@Diomedes it has been a hay day for landscapers around here. In the beginning of the pandemic my wife and I stopped going anywhere for hikes and walked around the neighborhood. We noticed lots of well considered gardens and lots of new work too. After many years of only gardening within our ‘compound’, a few years ago I started paying attention to how our front border was planted and the ‘hell stripe’ between the sidewalk and street. That has been a great way to meet other gardeners in the area.
Sorry to hear that @Firenze. Since we seem to be in a permanent drought here in California I do have wide pathways, flagstone patios, decks, a pond and even a hot tub mostly so as not to require so much irrigation. I also restrict watering to just a few areas; everything else has to tough it out. But where I do plant I like a feeling of abundance and even flamboyance albeit still with a natural feeling. I’ve actually come to appreciate the unplanted places as calming negative space.
From google earth it can look like I live in a forest. But on the ground it isn’t claustrophobic. My wife took the first of these photos recently out back. I took the second looking from the side to the back garden and the last was courtesy of Google Earth twelve years ago.
For my suburban area, I have a large lot: 100’ along the street and going back 120’. That’s great for an obsessive plant collector but a heck of a lot of work for one old guy to keep up.
That looks lovely. I have a square 40ft x 40ft, bounded by other gardens - two of the high fence persuasion. Small as it is, I think it's possible to create lots of areas of interest. This year I intend to concentrate on finding the right plant for what is quite a diversity of situations. Top right corner, for example, is high fence down one side and neighbour's overhanging elder, so I'm thinking a collection of hostas to join the tub of aquatics. Bottom right, by contrast, is positively arid, and gets most sun, so solar-powered water feature. And so on.
Right now especially I very much envy you @Firenze as I am working hard every minute I can to get the thousand plates all in the air spinning at once - ie get it all weeded and postponed projects completed in advance of having a neighboring horticultural society over to visit. This would be easier if I wasn’t naturally such a slacker in the garden. My M.O. is to read in the garden or shoot photos when something catches my eye until, while looking around I start getting inspiration. What if that plant was wasn’t so jammed up against that other one.. wouldn’t that view be better without that bit of crossing branches .. ooh that bit is getting too dry .. and so on. Acting on inspiration is fun, slaving away all day - not so much. But I enjoy these people and don’t see them often since we live a bit too far apart to attend each other’s meetings and activities regularly (have scarcely seen anyone in these past two years) plus they’re all gardeners and those are the most fun to show around.
It looks like the three photo album I linked got messed with while I was trying to do something else on Flickr. Now it only seems to take you to the first of the three photos in my photo stream. Sorry about that. It would require an act of Vanilla to do anything about it now. But thanks for the kind words just the same.
Northern California freeze last night. We had had weeks of sun, with no rain and the fruit trees had bloomed early. Hope people get fruit this year. My lemon tree is large so it seems alright.
Northern California freeze last night. We had had weeks of sun, with no rain and the fruit trees had bloomed early. Hope people get fruit this year. My lemon tree is large so it seems alright.
Definitely the coldest night here this season. I've got a small Brazilian shrub that isn't looking too happy today. I could lose it though fortunately I gave it a good watering the morning before. But nothing else looks the worse or wear.
A friend in San Diego reports snow down to 2000 feet and needing to put snow chains on to go over a pass.
Today being mild and sunny, I headed into the garden. I now have a tidied patio, a weeded path, a thoroughly raked lawn, and a stonking great blister on my thumb.
Three positives and one negative can't be bad @Firenze .
There are a few promising signs of life in the flowerbed where I planted around 100 bulbs last autumn and was cheerfully informed by a friend that as the ground was so waterlogged at the time they would simply rot. She may have been right about the majority of them, but there are two sorts which are throwing up leaves: one sort looks like tulips, the other sort just have spindly green leaves a bit like daffodils but thinner and taller. No signs of flowers yet. And I can't remember whether I kept the box they came in or not.
Reading your posts got me motivated. I ordered my veggie seeds! (No summer squash.) This is the year I'm learning how to save seeds, though. I also got a bunch of wildflower seeds for the Littles' birthday treat at school and to scatter behind the play set. We'll see if I get the space ready in time to sow.
