I just had to make the most of the glorious weather this week-end and got stuck into the garden. My sweet peas are now in complete with cane wigwam. My borders are dug over and perennials in. Our soil is very sandy despite the layers of manure we added to it last year so I’ve used plants that like dry, sunny conditions

– Echinops (blue thistly flowers) Eryngium (more blue thistly flowers), Geraniums (bright pink varieties), Helenium (red daisy flowers), Lychnis (silver foliage, bright pink flowers) Rudbeckia (yellow daisy flowers) and Stachys (velvety silver foliage) to name a few of my favourites.

The lawn is re-edged and aerated and one of the veg beds now has carrots, parsnips and radishes sown. My pots have had a tidy and are ready to be planted with the summer bedding in a few weeks time. Phew... Exhausting but its going to look gorgeous!

As it finally looks like temperatures may be climbing I’ve got some serious catching up to do in the garden. Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be getting some vegetables into one of my raised beds, a few weeks later than I had hoped but there’s still plenty of time for them to get going & its still too early to plant the beans & courgettes that I’m saving for my other raised bed, I’ll just give that another quick weed then get my favourite Maris Piper potatoes started off in my Potato grow bag.

I can also finally get some sweet peas in. They make very pretty cut flowers that also offer a wonderful fragrance. I’ll buy some ready started (from our nursery of course!) & get a cane wigwam set up for them to grow up whilst I harden them off for a few days. This means leaving them outside in the day but bringing them inside at night to get them used to the lower outside temperatures. Although they’re pretty tough I’ll just keep an eye out for any late frosts once planted out & fleece them if necessary. The most important thing with sweet peas if you want a long & productive flowering season is to keep picking the flowers once they start to appear. If you allow them to set seed the plant will have done its job & won’t produce many more flowers. A little tomato feed every now & again will also give them a boost.

Some of the boys from our centre in Mappleborough Green in Warwickshire are just starting training for a charity bike ride from Mappleborough Green down to Golden Acres West Parley in Dorset. James, Ben, Anthony and Steve will set off on July 6^th and hope to make it to us for the 7^th – quite a challenge. They are doing this in aid of the Acorns childrens hospice who offer a network of care for life limited and life threatened children and young people and their families across the heart of England.

If you would like to sponsor them the link to the just giving web site is :

http://www.justgiving.com/Badger-boys  or you can text 'JABS69' and the amount £.... To 70070. (texts are free)

We’ll keep you posted on how the training goes (we’ve advised them to get plenty of padding!) and how much they manage to raise when they’ve completed the ride.

We are very pleased to be stocking a new range of garden machinery available in most of our centres from Wolf tools. We have stocked a range of their hand and multi change tools for a while and have been really impressed with the quality so we were really excited when we saw their range of electric lawnmowers, trimmers, scarifiers and battery powered tools at a trade show last year.

Wolf has a great reputation. German engineered and around since 1927 they have a wealth of experience behind them and are so confident in the quality they offer a 10 year guarantee on all of their tools. They have also achieved several awards from the Which best buys.