SOME MAY COLOUR IN THE GARDEN

 

The reopened raised bed is looking nice and colourful.

The troughs that were moved to the new brick area , have been planted up and hopefully will enjoy the sun, when it comes out.

We decided to replace the four terracotta pots in the flower garden, with four heavier blue pots due to one of our dogs having a destructive tail ! Honestly he's tail is so strong and always wagging, it knocks both plants and pots flying. 

Looking at the pots now it place , it helps the circle appear more obvious.

We have also added another brick under the new pots to give them a little more height and therefore , hopefully, save them from the tail damage ! 

We have put Salvia's in each of them and some low growing plants.

x

Some breaded Iris's are starting to flower.

We appear to have an awful lot of these purple bearded Iris's and they have started growing in lovely full clumps around the garden.

z

z

z

z

z

The garden does have a lot of purples and lilac's in it at present.

We are still having some cold nights , so plants are back in the greenhouse and also covered up but soon we should be past cold nights and everything can stay back in place. 

ANOTHER STATUE FOR THE GARDEN

 

So Paul wanted a statue but like everything, a place needed to be found along with making sure we were not over crowding the garden. 

We decided it could go amongst these shrubs.

However like everything, placement and then standing back and checking saves having to move things again!

Wanting it to have some of the shrubs behind it, we forgot that we had thought that it should be further to the left in order not to land up behind the sundial ! As you can see , we forgot that by the time it arrived.

The statue is quite heavy, so it was left for a day before Paul moved it over to the left. Which is a much better place for it in relation to the sundial and the folly .

One of the reason for wanting shrubs behind it, is that we are near the top of a hill and therefore it can be very windy at times. So it's now in a slightly more open space but there is a shrub slowly growing up behind this new place and we can add another if needed.

Here later in the morning as the sun is moving round, the statue is now in shadow.

which gives it another feel.

The statue is by Marcus who sell as Tudor Gate , he lives in Cornwall who has been creating his own designs of garden and architectural ornaments for 37 years and all pieces are hand made by him in St Ives where he lives.

The statue is called Sanctuary

Here is this statue's story. 

Claus Sluter , of Haarlem, Holland, influenced this functional sculpture which took Marcus, two and a half years to carve and perfect the original. Sluter was the foremost sculptor of the period around 1400.

His chief works were done for the court of Burgundy.

The Latin inscription that runs the circumference of the monk base in lead reads " Solitarius Locus Sanctus " this transcribes to " Holy Lonely Place "

Marcus strove for both utility in purpose and beauty in design, for the Sanctuary has a secret, it can house a family of Blue Tits in it's chest. Entrance and exit through the cowl.

So the monk stands ready to home a family of Blue Tits in the future, the statue has been placed so the entrance via the cowl is facing the right way for bird use.  It will be interesting to see if any take up residence. Meanwhile he stands in solitude near both the folly and the stream in the quiet .