My first daffodil flowered and broke two days ago! But now I have quite a few more flowering, mainly the little early tete a tete variety. Lots more to come. I love this time of year, when the weeds can still be seen and dealt with individually and the planting time is almost here.
This morning a pair of long-tailed tits were exploring my garden. We have no shortage of their great and blue cousins, but these are the first long-tails I have seen in there - hopefully a sign that my wildlife encouragement is working.
No daffodils out in the garden yet but I bought cut ones to have in the house for St David's Day. I am not a huge fan of the daffodil really and I love them best when they're in a vase in bud, one or two just opening and the rest all ready to burst but not having done so yet.
I love long tailed tits, we occasionally have some. Not in my garden, but I saw an egret in the water-land reserve (15 mins from my house) this morning.
Daffodils beginning to open here and masses of crocus and the hellebores are still looking good. Not as many snowdrops as expected though.
Our plot needs some serious work. The tulips are up, but not yet flowering, but that's about all I have in an interesting state at present.
Husband en rouge gave me a mini greenhouse for a present, so I've been for a scout to see where it would fit. Once that's done I can think about tomatoes, courgettes and the like. We went to the gardening shop this morning and I have procured a gooseberry bush (gooseberries are very hard to get hold of in France). I also have sweet peas and freesias to plant.
There is a vine down the bottom of our plot that needs some serious pruning. Another lady has offered to help me with it next week, which is a good thing, as I believe she is that magic individual, a person who Knows What She Is Doing.
Chaffinches arrived in the garden a few days ago, as did lots of frisky frogs . So the trees are full of chatter whilst the pond is filling with frogspawn.
Daffodils starting to burst and the marigolds are Still flowering; Small flowers it must be said, but I am very glad they were left in situ for the winter. Snowdrops are gathering in numbers and the crocus are still with us.
The viburnum has been a delight all winter (I must get another one or two🤷♀️) and the yellow wallflowers are just great.
Had a check of the compost heap this week and down a bit it is warm, must be doing something right!
I have a small planter filled with spring flowers someone sent me as a gift. Tulips, daffodils, and such. I decided to place it outside by my mailbox so all could enjoy it with me. The funny thing is I have had 3 different people make a remark about how those fake flowers look so real. : )
I have a small planter filled with spring flowers someone sent me as a gift. Tulips, daffodils, and such. I decided to place it outside by my mailbox so all could enjoy it with me. The funny thing is I have had 3 different people make a remark about how those fake flowers look so real. : )
We finally got round to planting out a small plum tree that has been sulking in a pot. I hope it likes its new position better. I planted some lupins around it and it does look quite pretty. Let's hope the snails don't find the lupins. I've planted some agapanthus in the pot the plum tree was formally in, and I hope they do OK in our East Midland's climate.
Frosty morning here, but lured out by the sunshine. Clipped the beech hedge, as it's easier to see what it's up to before it comes into leaf. (What it is mainly up to is over growing the path).
Disappointingly, while the snowdrops I planted came up, only a few flowered. Very odd.
One of my favourite garden days of the year today. The snow mostly disappeared overnight, the first snowdrops came through, and our natural tree nursery is delivering some more seedlings to be nurtured until ready for transplanting.
The hills are alive with the sound of mowers, clippers, strimmers etc. A sunny weekend and folk are out in their gardens.
I'm past the tidying stage, and probably finished the serious planting - ie shrubs and perennials that I expect - hope - will be enduring features. These include three hostas, two clumps of ornamental grasses, a fern, two peonies, geum and geranium. Time to think about bedders and herbs, to infill the beds and put in pots.
Our plot is starting to look quite promising. I have moved things around so that in the place of the two previous raised beds, we have two raised beds and the miniature greenhouse/coldframe. The one bed that I moved was really a bit old for it, and hammering it back together was a bit of a... challenge. Definitely won't be moving it again. I have completely weeded and cleared the paths, and now need to do something with them to stop them getting all overgrown again - either gravel or planks.
