Gardenly

Our taste in plants goes from common to odd.

We’ve got quite a thing for umbellifers which we’re experimenting with.

We love scent.

We enjoy colour.

We all have different tastes and thoughts about what looks good as garden ornamentation and adornment.

We’re not one’s for lads and lasses kissing under a scallop-shell shaped fountain. But we appreciate people who like to decorate their gardens with such things – they enjoy it, we can too, but it’s not for us.

We do admit that we couldn’t throw away the previous garden owners’ concrete dragon, squirrel and otter, (oh! and two very robust plastic lobsters – now hunkered in one of our gravelled areas) tat, kitsch, homely?

And there’s sentiment and memories mixed in too. What you see as a rather clunky 1930’s faux stone bird bath is a reminder of a grandmother and her garden of many years ago.

That’s what Gardenly is all about.

Elena’s fish

We love Elena’s fish.

We saw these and asked Elena to make us some quirky fish to swim through our flowerbeds. Taking inspiration from the seas around Trinidad where she was brought up, we now have the quirkiest brightest shoals in greens, blues and oranges.

Each is hand-made from clay, decorated in glaze and low-fired, (so not suitable for leaving out in frost) – these tropical fish would get cold and depressed in a British winter anyway!

The fish have holes in the bottom so can be mounted on strong steel rods. If you fancy you can keep the rods in the same formation and change the fish about or up-sticks and move the whole shoal around through the summer.

 

Hanging out your washing on a  breezy sunny day and then bringing it in dry, slightly crisp and smelling of fresh air can be one of life’s little pleasures. Snuggling up to a freshly washed pillow case as you fall asleep.

Perhaps the best of all is that first fresh day in March, daffodils nodding, fat bumble bees on the wing. Finally washing is released from winter’s tumble dryings and radiators.

In search of the perfect peg

We got fed up with plastic pegs. We got fed up with buying those skinny-minny cheap held together with paperclips for springs pegs from hardware outlets. Open a cheap peg for the first peg-out and it falls apart in your hands. Or at the first puff of wind, washing slithers to the ground.

Luckily there are still vintage pegs to be had, made from proper wood with good solid springs.

Did you know the Americans patented the sprung clothes peg? We were stuck with forked wooden dolly pegs in the UK from way-back when, until the higher tech US ‘clothespins’ took off.

In search of the perfect peg bag

We make no apologies for the slightly dishevelled look of our custom peg bag – it’s a working object and has already been out in wind and rain.

Hazel is a textile artist who specialises in re-purposing fabrics as artworks and creating cushions and other practical and homely one-off household pieces.

She has designed this retro peg bag built around an old wooden coat hanger for those of us who enjoy a proper wash-day experience, (at least when the sun’s shining!)

The gentle clatter of wood as you feel around for the right pegs for the job. The satisfying clack when returned to their peg home as each piece of washing is unpegged from the line.

 

 

 

Tile: Black Dog of Wells