Welcome to my web page. My name is Ann and I live in Haverhill, a small town in Suffolk, England. I am married, work in an Upper school as a Teachers Assistant and have a daughter who is a teacher at a school in Wiltshire.
We used to have a 'Heinz 57' dog called Petra who is sadly no longer with us....
I only have small areas of garden at the front and rear of the house but it is enough for me to manage. My interest in gardening began with an interest in herbs and their uses and then spread to all plants, especially ones that attract butterflies. I also have an interest in genealogy.
Here is a list of the plants that I have in my garden.
I have developed an interest in Family History over the past couple of years. So when I am not gardening I am chasing the ancestors.
I am interested in butterflies, not that I could quote you all the Latin names for them, but simply because I like them. I also like live ones - not dead ones with a pin through them!
I am a member of the Royal Horticultural Society and like to visit other people's gardens to see how they arrange their gardens and to get ideas for mine. It is also nice to see plants 'in the flesh' and not just pictures of them.
The main gardens of the RHS are at Wisley, near Woking in Surrey. I have been to see them twice so far and taken a few photographs, you can take a look at them here.
I am a computer user as it allows me to get onto the internet and look at plants, gardens and butterflies, my husband does all the setting up - like this web page.
A total overhaul of the garden at the front of the house. This used to be all lawn with a small border for flowers but, as the soil contains a lot of clay, it would crack open every summer. In 1997 I got my husband to dig it all up for me and I have been in the process of replanting it ever since.
Here are some photographs of the front garden as it progressed since 1997.
Looking in the photo albums it seems I was a bit too busy taking photos of flower shows and other people's gardens to take many of my own garden and the way it had changed.
It's getting a bit crowded now and beginning to look like the lower storey in a jungle. Time to stop filling in the gaps with extra plants and display more will power by implementing the plan that I had when it was first dug up.
Revamping the back garden. I got my husband to do a bit of landscaping of the back lawn in 1997 and now it has extra flower beds, a border, a small rockery and a trellis archway with a trumpet vine and some variegated ivy growing up it. This isn't complete either. The dog still walks around the garden as if the layout of it was still the same as it was before it was revamped, it refuses to recognise the existence of the border. Here are some photographs of the back garden as it progressed since 1997.
The back garden is changing and maturing at the same time. It sounds a bit odd but the plants that I put in a couple of years ago, having filled part of their alloted space, seem to want different companions now. Well thats my excuse for still needing to go to Flower Shows, Garden Centres and Nurseries, and I am sticking to it. The garden experts say that a garden is continually evolving and that it is never static. Well thats just their excuse for becoming plantaholics, which I am in a way, but the size of my garden and purse are the limiting factors!
I have visited the main gardens of the RHS at Wisley, near Woking in Surrey, twice so far and have taken a few photographs, in April 1998 and August 1998.
In May 1998 I went to the Chelsea Flower Show for the first time.
In 1999 I visited the Anglian Flower Show at Bourne airfield in Cambridgeshire. It was the first time that I had been to this show.
On July 10th 1999 I went to the Hampton Court Flower Show it was too big to be as impressive as Chelsea but at least you could walk through the show gardens and buy plants and things. It made the Anglian Flower show look like a village fete. The Daily Mail pavilion, just part of the Hampton Court Flower Show, deserves a page all to itself.
In April 2000 we went to Bruges in Belgium and Heidleberg in Germany, whilst we were in Heidleberg we visited the University Botanical Gardens, here are a few of the pictures we took there.
We recently bought a digital camera, so we had to visit some gardens to put the camera through it's paces. Here are some of the pictures we took at Cambridge Botanical Gardens and at Beth Chatto's Gardens near Colchester in Essex.
On June 17th 2000 we visited the Gardener's World Live Show at the NEC in Birmingham.
In July 2000 we visited Hyde Hall Gardens at Rettendon in Essex.
In August 2000 we visited Wyken Hall Gardens near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk.
In April 2001 we went for a weeks holiday in Devon, staying at Westward Ho during the Foot & Mouth crisis. During our stay we visited the Eden Project, twice!! We also visited the RHS garden at Rosemoor, and had a Mini URG Meet.
During Easter 2002 we visited Wales and went to see the National Botanical Gardens and the Colby Woodland Garden and in July we visited Bressingham Steam Railway & Gardens, near Thetford, Norfolk.
In May 2003 we paid a return visit to Hyde Hall Gardens at Rettendon to see what progress had been made since our last visit in 2000.
June 2003, and we finally made it to Kew Gardens on one of the very few days of 2003 when the sun was not blazing down and we had to dodge the showers.
E-mail me at: snowdrop666@btinternet.com