I have planted carrots and mixed salad in the greenhouse. I've gone with the sort where you can pick a few leaves and it grows back. I always find it a bit difficult to use a whole lettuce otherwise. The radishes I sowed with Captain Pyjamas are also up - for the eighteen day variety, they've been rather taking their time, but I think I can thin them out in a day or two.
I’m reading all of these lovely posts, trying to suppress a rather unChristian wave of envy. We still have snow everywhere, though ground is starting to show under a few trees. Our daffodils don’t come up until early May.😢
I planted a fat lot of tulip and snowdrop bulbs last fall, having first dug a bunch of compost into our clay soil and subsequently top-dressed with mountains of poplar leaves. I’m not expecting much, but hope springs eternal, even if tulips might not.
We had snow, changing to ice pellets, changing to freezing rain, changing to rain, all since midnight last night ... so not a lot of gardening happening here either.
Our little walled garden is a riot of colour. My husband planted loads more bulbs last Autumn so we've had snowdrops, daffodils, narcissi, tulips, hyacinths, grape hyacinths as well as japonica, camellia and blossom tree all going strong. It makes my heart sing 😍
I was put out when I saw some tabloids saying that slug pellets have been banned. No, metaldehyde has been banned, and this has been coming for years. You can get other pellets, ferric phosphate mainly, described as organic by some firms. That's dubious I think.
Very dry in London, forget April showers. Hence, much huffing and puffing to get the hosepipe out, and straighten the kinks. The powers that be on our allotment are saying the paths should be a foot wide, I doubt if I could walk along a path that narrow, so forget it.
Ha! Today I planted seeds which said they should go into ground that was already watered. (I imagine them saying this with high, squeaky voices, or maybe hoarse gasps, for lack of moisture.) Since the heavenly watering has been nigh constant for two weeks, I figured they might enjoy their new homes. I promised them that it might get a bit warmer over the next couple of days, so I hope I was right about that. Bitter wind here today as well as the wet.
We've done quite a bit of gardening the last couple of days. Planted some sunflower and basil seeds and bought some new herbs for our patio pots. The two areas we had planted up in November are beginning to grow and we can see where there are gaps that need to be filled.
There are still a lot of decisions to be made about the vast area of decking we want to get rid of.
A bit of a mystery in my friend's garden. By the front door with its root under the privet hedge, there was a plant, avery small shrub, which grew slowly and was gradually covering the path to the door. It had been planted by his mother, and he was very fond of it. But it needed pruning and so, a couple of months back, he cut the ends of the stems with a pair of shears. It is now dead, apparently right down to the ground (I'm going to use secateurs too see if there is any green cambium), and he is blaming himself.
I've looked through my Mum's book of garden plants, and round the local garden centre to try and identify and replace it, with no luck.
It had grey green silvery leaves, in pairs, and roughly oval in appearance (the tops looked bent over, with a non-oval part back to the stem. When it flowered, it had small white trumpet shaped flowers in the axils.
The garden centre did have something that might be related - non-woody stems, though, narrow silvery leaves, and large white trumpetty flowers - about an inch and a half. These plants were only plant pot sized, didn't look as if they planned to grow any higher than 9 inches, certainly not three foot with a spread of two or so, as the original did.
We want a replacement. And what I obviously can't do is take a cutting from somewhere. I can't believe the little trim could kill it so completely.
It's more likely to have been storms Franklin and Gladys than the 'little trim' that is the cause of the moribund shrub.
Don't give up before the end of May it could still come into new growth. I have an escallonia that I thought for weeks was a write=off, but is now greening up nicely, and we are on the south coast so possibly warmer than wherever you are.
Checking for green cambium is a good idea, if you need reassurance now.
Dry, dry, everywhere. In the West country for hols, hardly a drop of rain. Have to get back to parched London, hose pipe mania. Fortunately, early veg seem tolerant, especially lettuce.
Find a botanical garden with a help desk--there are some online I believe, though local would be better--and ask for help with the ID. If you have pics, so much the better. As for the trim, I'm hoping very much it's still going to come back from the roots, but there's always a risk of infection by something horrid when you cut.
