Although the recent rainfall has been very meagre, my gravel garden is looking beautiful. I have the most delicate shade of pale pink peony in flower, bearded irises, astrantia, foxgloves, geums, roses, centranthus, ruber and alba and a couple of geraniums in flower.

The peony is my particular favourite. I love the way the buds are so tightly packed and over a couple of weeks they open out and just get larger softer and blowsier.

I am definitely going to increase my stock of peonies.

In the greenhouse, many of my vegetable plants have now been moved to a sheltered part of the garden, between a wall and my greenhouse, to harden off. I have peas, sweetcorn, tomatoes and squashes to go in the veg bed this weekend and my climbing courgettes to go into large pots with supports.

The only downside to putting these plants into the bed, is that I am going to have to dig up a sea of cerinthe, which self-seeded from last year and when I say a sea I mean a sea. It has taken over an area of 5 feet square and looks so beautiful. I keep cutting it and putting it into kilner jars and it looks so pretty in the house with it's petrol blue iridescent flowers. I think that cutting it has helped prolong the flowering which started in April.

I visited an NGS garden at the weekend. Knitson Old Farmhouse in the Purbecks which was absolutely gorgeous and is my new favourite garden in Dorset.

I am going to write a post dedicated to the garden in a couple of weeks, here and on my gardening blog In and Out of the Garden, www.inandoutofthegarden.blogspot.com which can include more photographs than here, to do it justice. It is open again in June, so if you like the garden, you will still have chance to catch it open again this year.

Last week I was very lucky and won tickets to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, for Tuesday, so my post will be on Thursday next week, with photos from the show.

I'm so excited to be going but I have lots to do in the garden before then. Come rain or shine this weekend, I will have dirty fingernails, that's for sure.

Better scrub up for Chelsea though!

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