A rainy Dig the City - urban garden festival

 It was a very rainy day but I don't like to miss Manchester's Dig the City and have very much enjoyed the festival in previous years. Gardens amongst the city architecture and some great community gardens, perhaps a little scaled down this year but I still saw some fabulous creative ideas to share with you. 

I love the idea of stencilling on a painted shed with the writing above the row of pretty planted wellies and you can just see colourful polka dots along the bottom too. 

The bee is Manchester's symbol and there are even bee hives on top of Manchester Cathedral.  I adore this hive construction with the hexagonal supports and the woven bees, one for the crafty people to make. The plants are bee friendly ones such as achillea and echinacea. 

 The dreamscape garden uses colour and light as a backdrop here. An interesting bit of art for the garden, on a smaller scale using coloured plastic maybe. I'd like to find some coloured acrylic shapes to hang from a tree so the sun catches them. I'd like some large wooden planters on my patio, very effective painted up and filled with frothy summer planting or vegetables. Nice at this height for my sensory seeking little boy to smell and run his hands through. Well, here is the first bit of weirdness. Dolls head and teapot planters combined with all sorts of odd trinkets to make the most individual planter you will ever see. More of these later......... Nautical elements that I am still trying to bring into the back of my own garden for my son. It's great picking up seaside bits and pieces whilst on holiday. Last time I found a huge basket of old buoys in a junk shop. Potting shed styling with crates and palettes. Reusing items that you may have lurking. the crates fixed side by side and used as shelves makes a pretty plant gallery. Wispy planting, grasses that swish in the wind, planted with pleasant flowers. More stencilled text on wood - really like this. Simple but effective.  Planting up the edge of a shed rather than a boring empty space, embracing the flowers at this time of year - achillea, cosmos, salvia, heuchera.... Don't let this freak you out! How many good ideas though and something to have fun making and painting up letting your artistic inner self free. A green outdoor cocktail bar for the decking or patio? All that lush green planting using edible flowers, vegetables and herbs. Lots of recycled containers used at the festival, all sorts of plastic bottles and tubs put to good use for growing in. Different ways to divide or smarten a community space up. Side view of the quirky planters - I loved them! going to have to raid the shed and create something out of all the junk residing there.  Beans growing up wire, a kitchen garden making the most out of scavenged and unwanted items. Good ideas for the allotment where it is the law that there has to be recycled materials :)  Cute jam jar tealight holders. This was the Post Office cafe garden and they used wooden spoons and spatulas as plant markers Bug houses making a wall or divider with mini planters and coloured boxes. My favourite, easy idea - hanging moss balls, strings of buttons and vintage cutlery from trees to jingle jangle and tinkle in the breeze.  

{Joining in with Mammasaurus for How Does Your Garden Grow?}