It’s about the height of summer, and the honeysuckle looks and smells spectacular. A recent visitor was the hummingbird hawkmoth, a beautiful bird-like moth that feeds on honeysuckle nectar. Of course, bindweed is an ongoing challenge, and the odd corner of the garden is getting overwhelmed with brambles, but it’s mostly looking lovely.

I took pics for ‘Six on Saturday’ and then got sidetracked, so here’s a selection of seven garden things for Sunday.

The honeysuckle – with a white tailed bumblebee

It feels like as good a time as any for a quick recap on ‘The Plan’ so far.-

At first our plan was to leave London, and spend more time in the garden. I ‘downshifted’ to part time work, and began volunteering to help nuture a love of nature. As these things go, THE PLAN has gradually evolved… and this blog is now mostly about a plan to create a nature-friendly garden, with flowers, fruit and veg.

By ‘Nature friendly’ I mean that we avoid using pesticides, herbicides or chemical feeds. We avoid using plastic lawns, weed suppressing membrane and try to limit use of plastic. We avoid using power tools. My lovely husband mows the ‘neat’ part of the lawn with a push-mower, and he trims the hedges using hand-held shears. It’s much quieter and it’s energy efficient!

We avoid peat based composts, and I try to limit the amount of plastic brought into the garden. I generally avoid buying plants grown in plastic, with peat and/or herbicides. I really do love the look of the colourful displays of mass produced bedding plants available at the big stores and supermarkets, but I try to remember the environmental cost of this kind of gardening.

That’s probably the hardest part of ‘greener’ gardening for me. I saw these pub-garden style hanging baskets, crammed with red white and blue petunias, for just £5 each at the market. I think they were unwanted jubilee decorations. And I could not resist them.

Nobody’s perfect.

I could share updates on the veg patch, the cherry tree and the sweetcorn, but I’m off out for a BBQ with friends later, so that’ll have to wait.

I hope your garden plans go well…

J x