Early Autumn 2023 English Garden Tour (& chairs update) 🌸🌸🌸

Hi everyone, it's Jeanette here from Enthusiastic Gardener. Welcome back to my garden and I just wanted to thank you all for all your comments last week. Remember last week if you saw my video we took away our old garden furniture and I asked you what would you do and I explained that we don't want a dining table and chairs, we don't need more than four chairs, we wanted something because we really liked the look of the open space and being able to see all the plants which we weren't used to and we really like that. So we wanted something that perhaps has a see-through-ish look to it. We had loads of wonderful suggestions. Come here. Oh loads of wonderful suggestions, thank you. We had things like an egg chair or two egg chairs. Richard doesn't like egg chairs unfortunately. We had a trampoline that was very amusing, fire pits, all different things. So very interesting and we have been looking around. I've been looking, well I said that we were going to wait, of course we couldn't wait. So I've been looking on online, I've been looking on Amazon, found a couple of good options on Amazon which were kind of my plan B's. Now today we went out and we looked at Alton's Garden Centre, the Vue Garden Centre, there's a shop called Regatta along the 127. We looked at it and thought they were really heavy. Regatta mostly has rattan furniture which we didn't want because that's what we just had. We were looking for aluminium. Anyway we ended up at Battles Bridge which is the Antique Centre and we have found what we were looking for. As Bono says in U2, we have found what we are looking for and I'm going to show you. It's a project for Richard but he's up for the challenge so this is what we're going to do. And I just wanted to say on the way to showing you the chairs how so pleased I am with Woodland Courtyard. It's honestly the most fun I've had in an area all year. So as we go into the garage to show you the chairs, look how well my spider's web is, so happy being in the shade. And that's the other one, that one, they've picked up no end so I'm delighted. And all my ferns Mark Border gave me, they're all doing well. Unfortunately all the labels as you can see, it rained but luckily behind each one I still have kept Mark's, oops, I still have Mark's little labels there so I'm going to have to do new labels again. That's the other fancier spider's web. So I am so delighted with my Woodland Courtyard area. I think it's just wonderful. Let's go in here, I'm going to show you in the workshop what we're going to do with the chair situation. And this is what we have, we have eight cast iron, these are so heavy, so heavy. Richard is going to make chairs and these cast iron chairs we fit all eight in our little Fiat 500 and that's the Woodland Courtyard chair which as you can see now Richard has to make four new chairs and fix. So he has five chairs that he needs to do but he has all winter to do them in. So the chairs are going to look like this one that he did, dogs have just had their dinner, he did this one probably a year ago I suppose. He made this, this was a three-seater bench if you didn't see this video, three-seater bench that he cut down the wood and made it into a one-seater chair. So that is what we're going to have. As four chairs all facing each other, like a little conversational area and we're going to get a little round table to go in the middle. And I must say we had a bargain because obviously chairs are expensive, garden furniture you can spend like two, three thousand pounds and there's no way me, bargain hunter me was going to pay that much. So we've got two sides i.e. one chair's worth for 30 pounds. Then obviously we need to buy the wood, we need to buy the paint and we need to buy all the fixings, the screws etc. So that's that's what we've decided and thank you so much all your help with helping us and let's have a quick look at the garden. I should have put the fountain on, let's run and put the fountain on. That's better, we can't have a garden tour without the fountain on. I recently, well yesterday actually, I deadheaded all my geraniums or pelargoniums and I've just left the little buds now. So any old flowers which was full of beautiful pink did look gorgeous but I've cut everything down and it's going to be a very brief garden tour because it's quite windy and I don't have a mic. I just want to show you a quick look around. It's still looking quite colourful but if I stand right here and look up at the trees which overhang my garden it's not going to be much longer before they all start falling and I'll be picking up leaves again. The year seems to have flown, let's have a quick look around the garden at the first weekend of autumn and I've been so pleased really with how this garden year has gone. I have planted so many new things and I've filled in lots of gaps and I've done projects that I wanted to do with relocated fountains. I kind of feel like all my major projects are done and now I can concentrate on maintenance. Unfortunately on my rhododendron I can only see one bud for next year. I'm considering moving this because I've said it so many times that does not look right to me. Here's the view from here, those Bronnera are just fantastic and the ferns and now if you saw my video for a couple of weeks ago with the wonderful fern collection that I was so kindly given by my friend Mark Border, hopefully I'm going to have so many beautiful ferns in the next year or two. Here's a view from my yellow seat where I