Yes, also there's old advice not to prune on a warm day, as if the sap rises, and there's a cold night, not good. As others have said, give it a lot of time to regrow.
My own fuchia looks dead, but has green at the base - it's from my parents so I want to keep it going. I've spent a fourth session on Grandad's rose, and, horrors, sprayed the bean bed growth of wild geranium with nasty stuff. It's a different wg than the one I manually dealt with last year, and is about to flower, so it has moved up the ToDo list above the forsythia and the philadelphus. There's a word for soil that is as generous to plants as mine. More than fertile.
The nasty stuff only comes out in a jet, so is difficult for spraying extensive herbage. And it leaks over my hands, finding gaps in the gloves.
We have a friend in the Linnean Society, so hope to find a photo to show him.
Last autumn I planted a hundred bulbs in an area of our front garden, looking forward to a lovely spring show. All I can say is that the four tulips are nice. >rolleyes<
The area at the front that was meant to have reseeded itself with wild flowers has not done so (the area at the back is behaving nicely) so I'll have to think about what to plant instead. The problem with trying to do anything at the moment is that the soil is so dry and we are on clay. Mr Nen was hoeing the other day and the head of the hoe snapped off.
We planted bulbs last year and we now have crocuses (it's only crocus season here due to our late spring) popping up all over the yard, in every spot EXCEPT the bed where I planted the crocus bulbs.
There must be rain at some point, I keep telling myself. We are away again, for a week, so hope everything survives, lots of watering this week. In fact, nothing is wilting, but then it's not hot.
There's often a long dry spell this time of year - not necessarily either warm or sunny, but just no rainfall.
I have a bucket by the bathroom door - every time I go into the garden I tote it down and into the water butt. The pots and the newly planted get favoured, everything else just has to tough it out.
Opinions , views , suggestions , horror stories concerning those robot lawnmowers🤷♀️
Really don’t want to leave our home, but too much grass. Were it up to only me there would be beds and woodchip paths, but the beloved loves his grass.
I have listened to folk rave above the beauty and practicality them but other opinion is not so good.
I have observed one. It belongs to next door, who've put so much shed, summerhouse, barbecue area, seating and hot tub in their garden that all that remains of green is a dismal square of grass. It strikes me that it needs straight edges and level surfaces. It wouldn't do for my lawn which is both bumpy and curved. Nor can I see if it strims the edges. Nor can I see a hopper for the grass cuttings - so presumably it just sheds them on the ground?
My brother has one and really rates it highly. He lives in Cornwall with an irregularly shaped sloping garden and fast growing grass due to all that rain! The little robot can work all day every day and takes itself back to its docking station to re-charge when necessary. The boundaries of the grassy area have a cable laid just underground that signals to the robot that it's time to turn round. The grass cuttings are left of the surface but because it cuts so frequently they are hardly noticeable.
Comments
That's beautiful.
It looks like the three photo album I linked got messed with while I was trying to do something else on Flickr. Now it only seems to take you to the first of the three photos in my photo stream. Sorry about that. It would require an act of Vanilla to do anything about it now. But thanks for the kind words just the same.
Definitely the coldest night here this season. I've got a small Brazilian shrub that isn't looking too happy today. I could lose it though fortunately I gave it a good watering the morning before. But nothing else looks the worse or wear.
A friend in San Diego reports snow down to 2000 feet and needing to put snow chains on to go over a pass.
There are a few promising signs of life in the flowerbed where I planted around 100 bulbs last autumn and was cheerfully informed by a friend that as the ground was so waterlogged at the time they would simply rot. She may have been right about the majority of them, but there are two sorts which are throwing up leaves: one sort looks like tulips, the other sort just have spindly green leaves a bit like daffodils but thinner and taller. No signs of flowers yet. And I can't remember whether I kept the box they came in or not.
It also fell over and broke!
So we have three daffodils inside for St David’s day.
Pairs of pert, bouncing tits!
This morning a pair of long-tailed tits were exploring my garden. We have no shortage of their great and blue cousins, but these are the first long-tails I have seen in there - hopefully a sign that my wildlife encouragement is working.
