Growing Grandma's Plants or Mormorsväxter

I'm interested in old days plants, in Sweden they call it mormorsväxter. Maybe it is because of the nostalgic, good memories or the longing for earlier times? It maybe, but I'm also sure that the old plants often smell better and can still attract the bees (the modern flower versions often lose their fragrance and fertility).

I like to have my garden filled with old days flowers, that makes me happy. I live in a place on the countryside in the woods of Småland, where that old plants fit perfectly. Beside of that I like to go back to the old days, where the plants were very pure and less manipulated. So maybe a can collect and grow them again?

I started looking for them in my garden when I started exploring some years ago. Of course I found a lot of Daisies (Prästkragor), Hemerocallis and wild Acquileia. Something to start with, they grow very well on sandy poor forestground. Because it has been a garden for a long time ago I found also traces from gardening and growing plants. Like an old Sedum (Kärleksört), an old Hungarian Iris Variegata and a Hepatica (Blå Sippa).

You recognize the flower above? That's Linseed Flower (Linum usitatissimum), A plant who will delivered linseeds, linseed oil and linen as a textile for a long time. I found it last week, I hope I can grow more of it... Last years I started dividing grote hoge Campanula's (Stor Blå Klocka) and sawing Sweet Hearts (Dianthus Barbatus or Borstnejlika), Sunflowers and Sunhats (Echinaecae). 

I started also looking in other gardens...with friends and family, for seeds or parts of plants from old days to enlarge my collection. I went home to my old father (who's already 91 years old and had a garden for a very long time) to get some parts of the old plants. He learned me the names of plants and how to grow since I was young. mostly it is easy to grow them again by making root cuttings. I found some old species like an old Paeonia, a Cannah and a Geranium and I took small rootcuttings. Because it's end of summer soon, they will should up next year in spring. Now they have time to settle. I'm curious what color of flowers they will give next year...

You got interested? Take a look at my other pages: Grandsma's early spring flowers,

Spring flowers or Secret Garden.

Impressions of Tusen Trädgårdar Open Gardens in Sweden

What an inspiring day to meet a lot of people who love gardening, taking care of plants, do know a lot about plants or have briljant ideas about design or just enjoy the colors or the place. It made our day!

We didn't know what to expect for this day. Nobody knows the place, maybe they have seen us working every day? We are not really in a busy garden area... But we found out some people visited the place because of garden interest, they are driving often this road, or family went to school in this building. So yes, we got visitors nicely spread all over the day, very Corona proof😊

Finlandsrosa, you should smell it, it's lovely

This place really has a history. It's an old building, a former school (Read more about living in an old school in Sweden), there are art sculpture, nice old plants in a beautiful area. I like to tell about it or to find out more. The concept with some history, some art sculptures and grandma's plants (mormors växter på svenska) feels as a natural connection to this place which people are interested in.

We were happy to meet a lot of nice people and the good weather stayed (at least nearly till the end). It gave a lot of spirit, ideas and energy to go further on this road...

Thanks 😄

Mormorsväxt Gullviva (Primula)

Tusen Trädgården Sjöbygget Skola Open Garden Time

Next week, it is open garden time all over Sweden. It's called Tusen Trädgårdar. We will join this event and open our garden at Stegaryd Sjöbygget Gamla Skola in Vittaryd. The school and the barn were build in 1875. A lot of people form farms in this neighborhood walked to this place to go to school. It was not always that close to their homes. In 1939 they closed the school 
 and the place was sold.

We have been told there was a lady living for a long time, she loved gardening too. The garden was always full of flowers. But later the garden was forgotten and overgrown by a lot of trees. The sculptures the old lady made are still there and sometimes I found old days plants, placed them in the nursery and they started growing again. Like grandma's plants.

We want it to be a nice garden again and started working. It still needs time to grow of course, its not ready yet. Last autumn we had even to make a new sewer, it didn't really didn't serve the garden. But we hope one day it will be a garden full of flowers again, even when it is a challenge sometimes. Just now there is a hare who specialy likes Campanulas, Salvia s and Plox. They are all eaten just now.

But anyway, we live in the woods and we like to share our work to any one who is interested. So it's time to open up our garden for the first time. You are very welcome on the 28th of June 😊

Grandma's Swedish Early Spring flowers

Early spring it starts in our garden with wild Crocus and some later (Mars/April) with "svenska sippor". That means vit sippa (Forest-Anemone) , blå sippa (Hepatica) och vårlök (Ornithogalum), as you can see above. I'm always very happy to find some Hepatica's in our garden. Because it was so grown over, you wouldn't believe they were still growing. I'm making a little more place for them now, I protect them against the strong spreading and killing Sevenleafs. But it is getting better and better, after some years.

