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.

Agree - 'tis dreadful out there!

Both DC's were camping this weekend (lucky them!) and DH on business in Singapore so I had completed all household chores and was hoping to get at least a day in the garden (I knew today would be a washout).

It 'bloomin rained all day yesterday too. When will it ever cease I wonder?

Had some germinations in the greenhouse and ordered some dwarf lilac for some pretty (and very large) blue pots we brought from the old house. Also ordered some blueberry bushes for container growing.

I did sow some lilac seeds about three weeks ago in the greenhouse (just when the weather turned cold and nasty) So far, nothing. Is lilac easy to grow from seed?

Lexi - DH has just installed two water butts for me that we got cheap via the a council scheme. Great I thought, just the right time to fill them up, given the weather. It was only yesterday that I noticed that DH hadn't closed the tap on one of them, so water was flowing straight back out again!!! Still, it's full again now!

Weebles - your garden sounds lovely. I too have a strange doubt that anything I sow will actually grow!!! I even poked around in one of the pots that I sowed some leek seeds into yesterday, given it was three weeks. Must learn patience - it had just stared to germinate but I have probably disturbed it!

We managed a couple of hours on the allotment this morning. Dd3 went to sleep & I dug up/moved more rhubarb ( it's like weeds now!) and then picked a new bed clear for now of mares tail.

Hi all, can I join? I have a litre of damson rum, and a shed load of mint, so am planning a damson mojito party in about 2 to 7 weeks whenever baby makes an appearance!!!

I got a phone call 2 weeks ago saying I'd got an allotment (yeah) however being 35 weeks pregnant, not sure it was the best timing!! (didn't want to turn it down though!) was quite worried as the lady was quite insistent that it needed sorting and clearing within a few weeks!!

Pleased to say it's nearly all weeded, and have even convinced my mum that on all fours is the best thing to keep baby in it's optimum position!! It's been little and often, an hour maximum at a time, and my DH has been helpful (although not overly enthusiastic!!) I sat at our allotment for an hour this morning, but it was raining too much (should be less wussy, but still dontblike being too wet!)

However now Dh has gone to work in the car, it's no longer raining! I can't get to the allotment, and all the gardening stuff is in the car, so I can't even do anything in the back garden :( I have lots in the conservatory ready to go, when it's ready to start planning!

Welcome karatekimmi - you sound as if you've been really busy.

I came home on Friday to discover that DH had weeded my biggest, weediest vegetable bed
He's promised to top it up with topsoil this week, weather permitting

On Saturday I did some weeding and some hacking back and shredding but today it has been too wet and wild to do anything in the garden.

I've got one two flowerbed that is so weedy that I am wondering about digging the whole thing up, salvaging a couple of things and starting from scratch. Trying to actually weed it is proving nearly impossible.

I'm hoping we have some dry evenings this week so I can spend an hour outside after I come home from work.

Welcome welcome kimmi. Envious of all of you with allotments. Although my back garden is about the size of a standard allotment, i dont think DH would be that pleased if i turned the whole lot over to veggies. Pigs, otoh...

I moved a wheelbarrow of soggy clay soil today in the pouring rain, and then washed out the dustbin it had been in (long story) so that it could be my reserve water butt. Winner. It's now half full with water taken off the main butt fed from the house roof, has a piece of chipboard kitchen unit on top for a lid, and will be the water source for the front garden if it ever gets dry again

Planted three of my 'four alpines for £10' on the rockery. Saxifrage had a bit of a shaky connection to its root system, the ajuga was really badly pot bound, and the sedum was just right. While I was there, I cleared two sections of weeds and mulched a bit. Very satisfied to have done that job. The fourth is cowslip which is going to go along the lawn margin but I think I need to mow first, which can't be until Saturday probably.

Still haven't planted any of the direct-sowing veg that I have planned. However there are seven pots ready to be sowed in, which I've prepared with a unique mix of the clayey garden/woodland soil in the bottom half, and fresh peat free compost in the top half. These will all be surface or near-surface crops like radish, beetroot, salad leaves, spring onions, etc, so they will enjoy the compost while having lots of moisture available from below. That's my theory anyway.