Daffodils beginning to open here and masses of crocus and the hellebores are still looking good. Not as many snowdrops as expected though.
Husband en rouge gave me a mini greenhouse for a present, so I've been for a scout to see where it would fit. Once that's done I can think about tomatoes, courgettes and the like. We went to the gardening shop this morning and I have procured a gooseberry bush (gooseberries are very hard to get hold of in France). I also have sweet peas and freesias to plant.
There is a vine down the bottom of our plot that needs some serious pruning. Another lady has offered to help me with it next week, which is a good thing, as I believe she is that magic individual, a person who Knows What She Is Doing.
Daffodils starting to burst and the marigolds are Still flowering; Small flowers it must be said, but I am very glad they were left in situ for the winter. Snowdrops are gathering in numbers and the crocus are still with us.
The viburnum has been a delight all winter (I must get another one or two🤷♀️) and the yellow wallflowers are just great.
Had a check of the compost heap this week and down a bit it is warm, must be doing something right!
That made me laugh @Graven Image .
We finally got round to planting out a small plum tree that has been sulking in a pot. I hope it likes its new position better. I planted some lupins around it and it does look quite pretty. Let's hope the snails don't find the lupins. I've planted some agapanthus in the pot the plum tree was formally in, and I hope they do OK in our East Midland's climate.
Disappointingly, while the snowdrops I planted came up, only a few flowered. Very odd.
I'm past the tidying stage, and probably finished the serious planting - ie shrubs and perennials that I expect - hope - will be enduring features. These include three hostas, two clumps of ornamental grasses, a fern, two peonies, geum and geranium. Time to think about bedders and herbs, to infill the beds and put in pots.
I have planted carrots and mixed salad in the greenhouse. I've gone with the sort where you can pick a few leaves and it grows back. I always find it a bit difficult to use a whole lettuce otherwise. The radishes I sowed with Captain Pyjamas are also up - for the eighteen day variety, they've been rather taking their time, but I think I can thin them out in a day or two.
I planted a fat lot of tulip and snowdrop bulbs last fall, having first dug a bunch of compost into our clay soil and subsequently top-dressed with mountains of poplar leaves. I’m not expecting much, but hope springs eternal, even if tulips might not.
🌱
There are still a lot of decisions to be made about the vast area of decking we want to get rid of.
I've looked through my Mum's book of garden plants, and round the local garden centre to try and identify and replace it, with no luck.
It had grey green silvery leaves, in pairs, and roughly oval in appearance (the tops looked bent over, with a non-oval part back to the stem. When it flowered, it had small white trumpet shaped flowers in the axils.
The garden centre did have something that might be related - non-woody stems, though, narrow silvery leaves, and large white trumpetty flowers - about an inch and a half. These plants were only plant pot sized, didn't look as if they planned to grow any higher than 9 inches, certainly not three foot with a spread of two or so, as the original did.
We want a replacement. And what I obviously can't do is take a cutting from somewhere. I can't believe the little trim could kill it so completely.
Don't give up before the end of May it could still come into new growth. I have an escallonia that I thought for weeks was a write=off, but is now greening up nicely, and we are on the south coast so possibly warmer than wherever you are.
Checking for green cambium is a good idea, if you need reassurance now.
The nasty stuff only comes out in a jet, so is difficult for spraying extensive herbage. And it leaks over my hands, finding gaps in the gloves.
We have a friend in the Linnean Society, so hope to find a photo to show him.
The area at the front that was meant to have reseeded itself with wild flowers has not done so (the area at the back is behaving nicely) so I'll have to think about what to plant instead. The problem with trying to do anything at the moment is that the soil is so dry and we are on clay. Mr Nen was hoeing the other day and the head of the hoe snapped off.
snapped hoe, yikes.
I have a bucket by the bathroom door - every time I go into the garden I tote it down and into the water butt. The pots and the newly planted get favoured, everything else just has to tough it out.
Really don’t want to leave our home, but too much grass. Were it up to only me there would be beds and woodchip paths, but the beloved loves his grass.
I have listened to folk rave above the beauty and practicality them but other opinion is not so good.
What say you?
Have you thought of getting a sheep?