Come into the garden with Maud - all obsessive and wannabe gardeners welcome

[ComeIntoTheGardenMaud]

Whether you've got rolling acres or a tiny courtyard, whether you're a novice or a gardening die-hard, whether you're aiming for a garden of Sissinghurst loveliness or self-sufficiency à la Felicity Kendal in The Good Life, this is the place to be. Take a seat on the tastefully-painted Lutyens bench and chat with fellow enthusiasts. There may even be a bottle of gin in the potting shed.

Our garden chairs are ancient ikea director's folding ones from my first flat, and the table (wooden) also ancient, is hexagonal, wobbles slightly and I cannot remember where it came from. It stays out all year and I paint it with darkish brown wood preservative every Feb (the first sunny day) with DD helping so it always looks fine. The painting of the table has become a yearly ritual. It takes hardly any time and it makes us feel good when we go round the shops and realise we have saved hundreds of pounds.

That last shed was too tidy to be true.

Hello everyone. Lovely to be back in the garden. Derbyshire was lovely despite being really cold. Saw some lovely gardens, Haddon Hall was superb.

You know last year we planted our wildflower meadow from some seed we bought in Lidl for £8? Lidl don't have any this year and we have realised that it is going to cost us about £100 quid to buy enough seed to do it again!!!!

Humph - I have a canister of wildflower seed bought from Lidl last year that I haven't used and probably never will. Do you want it?

Oh, and thank you again to Bertha (do I mean Bertha? perhaps I mean Wynken) for the oca. The shoots have now reached the top of their pot. It's quite a big pot - can it stay there or should I replant in open ground?

yes please bites hand off

shall I send you a SAE?

we would have bought loads of it if we had known we wouldn't be able to get it next year.

Also, the mixes on line are all much more tasteful I loved the explosion in a flower shop effect from the lidl seeds.

Wynken - oca; Bertha - jerusalem artichokes .

My oca has only just started sprouting but then I've been mean to it and it's been outside all the while. Jerusalem artichokes though are all up and going strong.

My little plastic greenhouse took a trip across the veg plot in the wind today. Took out a couple of broad bean plants in the process but I think I've rescued them.

I took the DDs to TK Max earlier this week - they had some chunky garden chairs in which looked nice Maud. Not sure if they had the tables to go with or what they were charging for them though as I was too busy shouting at supervising my children.

My Jerusalem artichokes have come through in the little pot but not yet in the bigger, deeper ones. I am most grateful to Wynken and Bertha for their kindness and generosity.

Our local T K Maxxes don't really do gardening stuff but, anyway, I Must Not buy the furniture before I actually have the patio!

Humph - Just PM me your address. I think I have a padded envelope I can recycle for the purpose.

I've got some packets of wildflower mix too Humph. Aimed at beneficial insects, bees, butterflies. A bit old maybe but in sealed packets from Nicky's Nursery. Pm me if you want them - no idea what sort of coverage they would give. The weeds wildflowers that i planted on the back of my rockery last year re-sowed themselves, but I guess you can't always achieve that with flowering annuals.

I've got something in a bed that may be Jerusalem Artichoke roots, but I'm not sure - they are thick and white.

Tonight I was making a salad and as I prepared one lettuce it was brown and horrid inside - I can't wait until I'm using my own lovely veg again this summer

Jerusalem artichokes look more like small potatoes (think Pink Fir Apple or something similarly nobbly).

Mmmm - these are just very thick juicy looking roots but the whole bed is full of them.

I can recommend the Argos hardwood steamers.Bought 2 in the sale last year as they were such a good price[and had been hankering after steamers for a while] and wanted to lounge on my new patio.I didn't expect longevity-only to be very surprised.This year they still look perfect.
I have solved the problem of the missing blossom on my cherry tree-its being eaten!.Something has been chewing on the buds and there are big holes in the bark [so not bullfinches but something with teeth].Maybe mice or squirrels [attracted by the vast quantities of bird seed sprinkled liberally arround by the dc's].What do i do?

don't put your frost-tender plants out yet...

Lexilicious - nooooooooo!! My sweet peas (sob)

Got a great patio set in Argos - all folds up and half price in sale. Doesn't look like I'll get much use out of it for a while yet then..

If anyone has 'The Works' bookshop near them they are doing wildflower seeds - 2 packs for a quid. Morrisons have cheap seeds too.

Just settling myself in for an evening with a glass of wine and Monty's book which arrived today .

I'm just thrilled it's raining here in Melbourne - a fortnight since the last rain, though from a sitting on your arse with a glass in your hand in mid-20s temperatures point of view it's been lovely.

I've got a sunny flower bed to get started, so this weekend I'll crack on.

Spent a very happy morning in drizzle potting up lily bulbs and I soaked the hosta roots which I will pot tomorrow. I've decided to grow them in pots till shoots come up and then put them into the ground. A 2 stage process.