Fritillaria Meleagris

Viola Odorata

Some of my favorites are Fritelaria Meleagris, (Kungsängsliljor in Swedish, Lapwingflower in english) the brown and the white one, I really like them. They are so beautiful and so vulnerable. And they actually are. I think we had a hair hiking around (we live in the Swedish woods) which really liked this ones too. I was lucky I discovered in time, so I could save the other ones from being eaten. But they will flower next year. They need to stand in an wet area, best is in the gras.

Spanish Hyacint

Myosotis - Don't forget me

The spring flowers start every year again, no matter what. It makes me very happy. Nature just going on. No matter what i do or think. I try to create within the nature. A little going by the flow, what is nature bringing me. What is possible here? Which ground, is it sandy or clay? How much light they need? What about moisture? And then try to combinatie with colors, flowering times, leaf sorts, structure... It is like making a painting. In the grandma's style with a special touch of me.

Soon the other Spring flower will come...

DIY Natural Healthy Granola recipe

My favorite natural, very healthy and colorful granola recipe is has been created by doing it very often. It tasted and smells really fantastic! You have to try it yourself...

You need:
5 dl rye and/or oats grains (2,5 dl mix is the best)
3 dl grinded cocos
1 dl pumpkin seeds
1 dl sunflower seeds
2 dl coarsely chopped hazelnuts
4 ts  cinnamon powder
2 ts cardamom powder
1 ts kurkuma
1/2 ts salt
2 dl honey
2 spoons water
3 dl mixed dry fruits (for example my favorites russin, mango and goji berries)

How to fix it:

• Put the oven on 175 degrees
• Mix all dry ingredients except honey, the mixed fruits and the pumpkin seeds
• Add the water and mix the total
• Put the mix on a baking tray and spread half of the honey above it
• Roast it in the middle of the oven for 5 minutes
• Take it out, shuffle the mix and put the other half of the honey on it
• Put it back again for 5 minutes each time and take it out and shuffle again.
• Ready after 5 minutes and mix it
• Take it out of the oven
• Add the dry fruits and the pumpkin seeds
• Let it cool down, some time.

Total baking time is about 15 minutes, it shouldn't be too dark then it gets bitter.
Delicious as a cereal in your morning yoghurt!

After some time you will make your own favorite recipe out of it, bij trying, changing and making it better each time 😋 Good luck!

Dreaming about plants

Today we have the perfect time to dream about gardening. When you have the Corona virus moving around and the weather is not as good as last weeks. T too bad for getting out and do some garden jobs outside. So today I made a small garden design for my neighbors. Just a circle of plants in the middel of a nature garden in Småland Sweden. A beautiful, flowery spot the year around without too much maintenance. With plants who can stand heavy hot sun from the south but also severe winter days in Swedish zon 5, so hardy as well. (oeps Sweden has its own numbers in climate zones, warmest is 1 and coldest is 8)

I love new creations in the garden, like painting with plants. I love to see nature growing, it makes me happy. It is always going on, no matter what happens. Whole my life I felt the connection with gardening and plants. My father told me all the latin plant names, as if they were Dutch common names. I got used to it. But it also filled my heart with pleasure. I can forget everything, working hard to maintain or just dream how to make it look better.

And you know what? We want to make it our future!

DIY Creating a hide away

We have been very busy last months. We got a new sewer. The result was a totally ruined front garden. We got tree concrete reservoirs for the sewer and a infiltration bed. No one could miss it, even if you tried very hard. The must ugly things I have ever seen in my garden. So now we try very hard to hide away this thing. It was a though job to do. But when we see the result of today, maybe the garden is even looking better then before.

What did we do? Actually we changed the ground, so you will not see it is an infiltration bed anymore. We higher-ed up the ground where the concrete sewers were. We created a hat out of willow and birch. And created a oval border with plants around it. We love it!

Do you want to see what happened before in our garden? Take a look here 😃

What are weeds in your garden?

Viola Odorata

The most important to know is, that -objectively seen- weeds don not exist at all. Because they are all plants anyway. Actually it is a very subjective view on a certain location where certain plants are not welcome in the view of some one, for exempel a farmer, a florist or a gardenista.