As I sit in my customary place on the sofa just now I can see my blueberry plants in a trough on the deck. There is at least one fluffy round mostly-black bee feeding from the flowers, so I'm reassured that they are not starving and shivering in some nearby hollow tree. A couple of weeks ago in the sunshine there was a steady stream of honeybees (yellow/brown and longer) coming to the edge of the pond to drink. All day.

Lawn is soooooo soggy. I don't really know what to do with it. It's quite lush and we haven't yet mowed it this year at all, but it needs some patches seriously TLC'd with sand or very sandy topsoil or something, and to be forked all over first. Yet another job for "when it stops raining"...

Still no water butt. I must admit I was exhausted after a long and tiring week, and fell asleep and only woke up after the shops had shut. I had intended to get a water butt.

The rain had stopped when I woke up though, so I wandered out and planted out the Acanthus mollis, Hosta, Astrantia Shaggy, Tree lilies and Aquilegia from their pots into the shady bed, having dug up loads of catmint in soggy clay. The creeping catmint roots had broken up the heavy soil which was handy. With added manure and compost the soil almost looked like Monty's.

Moved some Hellebores from pots into the ground, knotted the daffodil leaves, as they are over. Nurtured the Rosemary, Sage and Cistus cuttings. The robins watched all the while.

Then I wiped the floor which had got a bit muddy!

Maud it would be really lovely to see a photo of your black and white bed when the time comes.
Gardening requires an act of faith. Faith that the plants and seeds will grow and faith that one will be there to see them.

I need to do some lawn repair. Was going to get dh to make me some little mesh frames to put over newly-seeded bits, to keep the birds off, but it has just occurred to me that the mesh shelves I've saved from old greenhouses would do the job and I wouldn't have to wait 6 months for dh to get round to it.

I have decided I'm never going to use the huge butt that has been cluttering up my garden for years and I'm going to try to sell it, and replace it with one of the streamlined models.

Funnyperson - Knotting daffodil leaves is now regarded as a Bad Thing as it impedes the flow of nutrients back to the bulbs.

Lexi I dont think I have the courage for veg just yet. I have 1 apple tree and the sticks apple and plum tree from lidl have shoots !!!!!!! But if flowers and fruit do their own thing its OK, but I think I would be upset if my veg didn't grow to plan. I am in awe of your veg growing abilities.

There have been no more butterflies, though plenty of worms. I think you are right, the rain has upset the butterflies and bees.

Maud really- is knotting not the thing then? I will go and undo them before work tomorrow.

My lawn is also v soggy and it is a bit patchy where I have walked on it though I tried to stick to walking on the fossil buff sandstone paving stones from Gwalior in India which are useful. However they are a cream/peachy colour in the lawn and so they detract from the subtle plant colours of the borders, thats the only trouble. So if looking at the garden from above, one now inevitably focusses on the stepping stones, rather than the lawn, plants and topiary etc. I am really not sure what to do about it.

Funnyperson - The RHS does not approve of knotting!

OK OK OK I will undo the knots. !

And I will never knot the daffs again. I will gently comb the leaves back into an unimpeded.....unimpeded.....erm droopy but flowing green state.

'Salright, Funnyperson. I only included the link to show I wasn't making it up. You can style your daffs however you like!

I dont mind untying the knots, I want them to be just as good next year.

I ordered this water butt
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/B0030ZPC9Q/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new.

It should arrive in time for the good weather.

DD's May ball got rained on. I hope May day is sunny.

Gosh i was just admiring the neatness of my neighbours knotted daffodils and ruminating about doing this with mine-now i have been warned!.Does anyone here treat their lawn?.I am having an ongoing row with my parents as they say my lawn is weed infested.I deliberately don't put anything on it as i love the mixture of moss,cowslips and violets and daisies [and i think now michaelmas daisies-though these may be a step too far].I don't mow the bottom lawn because i have about 20 cowslips in it,until much later in the year.I think my attitude to gardening is totally different to my parents generation and much more naturalistic and idealistic and hopefully more sustainable.I rarely plant annuals apart from the odd summer pot and scented stocks/nicotinia or pelargoniums or cosmos.Also i would never plant out 'park bedding' type planting as i hate the look of it.

Oooh. That butt is like the one in my front garden that I still haven't managed to fix but at a much better price.