I have rather a lot of (fabulous) plants waiting to go into the ground atm. I went a bit wild over the ordering and kept forgetting what I ordered. No duplicates though and everything is sensible for a shady north facing idyll. I'm getting a bit anxious about whether it will all grow and flower once planted.

I don't want to walk on the lawn too much to get to the beds on either side, with it being so wet. I probably ought to put down a path/ paving stones/ near the edges of the beds, but I don't want to decrease the size of the lawn too much or have anything which doesn't blend in. Grey concrete squares for example would not be an option, cobbles are too uncomfortable. I would appreciate any suggestions or ideas.

How about slices of trees - not those horrible concrete fake slices but actual slices - they're light so you can move them around to prevent wear - when they wear out you can compost or burn them - environmental too.

A possibility?

I've been to Bunnings (all Aussies know this place, it's B&Q meets Homebase. Sort of) and bought bags and bags of soil conditioner and water retaining agents to build up the bed I'm going to plant.

Picked up two hemerocallis from the sad plants unit - cheap, shrivelled or just past flowering plants at a reduced price - and these will go in.

I'm trying to build up my collection of kangaroo paws because the birds love them, and they look great, so tall in my downhill garden. However, they're only sold in flower, as that's when the general public will buy them, but one species will be flowering at some time in the year. I'm looking for the one which has black-furred stems and green and black flowers.

I was just praising the rain, but it'll be 26 tomorrow, so gardening in suffocating humidity is the order of the day.

Funnyperson - When we had the garden landscaped just recently, we had a path made out of stepping stones in a windy pattern to another patio/pergola, positioned when the sunset through the trees in the summer is particularly beautiful. In my 'grand plan' I am envisaging all sorts of lovely climbers over our pergola but I am digressing now!

Anyway, the landscaper used Indian stone for the stepping stones and patio. The stone is really pretty, the shades vary from a deep rust colour to a light sand. Perhaps an option for you? I don't know how much the stone itself cost as the quote we had didn't itemise materials and labour etc but can soon find out?

Ok, so it's rained pretty much constantly for 36 hours here but the sun is shining at least for the moment, but is it too wet to plant veggie and salad seeds outside do you think?

Also, does anyone know about planting bulbs 'in the green' and whether it is advantageous to do so? Planning bluebells, snowdrops etc for our shaded, wooded area and the landscaper mentioned it's a good time to get them in the ground as they finish flowering and die off. I had sort of thought to get them in the autumn as bulbs and plant then? Not sure of best option now!

Looking forward to some warmer weather here tbh echt!

Bulbs in the autumn are marginally cheaper than in the green and I think there is little to choose between them in terms of whether they get going healthily.

I have used large stones (sold for zen landscaping I think) around the edge of my lawn to provide a walking path when the ground is soggy. The stones are uneven but it provides a wide enough tiptoeing sort of cakewalk! When DS was learning to walk and went on them there were a lot of stumbling-into-the-veggie-bed incidents involving broken stems but I didn't mind mostly

It's Friday so I'm working at home looking out at the garden and later today I will be raking my next seed bed, putting out my seedlings to get used to the outside, moving my four-shelf growhouse, and grumbling at the continued presence of rodents.

Away most of this weekend but it includes Hyde Hall on Sunday (oops, there's a plant fair on, hey ho !!) so I will get my fill of gardening one way or the other. Commuted into London two days this week and greatly enjoyed loing at people's gardens that back on to the Met/jubilee lines. Some shockers but some lovely ones too.

Doublemocha i think the main reason for planting in the green is that you can see where to position them and you know they will come up next year.Snowdrop bulbs don't always germinate apparently[though most of mine did this year].I would try masses of bulbs this year and if those don't cooperate,then try planting in the green the following year.
I went to Dobbies yesterday to buy plants for my bare patches of border.The plant info. tags have stopped saying when the plant flowers[which is really annoying].Also i came home with verbascum,nemesia and polemonium for a very sunny patch [checked with the staff that these are suitable for this sort of area].Found out when i got home that polemonium does much better in a shady patch so i have to put it somewhere else.Am i justified in feeling really peed off?.I only bought it as they had no perovskia left[which would have been eminently suitable].

The piglets are here. REALLY cute, half wild boar and half Kune Kune. They are very cute. DS said that we are not allowed to turn them into sausages .

It is all looking so pretty thanks to the rain. The underplanting of the rose walk has worked really well, all the geranium, aqueligia and catmint are looking splendid with all that lush green foliage. The black and white tulips are flowering in the middle round bit of the walk. We are going to be much more rigorous about keeping the walkway clear this year, as our beginner's mistake with this area was making it much too small at 5'. It should be at least 2' wider. Never mind.

The five Paul's Scarlet we bought from B&M last year are doing splendidly. with lots of buds. They are underplanted with catmint too, it is the best plant if you have a lot of space to fill. It is so easy to propagate even I can do it, you can get three lots of flowers out of it with judicious cutting back and it smells nice.

Have a lovely weekend in the garden chaps.

The round veg

Piglets!!! Gnnaahhhhh, too cute!