Bloomfield Cottage Open Garden - two weeks to go....

It`s not every year that we open our gates for a weekend to share our amazing garden and lifestyle with the public and garden lovers alike. Thank goodness, because it`s an incredible amount of work for about five months. In fact, we only do it every 2 or 3 years, so this is going to be a great opportunity to see just what 18 years of dedicated gardening has produced.

`Bloomfield Cottage` is named after a massive climbing red rose, too big even for here! Roses are the main feature of the garden at the end of October, and are budding up with great vigour at the moment. There are three huge diamond shaped `show` beds - one a red rose bed, one a pink and white bed and the last is a mixture of apricot and purple. Here, Roses are used extensively in the landscape. Arbours and archways adorn roses, making walkways a fragrant experience.  Ballerina rose, drapes a chain and post fence along the driveway, while Crepuscule and New Dawn hang over tall rose wheels. Pillar roses are also used for effective upright height. Clair Jaquier is showing off at the moment, hanging from the branches of a dead tree - the home in fact of our beloved bee hive!

You will find many `Heritage` roses throughout the garden and an extensive bed dedicated to David Austin roses, so very English and so very fragrant, under-planted with loads of salvias and colour.
The massive undertaking of planting enough colour to keep the gardens interesting is helped, no doubt, by the fact that I work in a large plant Nursery. Urns, quirky statues, bird baths etc. are also dotted about the place for interest.

So, what else is there to see? If you stroll around the verandah, which is cool and covered in wisteria - just finished flowering, you will find lots of tender pretty shrubs and flowers all in pinks flowing into the gold/orange bed and around to the blue and purple garden, full to the gills of colour.
You may also like to investigate the cool greenhouse and potting area or the newly built glasshouse.
Of course it wouldn`t be an experience till you`ve said hello to the chooks and rabbits or Hunter, our very spoilt miniature horse.

In this part of the garden you will come across the vegetable gardens - six of them in fact. People are always fascinated with healthy looking home grown vegetables, so I have been busy planting all our summer crops in my spare time. That`s right, when I`m not shovelling mulch, planting shrubs and potted colour, pruning. hedging, fertilizing - oh, you get the gist. Have a look at the collage of garden pics I took today. So, two weeks to go till showtime...we`ve had some rain, now we need some sun...

I`ll post some pic`s and perhaps a video, when Bloomfield Cottage has its open weekend, to show you what the visitors will see. Oct 25th and 26th, 2014