First Bulbs Flowering

I have been having many conversations with my grandmother of late about our bulbs {flowers}.  You see she is a very keen gardener and loves planting lots of bulbs in her garden each year.  However, this year her bulbs {and mine too} have been very slow to sprout.  She has been ringing me every week asking me if mine have broken the soil yet.  You could say that we have been comparing notes. 

As this is my first season planting bulbs I admit I am completely not-in-the-know so each morning I head out to our garden to check on their progress.  I think the boys must think I am going slightly mad.

To my complete excitement, joy and surprise when I went out to the garden on Saturday morning there she was...my very first flowering bulb for 2011!!  I spent the entire day weighing up whether or not I should cut her to put into a vase.  By Sunday afternoon I decided to cut her and a few other flowers out of our garden including a sprig of our flowering yellow snapdragons.  I arranged them in a new jug which I purchased online HERE.

This gardening thing really is very exciting.  I can't wait for the next bulb to flower not to mention the sweet peas and hollyhocks!!

xx
Anna

PS.  The lovely nickel lanterns are a new purchase from HERE...

Garden Pots Inside

After planting a few little pots for my garden table on the weekend I have been thinking I might do a few more so that I can bring some inside to put on the table in our lounge room or to place down the centre of the dining table when we have people over for dinner.  I also love how they are placed on the bench in the bathroom I have posted above.  I think it would be a nice idea to find an old rack with perforated shelves {like Brooke's} so that I can store lots of potted up succulents and also my potted bulbs and herbs in the garden near our garden shed.  Lots to do!!

PS.  If anyone is wanting to plant up some of these traditional little terracotta pots, I purchased mine from Bunnings.  I think they were approximately $2.50 per pot.  And if you live in Brisbane and want to purchase some bulbs then head to Bunnings as well.  Bulbs can be a bit tricky to buy here in Brisbane due to them not really liking our climate.   Oh and one more thing, if you want to plant some sweet peas you need to get them in this week if you live here!!  Mine were planted yesterday.  I can't wait to see them grow and flower over the coming weeks.

PPS. I only know these things about when to plant etc. thanks to Merve, Uncle Robbie, my mother, my grandmother and the lovely man at Bunnings who is my new best friend.  What would I do without them!!


image 1 - via delight by design scanned from easy elegance, image 2 - http://brookegiannetti.typepad.com/ {thanks viera}

Garden Ramblings

This is our garden yesterday with the round garden table Harry and I filled

with pots and also our vegetable garden to the left.

If my ramblings about my garden are becoming annoying just take me off your google reader or stop reading because I am thoroughly enjoying the excitement my garden is bringing me and I hope that these posts might inspire you to get your gloves on too.  I am actually quite a highly-strung, stressed-out maniac most of time however, I am finding that my garden is a place where I can relax.  I tend to drift off into another world when I am out there.  So, this is what I got up to on the weekend.

Harry and I planted up 10 little pots with succulents, herbs, pansies and another little plant which I can't remember the name of.  We arranged them on a round wire garden table which I placed near our vegetable garden.  I think this idea is such a great idea for interest in a large garden like ours but also would be wonderful on a verandah in an apartment or in a courtyard in a small garden.  I originally got the idea from a story on Deborah Needleman in Lonny magazine.  I think it was in one of their first issues...

We also started planting up some terracotta pots with Hyacinth bulbs which won't flower now until Spring but we are prepared and I think I might plant a few more this weekend as they will make nice gifts when Spring comes around. We also planted 30 Daffodil bulbs into the garden.  This weekend we will plant the Ranunculus, Freesias and tulips {which are currently in the fridge}.  I am keeping my fingers crossed that they will like it here in our red soil and will flower in Spring.

On Saturday we spotted 2 capsicum growing in our vegetable garden along with some corn.  We collected a small basket full of beans and cherry tomatoes which I cooked up on Saturday night.  This week we are planting some pretty sweet peas...this is the perfect time here for planting them.

And just to prove that I am making some headway in the garden compare the top photo in this post to this photo above as this is what one area of our garden looked like just before Christmas last year.  What a difference some effort can make and some help from my Uncle Robbie and Merv our lovely 84 year old gardener.  I can't claim all the accolades although if I didn't work I think I might be out there 24-7!

PS...One day she will be painted white but for the meantime we endure the red, green and yellow...xx

My Wonderful Weekend

My plans for a weekend in the garden had to be slightly altered due to the weather.  However, despite the rain I did achieve some gardening goals.  I went to my favourite nursery at Wellington Point yesterday.  If I could put their garden surrounding their nursery onto a truck and deliver it to our house I'd be one happy girl.  I just love wandering around the little pathways through their beautiful established garden. 

My aunty and my grandma {the one I photographed here on the blog last week} dropped in for morning tea this morning.  Aunty Jane brought me these pretty roses from her garden.  I love garden roses.  They are my favourite.

As you can see I did go a little crazy at the nursery.  I love the mix of plants I chose.  I really want to add lots of different colours into our garden.

I can't believe our little Max turned 10 months old yesterday.  He is almost walking.  Time really flies...



This morning my brother Sam and my mum, Harry, Max and I went to the Chandler Markets.  I hadn't been before and was so excited by what they had.  I found some beautiful orchids and fresh flowers and a few little vintage surprises too.



Yesterday I collected this bundle of fresh lettuce, beans and tomatoes from our kitchen garden.  I placed them into a basket and took them down to my mum's house.  Today she and Sam made an amazing salad which you will probably find the recipe for over at Sams' Table this week. 