All the plants you can buy in a garden center are found one day long ago somewhere in the world and brought to Europe. They were collected at first, afterwards they tried to breed them to get stronger, bigger or more colored plants in flowering and leafs. Some plants came from warm countries and never got used to the cold in northers Europe. Now they are sold as summer plants for one year or for your greenhouse 😊

The definition of weeds for me are plants who appear growing of other plants, or are killing other plants in my garden. My biggest enemies are Sevenleaf (Umbelliferae) and an invading grass called (Elytrigia). They invade by making underground roots as far as possible, special into the roots of other plants, so it is difficult to take them away. But when they take over, they will kill all your other plants. So I spent a lot of time digging them out. 

Today I'm living in Småland Sweden since 2016 and I want to create a natural garden on the countryside. A little like Piet Oudolf, a very famous dutch garden designer abroad. With a wink of course. Not totally natural and wild or formal but something in between. Something from nature and something from me. Colorful all year, easy to maintain.

It takes time and a lot of money before I realize this beautiful garden with one can visit for fun.
That's why I''m very tolerant for plants coming up spontaneously (because they grow very well on this location) and nice to see as well without being aggressive. Like wild daisies, combines, violets, forget me not, forest anemones and honeysuckle.

forget me not

How to recognize weeds in your garden?

You can learn by looking to small plants and the way they grow as often as possible while maintaining your garden by hand. You will only learn bij trial and error. It takes time of course, but it also brings a lot. Your garden, which you are growing yourself is a gift. With some time and attention it will pay you back with a lot of joy and relaxation. It shows you the natural life, the seasons of the year and how to handle real life. Today i heard a very good quote: to take care of a plant is to take care of yourself 😍

Corona brown in the green garden

Everything you give attention is growing. So its up to you, your choice...

My advice? Go out and get some energy. Go out in your garden and pay attention to the small things you see... See the plants changing, coming out. Starting up for a new season. You will see things you have never seen before, all though they were there. Green is the new energy (as I said before see: green is the new energy).
You will be out of your head after half an hour, having no more worries for a while. Losing the feelings of fear. It works for me. Sometimes a go out with a head full of problems about future. But I know also, I can not influence it right now, maybe later I can. For now a try to be as mindful as possible. On this moment we can not (travel for) work. So we stay at home. We only can wait and see for some weeks or months.



That's why we started gardening fulltime. Every day. It gives a lot of satisfaction.
It's good to see nature is going on as if nothing special has happened. The spring is coming now in Sweden. We see the plants growing. The bulbs we planted last autumn. We see the birds we have never seen before. At the same time we try to create a new garden, our garden. When we go inside, a little tired, feeling the hard physical work in your body. We like to see the results of the work of today. Last weeks the weather has been wonderful, really sunny days. When you are outside whole day, like we, you get a very healthy sun brown face... The so called Corona Brown look 😂




I just started to pick and celebrate each day. Thankful for the things around me right now. I'm sure, there will be better times again. Take care of each other with love where ever you are.

Big hugs from Sweden

Busy times in my Swedish garden in april

This is the busiest time of the year in the gardening world. A lot of jobs in the garden in april. The positive thing about Corona is that we have a lot of time to spent in the garden.  And there is no need to go to the gym anymore because we already had our workout. Being not really used to this habit it hurts a little in our bodies.

There are some special things to do this year. There was a special project called The Swedish Sewer Project last autumn, which ruined half of my garden. A lot of work we could do in wintertime, such as rebuild the entry, equalize the ground and remove the clay and recover the gravel of the driveway. But some jobs were left for springtime. Such as:

• We had to saw lots of new grass for the new lawn
• Plant a beech hedge, to fill the empty spaces after cutting the tree trees and create a more hidden place
• Cover the sewers in some way, so you would not see that ugly concrete things anymore
• Restore the auto movers area

We have some extra jobs:

• It was a very wet winter, there for we have to make some extra drainage because we don not want to have a pool (we are already close to the lake 😊)
• There is a very big dead tree in the garden, before it falls on our barn it has to be cut down by a professional. Afterwards we have to take away the wood and lots of branches.

Of course we also have a lot of normal yearly jobs:

• To clean up old autumn leaves (every year at least about 100 wheel barrows...) and ferns
• Prune al the shrubs and trees before it starts growing (except the ones which flowers before the longest day of the year. We also have a willow tree we have to prune. 
• Fight the weeds (it is growing very fast with good temperatures and sometimes a bit of rain)
• Divide and change some plants positions, best time to do because it's wet and not too hot for rooting
• Prepair sawing inside: This year I prepared some Verbena Bonariensis, Echinacae White Swan and Mirabilis Jalapa.
• Preparing to grow potatoes in an expirimental way, I read about
• Prepare the grass for cutting (repair the robot lines and collect or take away all the branches from stormy weather) ...)

As you can see, we are very busy this time of the year. But don't worry, we have got all the time (no work now because of Corona) 😉