This Ideal Home...

You know what its like, you get some quality time with your girls and all they do is spend their time on the phone! To be fair Gardengirl and Citygirl had trailed around the Ideal home exhibition with me and were in need of muchio refreshment! Refreshment came in the form of champagne cocktails with gold bits floating in them...very fab and gorgeous as long as you don't think too much about where all that gold is going to end up!

Being anything but an Ideal Home Owner we decided to make this years Spring outing to the Ideal Home exhibition in search of inspiration.  I don't know what I was expecting - perhaps the secret to domestic bliss or at least a contraption to make children put their own clothes in the wash basket. Well we didn't find those...but we did find some very nice chandeliers...

Perhaps one day...

and we bumped into Greg Wallace from Masterchef! I managed to resist saying "this is where cooking gets serious!"

We were eating in his cafe when he popped over  to our table - Im ashamed to say that id just put a whole pickled onion in my mouth and couldn't speak or swallow the onion for shock! GG and CG did all the talking and then he moved on. I was so mortified by pickle shame that CG made me go and ask him to come back for a photo - which he did, very generously - i didn't tell him about my onion dilemma though - the horror!

We didn't buy much but came back with lots of brochures, just waiting for those lottery numbers to come up now!

Urban inspirations (episode 2)...

Day two of our travels saw BH and CityGirl disappear off to the GrandPrix, leaving me to my own devices. The children were away having far too much fun with grandparents, Arthur was staying in the doggy hotel and the chucks were being fed and watered - what was a freerangegirl to do?! I got to spend the day with my total garden inspiration bud, who started me gardening in the first place - Garden Girl!



GardenGirl is an amazing plantswoman and the array of specimens growing in her urban garden is stunning. This is my second visit this year and everything seemed to have changed again as her successional planting is coming into its own. Earlier this year the garden was alive with allium blooms and hues of purple and lime green,now the colour scheme has transcended into pinks and deep greens. I am, as you can probably tell, a bit in awe of Gardengirl and her borders, my only regret is not writing down the names of these lovely plants!



Whats extra amazing about this garden is that ive known Gardengirl for a long time, since her first garden in fact, where many of these larger trees and shrubs were first planted - when she moved the plants came too and are really established now - its like watching them grow up!!!



This seat came from the original garden - its where we used to have a good old gossip in our youths - boy, if timber could talk! I love the way GardenGirl fits plants everywhere without them ever looking too crowded - genius!



I had to put a picture of this Lavender in, I love GardenGirls attention to detail - I made a new gardening resolution to pay more attention to detail! (lets see how long that lasts!



But I've finally found what GardenGirls secret is for a fantastically well kept garden - Watering Pixies, or is it child labour, i'm not sure! GardenGirl has definitely trained GardenBoys very well!!!




We had such a great day, which left me brimming with ideas and inspiration for our Freerange Garden. Before I gathered up a weary BH to return to the Shires, GardenGirl dug me out some plants and loaded up me up with cuttings - now that's what I call friendship. I cant wait to get digging!