Weekends at home are my favourite.  I always feel so inspired and rested and ready to go back to work on a Monday when I have been pottering around the house all weekend.

I'm in the garden...

If you're looking for me this weekend I will be in the garden...not looking quite as glamorous as the lady above!  I can't wait to get stuck into some planting...I'm thinking daisies...lots of daisies.

Have a great one.
x

image via party tights, photographer unknown             

The S.A. Crowd & Home on Sunday

Hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I must apologise as I didn't get a chance to post before I left for Adelaide a few days ago.  I am working on a house in Dulwich which is such a beautiful area in lovely Adelaide.  Whilst visiting I had the absolute pleasure of catching up with The S.A. Crowd - Kimberlee from Brown Button, Emma from White & Wander, Kate from Polka Dot Pantry, Pippa from Tres Dodgeois and Alex from French Navy Stationery.  What a lovely group of positive, happy, inspiring, funny, encouraging and creative girls.  We had a fantastic dinner at Sparrow Kitchen & Bar on Friday night and then went out and hit the Antique shops on Saturday together.  I was amazed by Adelaide's history, wonderful food, pretty tree-lined streets, old stone houses and fantastic Antique shops.  It really is a place worth visiting and I can't wait to head back down there mid-year to catch up with the girls again.

After such a busy few days away, today I loved being at home.  I spent the day with my boys pottering around the house and the garden.  We recently put in a kitchen garden or Potager as the French call them.  Our lettuce is growing beautifully.  I picked one today to make a salad with tonight along with our tomatoes which just seem to be sprouting up everywhere in our garden.  Although all of this rain we've had has done some horrible things to our state, our garden is just so green and full of flowers which I have been picking and placing in vases in the house.  There really isn't anything which makes me happier than arranging flowers from my own garden to place around our house...simple pleasures!!

xx
Anna

A Weekend in the Garden

My plan for the weekend involves gardening gloves, weed removal, mulching and preparing my old garden beds for some new plants. I have been obsessing over these gorgeous plants in the image above and as I am completely not-in-the-know when it comes to gardens I wondered whether anybody could tell me what these are? I just love them. Would they live in our hot climate here in Brisbane?

xx

Anna

Tulip Tub

I can't be credited for finding this fabulous image. Joni posted this over at Cote de Texas the other day and I immediately fell in love with it. It is the work of the famous garden designing couple - Isabel and Julian Bannerman at their own home or should I say estate - Hanham Court. {All of this info was provided by Joni!!}.

I have a few of these old galvanised tubs which would do the trick. Although, tulips won't grow too well here. I'll have to plant them with something like Lavender I suppose. Any other ideas? I also love the wisteria growing so wildly over the house in the background.

Gardens & Garden Furniture

I like these gardens pictured above because to me they are informal. I don't want a formal garden. I want one which is filled with lots of different plants just like these are. I also adore the gravel pathways which to me seem less formal than paving. The chairs in the top image remind me of the furniture we are now stocking at Black & Spiro which is all handmade by a lovely man down South using timber from his property.

Here are some of the pieces which we are having made at the moment. We are having them custom painted for us in lots of different bright colours. We currently have some white rectangular side tables and one orange round table at the shop.

My Garden Project

To my absolute delight we have a pretty serious garden at our new house which I am hoping to improve, extend and make even more beautiful over time. We also ended up purchasing the block next door which is a big, ugly mound of dirt at the moment - a perfect blank canvas. One thing I definitely want to put in is a Kitchen Garden or a Jardin Potager as the French call them and I also want to add more flowering plants so that I can cut flowers for the house and for Black & Spiro too.

With lots of ideas swirling and no idea where to start, I have decided to create a garden file and if it's okay with you I am going to post a few more garden inspiration bits here on the blog too.

My Uncle Robbie is going to help me put all of this into action as he is a retired Landscape Architect. He actually just did our front garden beds at Black & Spiro and although my instructions were very vague; "I just want them to look like a field of pretty flowers", he nailed it.

So, watch out for lots of pretty garden pictures and maybe I might even pose a few questions to you along the way as gardening is a whole new ball game for me!!

image 1 via nibs blog, image 2 jennifer garner's garden via habitually chic

A Garden Table

There were certainly many things to be inspired by in the much anticipated launch issue of Lonny magazine but one particular thing which caught my eye was the beautiful garden table in Deborah Needleman's home. I was recently recommending a very similar concept to a client of mine who has an apartment in the city. I thought it would be lovely to inject some green onto her verandah by way of a table filled with pots. It was great to be able to email her this picture the other day so that she could visualize what I had been talking about.

I thought this weathered table above could make for a lovely garden table. For all enquiries on this table above just email us info@blackandspiro.com.au

A Summer Table

This lovely table setting screams Summer to me. I love the fresh green and white colour palette. I also love the little succulent arrangements. They actually reminded me of the lovely succulent arrangements Chelsea over at Frolic created recently as below.

image 1 - victoria pearson via brown turtleneck sweater,

image 2 - frolic

Stepping Outside

I've been collecting a few pictures of some outside areas I like. I thought I would share a few of them here with you. Creating a space outside which feels like it could well be inside is something I love especially living here in sunny Brisbane where we practically live outside....in Summer that is!!

Image 1 - via the libertines, Images 2, 3, 4 - via sweethome style

Fun Fun Fun

My son would be in HEAVEN if this was our yard with that amazing trampoline and I as his mother would be in HEAVEN if this was our house...the yellow shutters are seriously beautiful...I'm in LOVE!!

I'm off now until next week. Have a great weekend!!

Images via Pink Wallpaper - Sixx Design