmia, that is, long and rising from the base of the plant. Elegant schwelligant.

Please, pleeeease try and grow these. You will honestly thank me forever and a day. Why acidanthera murialae aren't better known is beyond me.

Do you have a favourite cut flower to grow? I'd love to hear your choices.....

Sitting in the garden...

We're starting to get a second flush of roses in our garden. The garden seems to be rushing headlong towards Autumn so it's particularly welcome as a quiet reminder of the warmer days of high summer.

I like wandering in our garden. I try to do it every day, rain or shine, to make sure I am savouring all that it has to offer me. Admittedly, at times, it's nothing more than a quick mooch in the middle of getting the washing in, but my favourite times are when the children are at school and I can sit alone on the garden swing, with only the smallest glimpse of our house, and be still and pray and think and watch. That doesn't sound very still, does it, but it feels still to me, compared with normal daily life!

When I was out yesterday, this beautiful creamy specimen caught my eye. It only gets two flushes a year, rather than flowering continually as I'd really prefer, but they are so sumptuously full and fragrant when they flower that it makes any quiet spells worthwhile.

The colour is perfection. Creamy calico on the fronts of the petals and the warmth of freshly whipped double cream on the backs, which means that, as the petals fold in on themselves towards the centre, the colour reflects and intensifies and becomes almost pale gold. Heavenly.

A present in the garden...

Something that has been really lovely about moving into a house whose previous occupants were keen (and excellent) gardeners is that, even now, 6 years on, I notice new plants that they must have planted shortly before they left and are only now reaching maturity.

This year I noticed, for the first time, a lace cap hydrangea growing under a rampant honeysuckle. I am sure this is the first year I have seen it flowering. I've been wanting one for a while. They are so delicate and pretty.

We have other mop head hydrangeas but none like this! It's like being given a lovely present.

Everything's rosy...

Back to our garden....

This month, many of our roses are in their first flush.

Roses are one of my absolute favourite flowers.

Lots have been planted by me but many were here when we came so I'm not sure of the names of the ones pictured here. (Suggestions gratefully received!)

Aren't they beautiful?

Perfection.....

Lily beetles....

One of the wonderful things about having my very own space to garden is that I can grow lilies.....huge, fragrant, splendiferous lilies!

I love them in the garden or picking them for the house - their heavenly scent wafting wherever you put them. Aaaaah. Wonderful.

I've been growing them for about ten years now. Five and a half in our current garden. Which has been long enough to sound out to all the wretched lily beetles in our area that our garden is a lily playground. Grrr.

Here's a picture of one of the little blighters:

And here is a picture of the same lily seconds after I found it!

Gone!

Magic!

They are bright vermilion red so easy spot. If you are brave enough to hold them close to your ear pre-squashing, you may hear the bizarre squeak they emit. Very strange. Why would a beetle squeak?

If you grow lilies in your garden, do keep an eye out for lily bettles as the little critters will munch through leaves and can badly distortand even damage the plant.

Roses: Gertrude Jekyll

Could there be a Modern Country garden without roses? I think not. And, more specifically, without David Austen roses? The epitome of Modern Country gardening! The best of old (fragrance to die for) and the best of new (long flowering times) and all combined with stunning looks.

When I was young, I remember gardeners telling me that you could either have beauty or fragrance in a rose (and, no doubt, women!!). That the fragrance had been bred out in the process of trying to achieve visual perfection. No longer do we have to stand for this travesty! Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you David Austen's Gertrude Jekyll, a Modern Country rose at its best!


Obviously, I can't transmit it's scent to you (though I wish I could) but please believe me when I say it is divine. The kind of smell that makes you want to bury your face in the soft petals and inhale forever. Mmmmm.


This year, my Gertrude Jekyll rose is smothered with flowers. We've had a lot of rain over the past month and they seem not to have spoiled, as some roses do.

My one slight sadness is that their heads do droop somewhat. In fact, the whole plant is a little bit floppy (some might say 'delicate'!) and needs a helping hand supporting. With firm scaffolding in place, though, it is a sight to behold.


Gertrude Jekyll grows to about 6-8ft left unchecked (virtually a mini climber) or can be maintained as a shrub, flowering repeatedly throughout the summer. It has dark green foliage, which is a sumptuous bronzed red when young. The buds are beautiful and the open rosettes ( a medium pink) exquisite.


Don't you agree (how can you say no?!) that David Austen's Gertrude Jekyll rose definitely deserves its place in any Modern Country garden?