{"id":184,"date":"2006-01-07T19:19:57","date_gmt":"2006-01-07T19:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/applecrumble.wordpress.com\/2006\/01\/07\/learning-to-garden\/"},"modified":"2020-04-12T21:07:07","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T21:07:07","slug":"learning-to-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2006\/01\/07\/learning-to-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning to garden"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’ve spent the past two Saturdays out in the garden. It’s one of my new year’s resolutions to learn all about what to do and how to do it in our jardin magnifique – hopefully I, with the help of my wife (and her parents who have been great already) will be able to turn both our back and front gardens into something to enjoy instead of the eyesores that they are now.<\/p>\n

We’ve got a very big, old tree standing at the back of our garden and the whole area around it looked very messy. When I took a better look I found that the tree had lots of little bushy branches low down and no discernable trunk – from my very limited knowledge I think this must have been due to somebody cutting it back and not paying much attention to it afterwards, causing a mass of small branches and shoots to appear. So I set about it with my loppers and removed what seemed to be a massive pile of branches and twigs<\/a> but leaving a tidy cut-back tree<\/a>. I’m hoping that I didn’t cut back too much and do the tree any harm – I had a quick look on the web and in a basic gardening book we had lying around the house and the rule-of-thumb seemed to be focused around not cutting too many of the branches off as a whole so I guess it will be okay. I hope<\/em> it will be okay!<\/p>\n

So far over the past week we’ve cut the tree back, added a bird-box to our other large tree, put some nut and seed dispensers up (which the birds are just loving<\/em>), removed two reasonably deep-rooted plants, cut back another very old and scraggy tree, cleaned out our water butt and de-mossed some guttering. I’ve also invested in a copy of The Complete How To Be A Gardener<\/em><\/a> by Alan Titchmarsh<\/a> (an absolute bargain from Amazon.co.uk) and a small pair of binoculars to watch the birds! Exciting stuff. I’ll try and keep you updated with how it goes. Any tips appreciated!<\/div>\n

I’ve spent the past two Saturdays out in the garden. It’s one of my new year’s resolutions to learn all about what to do and how to do it in our jardin magnifique – hopefully I, with the help of my wife (and her parents who have been great already) will be able to turn […]<\/div>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-home","7":"h-entry","9":"hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":114,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2005\/06\/08\/the-ducks-of-bridgewater-road\/","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":0},"title":"The ducks of Bridgewater Road","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"8 June 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Since moving to sunny Berkhamsted I've now got a very pleasant walk to work, taking in pretty much the entire length of Bridgewater Road. 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The big beech tree in our garden has all its buds ready to go. They all seem to unfurl on the same day in one big explosion of green.","rel":"","context":"In "Snippets"","block_context":{"text":"Snippets","link":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/category\/snippets\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/c49e4ba80d664bf08e1355c9b2b2f767.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/c49e4ba80d664bf08e1355c9b2b2f767.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/c49e4ba80d664bf08e1355c9b2b2f767.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8953,"url":"https:\/\/andrewdoran.uk\/blog\/2022\/04\/18\/8953\/","url_meta":{"origin":184,"position":3},"title":"\ud83d\udcf7 Not long now until\u2026","author":"Andrew Doran","date":"18 April 2022","format":"status","excerpt":"\ud83d\udcf7 Not long now until the beech trees that line our back gardens burst out with their fresh leaves. The vivid green colour of new leaves is startling. 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