It’s a great pity but our front garden is looking sensational at the moment…shame it’s about to be bulldozed!

We have stunning spring borders, with wallflowers, forget-me-nots, heuchera and whitebells oh and a whole host of other beautiful things. In a few short weeks, the place where they now all thrive will be dug up and become part of the house. We’ve got the builders in and they are close to completion of the first of three extensions to our house. They start phase 2 in three weeks and the final bit is the bit at the front, which will probably start mid-summer I think. It’s all very exciting and scary at the same time but we hope it’ll be worth it when we come out of it with a home that’s not stuck in a time warp…which it is at the moment! It was built in 1952 and we bought it from the lady whose husband built it. She’d lived here for 63 years, through bringing up her two children, her husband dying way too young in the 1970s and for almost the entirety of her life after she moved here. She was in a care home by the time we bought the house and sadly she died just weeks after the sale was completed. All this means that the house had been lovingly cared for, but in a very old-fashioned way. We are trying to make sure that the soul of the family home remains but with modernity for our lifestyle.

Because the garden is getting dug up, I’ve been really conscious of trying to save plants that are in locations where the building works will be happening. I’ve been looking at these whitebells (or technically white bluebells) and thinking that they look like hyacinthoides non scripta (our native bluebell) rather than hyacinthoides hispanica – the invasive species. I was unsure if that was possible but a few moments of googling shows me that yes, hyacinthoides non scripta is available as a white form (alba). So, deffo our native form and yes, deffo worth saving then!