Welcome to my Gardening with Harmony site.
My website is named Gardening with Harmony for a variety of reasons.
I champion the crucial importance of working in harmony with nature and supporting wildlife.
In particular, I am sure that if we all try some Gardening with Harmony, we will create a better environment for us all.
One of my main aims is to show everyone that gardening reduces stress. In essence, gardening is extremely beneficial for physical and mental health and wellbeing. I have first hand experience of this.
One of my posts was published to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week. Here’s the link if you would like to check it out.
Garden to empower, out the anxiety
And another post inspired by World mental Health Day, all about the benefits of gardening and nature. Here is the link to this one.
Gardening for wellbeing, a beautiful beneficial boon
I thoroughly enjoy helping others to start gardening, and seeing their passion ignite, and their improved wellbeing and enhanced quality of life. Witnessing their new found confidence in growing plants and their sense of achievement and pride is so rewarding.
On my site you will find some of these stories of how gardening has helped people to boost their wellbeing. I have posted my own story too. My post can be accessed here Wonderful powers of a flower
Three of the real stories The amazing benefits of gardening and A powerful gardening for wellbeing story and The awesome power of the garden shows how gardening really does boost wellbeing. There are more stories posted and plenty more to follow.
Inspiring you to garden
In addition, I want to inspire you to garden, to sow and plant flowers for pollinators. Bees and butterflies need us all to work together to help them.
Here are a couple of recent posts on flowers for pollinators.
The best flowers for fantastic pollinators
Flowers for pollinators, more fantastic blooms
I am also a member of Butterfly Conservation and have posts on my site about recent survey results and how to help our butterflies.
Link below for Butterfly Conservation, if you would like more details and also my latest butterfly post on survey results.
https://butterfly-conservation.org/how-you-can-help/join
Big Butterfly Count, the results are in
Sowing seeds
Every year I sow more and more seeds in Favolosa, my beautiful greenhouse. These are mainly flowers for the pollinators and to have a garden full of colour.
I cannot resist twenty six or more varieties of cosmos, plus zinnias, scabious, morning glory, sweet peas, sunflowers, sweet william, echium, to name but a few.
My posts explain how to sow and grow flowers so you can achieve colourful displays in garden borders, window boxes, or pots.
Plus, how easy it is to direct sow hardy annuals such as cornflowers and the wildflower mixes. The more colour and nectar rich flowers we can grow, the better, so I urge you all to give it a go.
Tomatoes and my rescue chickens
In addition, I sow tomatoes; several varieties. This year was the turn of Purple Cherokee, Purple Bumblebee and Black Opel to name some of the colourful tasty toms.
As you can see below, tomato Purple Cherokee is a tasty treat for my lovely rescue hens. Letitia Lettuce is first up for a beak full of tasty tomato.
Also, I squeeze in sowings of runner beans, french beans, squashes, courgettes, swiss chard, spinach, and other tasty vegetables. Not forgetting the strawberries and other fruits. Growing our own is so rewarding.
I hope I can inspire everyone to grow flowers, vegetables and fruit in their own gardens, courtyards and balconies.
One of the highlights each summer for me, is seeing the beautiful butterflies flitting around my garden and drinking nectar from the flowers I have grown.
I genuinely believe we can and should live in harmony with wildlife. Try some gardening with harmony to boost wildlife and your wellbeing.
With this in mind, I enjoy sharing my gardening experience to help others to create a beautiful garden. I garden all year round as there is always something to do and it is great to be out in the fresh air.
I hope to inspire you to become a gardener, whether you have a large garden, small garden, courtyard or balcony.
Habitats for wildlife
Furthermore, I want to inspire people to provide habitats for wildlife and food sources year round. The first queen bee will often emerge in late February in my garden, so I ensure I have sustenance for her. See my photo above. This will include winter honeysuckle, clematis, crocus, hellebores and iris reticulata.
Consequently, I have a colourful garden all year which is not only good for wildlife, but a boost to wellbeing too.
