Well this is very fancy. We have a fountain in our garden, don’t you know, like Lord and Lady Fancypants. Well, sometimes we have a fountain, it is solar powered. And I don’t imagine Lord Fancypants gets soaked scooping out pond goop or changing the fountain topper from ‘bubble’ to ‘jets.’ However, when the sun shines and the water trickles or tinkles it does feel ridiculously fancy that we actually have an actual fountain, actually.

So of course, I’ll share that fancy news with the ‘Six on Saturday’ gang who blog about garden things on Saturdays…

The pond is made of sleepers and dug out to about 65 cm deep, with steps creating various planting depths, and a few routes for frogs from neighbouring ponds to get in and out. It’s planted with bulrushes and water shamrock, and oxygenating plants and a waterlily. When we asked at the local garden shop, Acres, about solar powered pumps for fountains, the very friendly sales assistant reminded us we live in Britain, and that solar powered fountains only work when the sun shines. But when they do shine, it’s lovely.

Credit for building this marvellous garden feature goes to Simon of fromegardendiy and it was designed and planted by my marvellous husband. My only practical contribution was to hack the spout with tape to make it a three jet fountain.

My second selection from the garden this Saturday has to be this lupin in the front garden. Me and my husband love lupins but often don’t have much luck with them. The lupis seem to love this sunny gravel garden. I’m saying nothing more in case of tempting fate. Often, the space behind the lupins, also known as my neighbours garden(!) contains parked cars, but while it was clear and sunny I got this snap of this lovely yellow and purple lupin.

My third garden highlight is under the cherry tree, where these self seeded aquilegias emerged.

Regular readers may be delighted to note that the disco ball is sparkly and clean. Until my husband gave it a wipe with vinegar it was covered in lichen. It is much better sparkly, although I also kind of liked that that lichen.

My 4th thing this Saturday is cherries on the tree. There must have been a bee pop by that hd visited another cherry tree in the neighbourhood and it pollinated our little cherry tree. I was hoping this would happen!

Thing five is the red rosebuds. There are quite a lot of rosebuds on the two established red roses in the garden. With just a few sunny days (whenever they might be) these roses should be quite glorious.

Thing six from the garden is the wildflower meadow, which we planted as turf a few months ago, and has done wonderfully well in the looming shadow of the huge laurel bush. It’s enhanced with a metal sculpture of swallows, which is illuminated by solar lights once the sun’s set.

Last weekend, as ‘lockdown restrictions eased’ my parents came to visit for a few days, and although the weather was mostly dreadful, the sun did occasionally shine, and when it did, sitting with my family in the garden, by the fountain, with the lovely sound of water bubbling and a few G&Ts was utterly wonderful.

If you’d like to see more flowers, click here for my Friday flowers blog on the clematis, lupins, daisy, ragged robin, red campion or forget-me-not in our garden this May.

And for more collections of garden things this weekend, visit the Propagators blog for Six on Saturday.

As usual, I hope your plans and plants are doing well.

Jen x