Eventually, all the plans, schemes and clever ideas have to meet their biggest test.

The garden.

And that’s where What’s Growing comes in.

This is the bit where we stop talking about what might work and start finding out what actually does.

Plants, plants and more plants

There will be plenty of them.

Some carefully chosen. Some suggested by ChatGPT. Some selected because I simply couldn’t resist them.

I’ll be documenting what goes into the garden, where it goes and why I chose it.

Which plants are earning their place?

Which combinations look even better than expected?

Which ones are struggling?

And which ones have turned out to be absolutely enormous despite everyone—including ChatGPT—suggesting they would be “well behaved”?

The reality check

Plants don’t read planting plans.

They grow where they want. Flower at inconvenient times. Get eaten. Collapse in the rain. Surprise you by doing brilliantly when you were convinced they’d fail.

That’s part of the fun.

So this section will become a running record of what’s actually happening out there: new arrivals, seasonal highlights, favourite plants, experiments, failures and those small moments when something suddenly comes together.

I’ll photograph the garden as it changes, keep track of individual plants and revisit earlier decisions to see how they’ve worked out.

Because ultimately, that’s the test of the whole project.

Not whether the plan looked good.

Not whether ChatGPT had a convincing argument.

Whether the garden looks good.

And if it doesn’t?

Well, at least we’ll know what not to do next time.

Let’s see what’s growing.