can just listen to the gentle trickling of the fountain over there. I love that fountain there, I'm so pleased I moved that. I'm so pleased I moved the cat as well. So pleased I have in the distance my tree of life, my new window box which you can't see because it's been hidden by the plum. Everything is looking nice still. I just wanted to show you the enormous Bronnera leaves, look at the size of those, gorgeous. You can see my camper van, the blue camper van. Mum's got the red camper van now, I have the blue one. There's a view of Shady Corner with the fountain which I do need to clean. It's very green, I think you can probably get some stuff to put in to stop it going green. Crocosmia are fading now, just a few little orange flowers left. It'll all start dying down pretty soon. Look how much this has grown, sweet caroline potato vine is covering the pathway and these are just, oh my goodness, they're gorgeous. My seed of autumn joy, gorgeous. There's the other one because I cut them in half and made two and I think I will do that again. Oh I love this, Erymophila, it's grown so much. My emu bush, it's grown so much. This is my hand, this is the size. I do hope, I really really do hope that that survives the winter. If we have a week of snow like we did last year, things are going to suffer. We did lose things last year and this has grown so much. This is the unknown little cutting mum gave me. It's grown so much you can't even get through, although Lucy still does. She still manages to get through. I'm so pleased with these, the Carex. I divided my Carex and there's loads, there's lots underneath there, underneath there. They've done so well, they look so healthy and we have some more down here. This is like a dog's eye view of the garden. Those pelargoniums, I've deadheaded everything because I'm hoping that by deadheading we might get some more buds. You can see little buds there. There's still more flowering to be done but I thought I'd deadhead everything and then it can have a new lease of life. The Austromaria. I did consider spray painting these just for the hell of it but I've been banned, Richard has banned me from doing that. I shouldn't have mentioned it, I should have just done it. These are the Carex pups that I planted. They were the pups from the front garden and they're doing ever so well. Another thing that's doing well is this lamium but I have a plan B for this area. As you can see it's just a little semi-circle, it's hardly got any earth, it's probably only about four inches deep and then it hits concrete, probably as deep as those bricks are on the edging. So my neighbour outside, she had some artificial grass lawn laid and she had a skip outside with offcuts and I said to her, can I take those offcuts because if my lamium dies and everything else has died that I've tried to put in here, so if my lamium dies I am just going to put a little semi-circle of lawn. I will be moving these, these are Passia Glauca daisies white. These, well these aren't, very unimpressive, should have hidden those. I will be moving these, they look beautiful in the spring but they suffered against this brick wall on the west facing wall, they've suffered. But what I'm waiting for is for all these annuals to die back and then I'm going to put the three piceas in here somewhere, so that's what I'm planning. The window box has done so well, begonias is the way forward and the sweet caroline potato vine. When all this starts dying back, that's a little rose, I'll probably take it all out I think I will put, refresh the compost, I'm going to plant tulips in there and then what I might get is a couple of the ornamental cabbages, rows of those and that's it. We are at autumn now or fall as you call it and we don't really eat over here, not to my knowledge anyway, people don't really do the pumpkins and such like that. I know that my friends over in America seem to really go all out for pumpkins, we don't really do that here, unless maybe they, everyone does except me and I haven't realised, I don't know. But anyway, this is autumn in my garden and I'm appreciating this view at the moment because very soon I will be covered in leaves, oh my goodness. Hi, it's now Monday evening, we need to post this video, upload it for tomorrow morning but I just wanted to say thank you because at the weekend I hit 7,000 subscribers, oh yes, I had a certificate for 7,000 subscribers and also recently I had a certificate for 1 million views on YouTube, I think it's because of you, oh of course, because of Richard and I just wanted to say that I never ever say to you, please subscribe to my channel, please hit the like button, it would really help my channel because I don't want to say, are you making fun of me? I don't want to say that to people but however I have noticed on my analytics that out of 36% of people who watch my videos, 64% have not subscribed, so if you're watching it's totally free, you don't have to pay anything but please hit the subscribe button and Richard, if we get a few more subscribers, he's going to be in more videos, yeah, okay, so you've got a project for the chairs, I have, yes, I'm looking forward to it, so that would be good, make four chairs, yes, make four chairs and fix a big chair, yes, anyway, thank you so much for watching, I'm Jeanette, Richard, enthusiastic gardener, non-enthusiastic, I'm an enthusiastic gardener, getting more enthusiastic, oh yes, year by year, thank you for watching, take care, have fun in your gardens and we will see you very soon, we will, bye, bye, smile!