A wildlife pond is one of the most beneficial habitats we can create in our gardens. I have four wildlife ponds, supporting frogs, newts, dragonflies, water boatmen, beetles, birds and all sorts of other wildlife. If you have room for a wildlife pond, or even a container, this will be such a boost for biodiversity. Gardening with harmony at its best.
Another of my posts is Wild things for gardeners, bee beautiful where I hoped to inspire others to join in the Wildlife Trusts 30 Days Wild for June each year. Four more posts have been published over the 30 day period. Overall, a fantastic wild 30 days where I learnt so much about the wildlife in my garden and enjoyed myself enormously. I hope that these posts inspire you to join in, or look more closely at the wildlife we share the world with.
Of course, we can all watch wildlife wherever we are, and learn more every day. Attracting wildlife and seeing it thrive is so rewarding.
I live in England but honestly believe that gardening with harmony for wildlife and our wellbeing is for everyone around the world. Consequently, I am thrilled to have subscribers from different countries and look forward to sharing our experiences and knowledge.
Also, I thoroughly recommend companion gardening and by this I mean gardening with others. For example, this could be family, friends, dogs, cats, chickens, or the resident robin. Companion gardening provides such a boost for wellbeing.
Companion gardening with harmony
My gardening with harmony companions are usually my cats and my rescue chickens.
Consequently, some of my posts feature my helpful chickens and others feature my lovely black cat, Remus Nautilus. A few of these posts are below
Gardening with chickens, more fantastic fun
The beautiful black cat who gardens for England
And here is the most recent companion gardeners post, featuring my fabulous hens, Remus Nautilus and a lovely white dog.
Companion gardeners, some of the best
I rehome from https://www.bhwt.org.uk and can thoroughly recommend finding out more if you would like to rehome some hens.
My photo below shows three of my lovely girls having a rest. Pickle Pixie Pantaloon, Tansy Teapot and Lovely Speckledy Hen.
Most of the photographs on my blogs are of my garden. In addition, a few have been shared by people who feature in a blog post. These are photographs of their own gardens and are marked accordingly.
A number of photographs will be dahlias because I adore them. No wonder I am known as the Dahlia Queen!
Here are links to some of my dahlia posts
The best dahlias, my dark sultry beauties
10 zingy dahlias for a truly beautiful garden
10 beautiful dahlia flowers for pollinators
Wonderful dahlias, stunning beauty and buzzing bees
10 beautiful dahlias chosen for you
Here’s one of my dahlia photos. This is Molly Raven in my garden, and what a stunning dahlia this one is.
More beautiful dahlias
I purchase dahlia tubers from Sarah Raven and the tubers supplied have been of great quality and grew quickly into flowering plants. Also, there are some exclusive collections such as the Raven Dahlia Collection which cannot be purchased anywhere else. If you love dahlias as much as I do, please follow this link for the online shop.
Click here for Sarah Raven dahlias
This blog is an affiliate member of Sarah Raven. If you purchase using the link above, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
One more photo I couldn’t resist adding to my homepage.
I had to add this photo of a lovely bumble bee having a rest in the sunshine within the petals of dahlia Purple Explosion. Once the two hour rest was up, it was back to the flowers for pollinators in the flower borders nearby.
Whatever flowers you like, plant them in your garden, courtyard or balcony and enjoy a colourful show, then sit back and watch the wildlife. A fantastic boost for your wellbeing and for wildlife.
The Wildlife Trust also runs a winter wildlife challenge called 12 Days Wild which is always fun to join. Naturally, I take part. Details below if you would like to know more about this.
https://www.wildlifetrusts.org/12dayswild
I have added two posts on my 12 Days Wild experience on my blog posts if you would like to take a look. Link below – Blog posts.
Finally, I hope that you enjoy my website and look forward to any comments you may have or suggestions on a new post you would like to see.
Click here for all my previous posts Blog posts
To see all my new posts as they are published, please enter your email address below and press the subscribe button
Privacy Policy can be found here Privacy Policy