My trip to England a couple of years ago definitively changed the way I am gardening here in California. I was so impressed seeing the world famous public gardens like Kew Gardens, Sissinghurst, Great Dixter etc. But to be honest what blew me away and influenced me the most were the many private gardens that my husband and I visited. They ranged from estate size gardens of many acres with a staff of gardeners to very small plots maintained by the owner himself/herself alone. Having an "Open Garden" is a well established tradition in England and that way even as a stranger you get to visit many beautiful private gardens, which I recommend highly to anyone to make use of, who is visiting England and is interested in gardening. But back to the original question. Visiting the private gardens and realizing what these gardeners got accomplished with love and of course a lot of hard work made me so much more motivated to try to create a place of similar beauty myself. The love for roses seems to be undeniably spread all over Great Britain. The variety of Old Garden Roses that they grow there, interspersed with modern varieties too, opened my eyes to the vast range of roses. The private gardens that I saw were mostly planted in a cottage style design, which means very dense and lush plantings. I was equally impressed by the variety of perennials that they plant over there. I never saw any boring monotony of mass plantings or the repetitive use of only one or two varieties that simply grew well in that area. The ability of the British to combine colors is also outstanding. They pay so much attention to that and have such a good feeling for colors that go well together. So when I came home to California I wanted to recreate the feeling of the gardens that I had seen in England with roses and plants that grow well here in CA. I started to buy more roses, in fact many more roses, old and new varieties. I try to plant more densely for a lush, full effect and give much more thought to color combination. I designed a pure white garden bed (the inspiration came from the White Garden in Sissinghurst), which I am still tweaking but I am very pleased with how it has turned out so far. I also pay much more attention to plant a "proper border", which means the biggest plants go in the back, medium size plants into the middle and smaller ones are planted in the front of the border. I also use more containers in the garden, which provide an element of formality, but also color in case I use a glazed pot (right now I am in love with blue containers). I felt that the love for gardening knows no boundaries in England and it made me speechless how far even private gardener developed the "Art of Gardening" and what beauty they were able to create. Now that I am writing about this I realize that besides lots of inspiration from seeing so many gorgeous gardens, the most precious thing I took home with me from Great Britain is the motivation to really try to create a beautiful small garden myself. Thank you England! Christina Here is a link that might be useful: Organic Garden Dreams

What chowdhry is referring to is more of a dryer mix of the concrete. Certainly not wetter otherwise the mix would collapse if you remove them from the tins. However I am concerned about using tins. Often tins have these lips on the rims and so the opening is slightly smaller than the insides which would cause problems when removing the concrete. You might get a brick too large to be removed. So watch out for those kinds of rim. Also, I've seen cement stick to tins so releasing the brick can be problematic unless you line the tin with plastic but then that leaves a lot of lines from the folds of the plastics. With milk cartons you get thicker bricks and essentially using up more concrete. So there's the disadvantage of using the form. More concrete in one form - less bricks you can make. However if you don't need a lot it's still a good way to go. I believe there is something that's used - a spray to help release the concrete from the mold - it's used to 'grease' the mold before the concrete is poured in. Ask the hardware store about this. And Sheryl is right about concrete curing - having done hypertufa myself. YOu need a curing period with plastic on the top to help get the concrete to fully cure otherwise - you get cracks. Chowdhury described in her first response, a technique I've used to make my concrete materials - and it's something I would recommend. Build the mold out of 2x4 - no top nor bottom, and with a flat surface covered in plastic, you can easily make bricks and remove the mold as soon as the brick has hardened a bit. And cover with plastic to prevent fast drying. - The advantage is that you can easily remove the material and you may need less concrete to make the bricks. - And it's a technique still in use in countries that make mud bricks for houses. I digress with this other thing technique I made some years before. I did the same thing as Chowdhury descriged, making a square mold with 2x2 and then I poured very smooth sand in the bottom and then I got my daughter to put in her footprint indentation. And then I poured the concrete mixture into it. Only my mixture was a wetter kind in order for the concrete to fill in the all the spaces. I had a relief of her footprint. The other thing I did was to put in seashell indentations and once again I got seas shells out of this technique. What's more the sand gave a nice texture to the block. Might be a something you can do at some point. anyhow, good luck on your experimentations.

Here in Central Illinois (we are about 70 miles NE of St. Louis) I live on a lovely country hilltop - TONS of space so my gardening in contained only by my energy level. I have room to keep a huge compost pile out back behind the vegetable garden and it doesn't spoil the vista. The house is in a mostly sunny spot and faces SW, so we have plenty of sunshine for a colorful border around the house. Huge sunny vegetable garden and orchard area surrounding the drive up the hill. Behind the house and the deck that navigates the hill I have shadier areas that grow amazing hydrangeas, japanese maples, and mega hostas. Because we are in the country - I get absolutely amazing birds and butterflies in my butterfly border. A real joy to behold. On the negative side, it gets dry on the hilltop - we are NEVER too wet with the drainage and even after days of rain it dries out quickly. My soil is toward alkaline and there are some acid lovers that simply will not grow here - I used to have beautiful rhododendrons and azaleas in our home on the other side of town but I have given up on them. It warms up fast here in the spring so everything goes thru the sequence of bloom paces so darn fast and by about mid July most of the garden summer perennials are fading - I need annuals, perennial hibiscus, dahlias to help fill in that period until the fall blooming asters and then the mums pick up in September when it cools. The winters have been generally milder - but we tend to get ice storms and without a lot of snow cover, a big freeze is really hard on the plantings. I would have proudly said we don't have japanese beetles until about 4 years ago when they finally arrived on their march west. I don't get aphids or slugs - but we do see flea beetles, plenty of squash bugs that inject their deadly wilt in my squash, cucumbers, and pumpkins, and green corn borer beetle forms that munch on my late summer flowers.

Hi Inky Cold weather of Canada slow you down yet? Yoga have been chenged since yoga came to US and west.as well as bonsai Japanese flower arrengement. Japanese have been chenged too. Now I found that even Chinese can't buddhism sutra even written in Chinese. No wonder why Japanese lost intrest in Buddhism and can't read sutras. School teacher who teach Japanese garden probably never read sutra of pureland buddism or zen but he still is teaching relationship between zen, pureland Buddhism and Japanese garden.So does top Japanese landscape architects. Peolpes who has christianty back ground have difficult time to understand buddhism and do not spend time to find simple histrical facts.( Japanese who don'y have christiany back ground and suporse to be Buddhist as well). Past 5 years I acumilated many Buddhism related books and collected many sutras and now slowly studying sanskrit. I have sent some books to few peoples you probaly know for long time like Edzard, nacho dady, June , cady and some friend in England. I thought about you too , but lost your address and you are not giving me your contact adress. You have been posted intresting subjects but din't joined my self. I was bussy and had many obstcles, now my mother asking me come home. Contact cady again for your e-mail adress phone number( or mine). Some time( many time) easer for me to talk than write. Take good care of your self. Your freind mike y.