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.

Humph they have wildflower seed at poundland as far as I recall. Do you have one near you? Otherwise ebay has lots but it still might cost you lots that way.

If your meadow would cost £100 to sow it sounds pretty big!! You lucky thing.

I am pleased as I have my purple carrots in a pot, dwarf borlottis, onions and courgette plant in the ground. Huge achievement for me at least . I just have to finish painting my bamboo canes purple then the peas and squash can be planted (and brought some broad beans today to sow). And then there's only the rainbow chard, basil, nastrutiums, geraniums and cosmos to get outside. Hurrah!

Looking forward to GW tonight.

Oh and Lexi v jealous of you going to Hyde Hall - would love to see the gorgeous dry garden there. I like the idea of how low maintenance but also colourful it is; great for disabled gardeners.

Well, thank goodness I've been too busy to plant anything out, it would have been battered to death by a severe hail storm. I dropped DS at a party a few miles away, drove home and there were cars coming from the opposite direction covered in hail and my front garden looked as if it had been snowed on.

I'm very behind with the allotment but greenhouse crops doing well. I have a chilli, some tiny cucumbers and tomatoes and a few strawberries that are doing well.

We've had some great news, DS's MRI scan was clear. Life can go back to normal. Am going to celebrate and relax with Monty in a bit.

That's great Wynken, glad things are looking up with DS.

I nearly sacrificed seedlings to the hail too! I put my trays outside to get a bit of the warmth and light, but then had some showers. I was sitting watching, ready to leap out and get them if they looked too battered. I've left the tomatoes and pak choi out in the little growhouse now. Will check the weather and only bring them in if it's going to go below freezing. Chilli and peppers, and the really baby seedlings, still inside for now.

Ooh I love a pulmonaria... Better concentrate on GW now!

Wynken - I think I've missed the full story of your ds but I'm glad the news is so positive.

GW was bliiisssss tonight, wasn't it?

::Do love a nice pulmonaria::

I realised yesterday that I haven't bought lettuce from a shop since February. Or pak choi. And the newly sown salads are starting to get their true leaves. I'm not going to attempt cucumbers until I have a greenhouse though, and especially not when we're forecast a dry summer.

lexilicious where do you sow your salads?

Has anyone get/used/seen a trug riddle
I'm quite tempted as we have a huge pile of topsoil that needs riddling

Just been trawling eBay after being unable to find cheap pots locally. I've ordered some of the plasticky collapsible ones so hope they are ok though I did find some cheap pits to watching in case they aren.cheapest I've found for that size was £1.98 locally , even wilkos wasn't cheap :(

I dont know why i havent tried lettuce before, i am growing iceberg lettuce in the greenhouse and after just a few weeks they are coming along really well. Im always going to have lettuce on the go now. But as for my red peppers, i have had to bring them inside as they still arnt up after 6 weeks.

stand down on the worries of May being freezing !!

funnyperson I have had my overwinter salad leaves and pak choi in those rectangular council recycling boxes. I put a couple of bamboo hoops at the sides and polythene over it with duct tape to the boxes and clothes pegs to the hoops.

The newly planted salad is in a small wooden trough planter thing. I have a plan for where's everything's going to go, but then I get tempted by new things and have to do a sort of shuffle of the pins around the planning board...!!!

I have had a lovely gardening day - potting up, then buying and selling plants.

I was twitching to buy that trug riddle - the sieves I bought when I started this garden are old and a bit broken - until I noticed the price!

I've just ordered the trug riddle - I've got several broken sieves that aren't that old so I'm hoping that it will be an investment and I won't need to buy any more.

I bought a tub of 100 summer flowering bulbs today so I'm hoping to plant them tomorrow if the weather is alright

I think it will be AJUPB - it looks sturdy and the fact that you can sieve straight into the trug is a huge plus - but I've frittered invested so much money on the garden recently that I feel I have to deny myself that particular toy piece of essential equipment.

That said, I need to buy another obelisk.

I daren't add up how much I have spent on my garden. This year I had been really good until today!

There are loads of things I haven't bought - a copper fork, a coldframe...

I like the sound of an obeslisk - what will you grow on it?

Ah, well....

Last year I was given a garden centre voucher but found that only one local garden centre would accept it and from their tiny selection of roses I bought Gloriana. I had a mad imaginative idea to put an arch around the front door for dear Gloriana to grow up, but as the front garden is paved it would have to stand in pots. (I have lots of huge pots in the front garden). I haven't found an arch that I think would work, so decided a couple of days ago to look for an obelisk that will fit in the pot.

Although I bought Gloriana in a moment of desperation because I couldn't see anything else I wanted, I'm very pleased with her. She has lovely foliage and is already producing buds. She's a very good 'doer'.

Gloriana looks very pretty.
I'm quite tempted by Mermaid for a pergola at the bottom of the flower garden, but I'm not sure it will recieve enough sun as there are trees surrounding it. I've got a honeysuckle growing on it but it's a bit sparse so I'd like to add something else.

It is a glorious day, I am at Hyde Hall, I am wearing the Pink Trousers.

Oooh, Mermaid looks lovely. Although, as I said, I bought Gloriana mainly as a way of using an otherwise useless voucher, I'm very pleased with her. The house is painted an ochre-y colour and purple plants look stunning against it.

Lexi - the Pink Trousers. They have their own capitals now.

My asparagus crowns arrived on Friday lunchtime - 20 minutes before I had to leave the house to go away for the weekend. I kind of threw them into the bed and really hope they'll be ok. Still don't know if they do grow whether the deer will eat them or if I should net the bed. Need to do more research.

Have laid fossil buff paving stones on side of lawn. Not sure about them at all. Preferred the unbroken green of the lawn, which now also has a temporary row of potted up lilies in plastic pots of varying sizes along the middle of the lawn where it is sunny. Failed garden design. . Didn't get the Hosta in. Fail fail fail. Have trampled on wet lawn. Mega fail. Looking forward to work how sad is that.

I too need to keep off the scrawny patch of weeds lawn for a few days, to allow it to recover.

But I have done really well this weekend in disposing of surplus plants, buying a few more lovely specimens and replanting the Brownies garden. Am feeling very pleased with my labours.

Another happy gardener here!

Managed to sow radish, lettuce, beetroot, spring onion and rocket seeds in one raised bed on Friday afternoon. Then, over the weekend I potted on all the indoor seedlings, although I needed to buy more pots to do this and was flabergasted by the price, given how many you need!! Cheapest place for gardening stuff I have found so far is B&Q (garden centre prices - phew!!!) but other suggestions would be most welcome. Same goes for compost, can't wait until our own is plentiful and ready.

Also rescued a Hosta, which hadn't been re-potted for at least 4 years (we were useless at gardening at the old house!) but seems to thrive on neglect. So that's now in a lovely pot too.

This week I am hoping to get some more digging over done, weather permitting, it's an rather wet forcast here.

Thank you for the advice re planting 'in the green'. I am going to wait and plant bulbs in the autumn. I hadn't planned on doing anything with that side of the garden until then anyway, so happy to wait until then.

Gloriana sounds lovely Maud!

Watched GW for the first time on Friday too, think I am officially converted to this gardening malarkey!

We had a good day in the garden on Sat but it poured yesterday when we were going to allotment so nothing done there.

Dh gardeners world just come so am just reading it