Repost 24 April 2007: My Garden

This was my first real gardening post over on The Ethical Palaeontologist. Oh how far I have come since then. Most of my early posts are quite pants, but then this time last year I looked back on the earlier posts and thought they were pants too. I guess our writing styles change even over the space of a year. Anyway, enjoy...

Two weekends ago, my previously rather frilly ornamental kale grew up several inches and branched. Over the weekend just gone it developed bright yellow flowers, and the stalk appears to have almost rotted away. I think it's in its death throes, which is sad although very pretty. My wallflowers have also nearly gone over. This weekend is going to mean much gardening and emptying into the compost heap. My workmate has given me some sunflower seeds, which I'm going to plant where the wallflowers were - they'll be nice to walk past when we come out of the back door over the summer, and the birdies can eat the seeds when the flowers die off. But I have a container free (well, I will when the kale gives up the ghost).

I want to gradually acquire plants that would have been around when the dinosaurs lived, or at least relatives of them. I have a tree fern, and I think that's about it. Gymnosperm though it may be, I don't think the juniper was around when the dinosaurs lived. The alpines and rosemary certainly weren't. The ultimate ambition is to own a Wollemi Pine, but they're pretty damn expensive, and I seem to remember some ethical issues surrounding them. Googling for them though, I've discovered that there's going to be a Jurassic garden exhibit at the Chelsea Flower Show this year. Anyone want to go with me?

I found a website (okay, okay, it's a kids' website!) with a list of things to grow in a dinosaur garden:

• Ferns
• Horsetails
• Bald cypress
• Dawn redwood
• Ginkgos
• Cycads
• Magnolias
• Palms

According to Project Exploration, monkey puzzle trees are good too, as are water lilies (I did not know that!). I suspect the cheapest option is a ginkgo or magnolia at this stage. The moment I get horsetails Hubster will want to get rabbits, so we'll hold off on that for the time being. If anyone has a spare £500 that they don't need, that would help. I suspect this is going to be a long and expensive project, but at least while everything's in a container I can pick it up and move house with it!

I'll pull up something from the archives once a week or so, unless I get really bored or run out of things to say (yeah, right).