Go to London in the Spring and Summer and that's when you see all the gardens in the country come alive! Everything starts bursting with green leaves and buds and ofcourse the birds start nesting and planning a new brood.

Our son David had just bought himself a new home in a very leafy borough of London. The houses came with huge gardens and David's house came with a large garden both infront and a really massive one behind. Both are In a totally run down condition, as the owner lived in Ireland and came in only once a month. So you can imagine the work involved and how hard it has been to bring the house and garden into a liveable condition.

All the gardens around along the road are beautifully kept and the owners seem proud of their handiwork. Then ofcourse most of the owners are way older than David and are well into their retirement years. So naturally they spend long hours in the garden.

The beauty about the UK is that every plant you put down just blooms and grows in no time. Probably due to the richness of the soil and also that it rains all the time. Its amazing to find that you barely put a plant down for a week and soon it blossoms and grows up tall and flowers profusely. I had barely come to stay in the month of ay when we decided to make our own hanging baskets. So foff we went, David and I to the local nursery called B&Q to pick up not only the baskets but also the plants to go in them and the compost to fill into each basket In a matter of three weeks the plants are blooming profusely and we are waiting for them to fall over the edge of the baskets!

We were also able to get packets of Lilliums and other bulbs to put down so that they can bloom and grow and multiply, year after year. That usually how British gardens are planted. Bulbs are buried and when its time for them they bloom beautifully bringing in marvelous colour into the garden. Already there is a little army of sword shaped leaves all pointing straight and tall towards the sky where we buried around 50 orchid lillies.

With the sun being really hot most of the time we have been watering the plants to keep them hydrated and growing. Happily for us David plans to live in the same house till he retires so whatever we are putting down is for a lifetime of pleasure.

In the back garden David dug up a really long bed and we put down colourful begonias and cocks comb. Lucky for me I found two old baskets which belonged to the previous owners chucked to one side. Cleaning them out in a jiffy we lined them with bin bags and then put down four colours of begonias. In three weeks we are thrilled to see that the little plants have sprung up much higher and the flowers are bigger and more profuse. Hanging from the branches of the old pear trees out in the back they make a beautiful spring picture when you wake every single day.

The hedge flowers too seem to be blooming with gay abandon and the white creeper rose has its scented aroma floating all around the garden. The only sad point that we noticed was that some of the lillies got chomped by snails or slugs so we had to rush off to the nursery and pick up slug and sail pellets to keep the plants safe from further destruction.

Every morning when we walk around watering of checking on the plants we find heaps of dead snails and fat slugs which have been decimated by the ugly bright blue pellets.