A friend is restructuring and replanting an entire garden in her new house. I am agitating to extending another flower bed. She is hating the whole process whilst I’m desperate to begin.

I love a good garden project.

Last year we extended the back bed and put in nine new David Austin roses. It was going to be a stretched eight, well they are reasonably expensive even bare root, but a spare arrived in the post so in it went. Sods law it turns out to be an entirely different variety but with a bit of luck…

They seem to be growing well and have coped with the narcissus and tulips for Spring. Hopefully the geranium (Roxanne Gewat) will look good underneath though I’ve also stuck in a few white gladioli and can’t quite remember where. This is why I’m a lousy gardener – too many plants and too bad a memory.

With the daffodils long gone and the tulips going over, it seems a good time to think about ordering for next year in that never-ending joy-fest of gardening with bulbs. They carry with them all of the promise of a beautiful Spring and the only downside is persuading the glum companion that an afternoon digging is worthwhile. He always loves the flowers, but not so much the dirt.

I’ve built up a wishlist on the website for PeterNijssen with as many of the ones from last year that I can remember. For under the hedge with the narcissus (a successful idea last year) I’m going to plant some tulip bakeri to follow on and hopefully cheer up the space.

And maybe if my potted up spares of the woodruff take, I’ll stick some of them down there too. The danger with the latter is that it spreads into the rest of the garden, like the thug it’s advertised as. 

In the back border, along with the roses I’m going to add some black and whites so something like Queen of the Night and the white Purissima.

And I might add some under the wisteria where the tulips from last year have really brightened the place up.

In the front bed, I’m just going to abandon the colour scheme and add some scarlet tulips to the ones that already live there. I can’t get rid of them so may as well go with the flow.

In the front garden, I’m going to chuck in some soft pink tulips like an Angelique

Maybe some whites would do nicely as well but four types of tulip seems a sufficiency.

Depending on what happens to the fritillary bed (to widen or not to widen) I could add some mini-narcissus into the front, but the reality is that I have larger ambitions.

If we make the bed as big as I’d like, then I could fit some iris germanic (bearded) into the bed along with some long flowering favourites from the rest of the garden. What’s not to love about some space for yet more perennial wallflowers, some penstemons or a hardy geranium or half-hardy salvia or two?

It’s not sensible of course, I should really let one project settle, take stock and then start in on the next phase. I’m too greedy. This is why my garden will never be elegant. Fun, though!