I think the daff-knotting is an age-related thing. My dad is an inveterate knotter of daffs. In the unlikely event that it doesn't rain tomorrow, I'll have another got at the weeds in the lawn. I have galium odoratum (don't mind that) but also lamium galeobdolon, iris foetida and forget-me-nots, which I think have to go.

Poor Funnyperson's dd and her soggy May ball. I nearly developed hypothermia at mine.

Oh, Teta, I buy lawn treatment stuff every year but never use it, because I can never get the lawn in a good enough state for treatment to seem sensible or worthwhile. After reading this, I was tempted to get a little man in.

Yes, some gardeners always aim for a 'good show' with lots of annual bedding plants. I prefer perennials.

Regarding the lawn. I have previously had crocus tomasiniana naturalised in a lawn, which was magical as they self seeded and grew more and more of them every year. That bit didnt get mowed till about the end of May. The new owners killed off all the crocuses though by putting feed and weed stuff on.
Last year the forget-me-nots took over the top third of my current lawn- a lovely sea of blue. This year I moved all the forget-me-nots from the lawn to the flower beds in February and I do like my unimpeded lawn.

My lawn is small, scratty and infested with clover -or with bare patches where I've dug up the clover. Does anyone have any good suggestions? I have scattered quite a lot of grass seed over the last few weeks, but without any visible results.

Do you know what happened to the grass seed. MooncupGoddess? Did it germinate, or was it eaten by birds or washed away?

I planted my lawn with cornflowers and primroses last year when I grew it from seed, but there is no sign of them yet. The is clover, and moss, and a couple of broad leaved weeds which I am not allowing to get to an identifiable age. The top level of the rockery that I dug over this afternoon w sowed with a wildflower mix last year which evidently included dandelions. Who the hell wants dandelions in their wildflower meadow? Tsk.

So, I guess if I used the Lawn Sand treatment it would kill off those seedlings if they are there at all. Yet another dilemma.

I agree very much with teta up there about perennials, and not doing an annuals 'show'. I had a boyfriend once whose parents were getting a bit creaky and bemoaning the lack of gardeners to hire that knew anything more than how to mow, strim, and hedge-clip. "I mean, you say you'd like them to 'prepare the borders for spring' and they look at you as if you're talking French" was something like it. I wouldn't know now how to prepare a border for spring but I do love putting plants together and getting colour mixes coming together at the right times/heights/spacings, that will then perform again and again.

Having said that, the way we grow most veg is basically the same as annual bedding plants, so I am trying to mark out my four veg zones (rotation beds) by putting a perennial veg plant in between each. So, globe artichoke will be one, rhubarb another, asparagus is in a canvas planter, I need one more... ???

The lawn next to our house has an enormous oak tree in it which means that the lawn is really mossy.But this is good because it stops growing in dry weather,always stays green and is a soft landing if the dc's fall off the trampoline.I read an article recent which says if the climate of the uk carries on changing maybe we have to change our perception of gardening and whether lawns will be viable in the future.I love Crocus naturalised in lawns funnypersonSsadly our spaniel insisted on bouncing up and down on top of them this year and peed on the rest,so i didn't see one flower.But i saw lots of leaves so i know they're still there.

Mooncup dh sprinkled loads of grass seed on the dog-pee ridden patches in our lawn.He followed up with a topping of lots of compost in a thick layer.Although i saw lots of birds eating the seeds,grass has grown from his admittedly rather enthusiastic sowing [ he used a whole box].Subtlety is not in his nature.

I don't like to depend on annuals simply because of the amount of effort entailed. I do though, like to grow a few things to fill any gaps where new plantings aren't yet coming together. This year I've got purple zinnias and orange tithonias, or will do if the very leggy seedlings survive.

We once went to an open garden that promised spectacular summer planting and it turned out to be lots of bizzie lizzies. I found it hard to keep a straight face.

::uncharitable::

Hmm, I don't know what happened to the seed - perhaps I should observe more closely. I'll give it another go now there are fewer birds in the garden. My usually reliable cornflower and poppy seed has also shown no signs of growth so maybe it's the filthy weather.

Maud - there is a funny scene in Jilly Cooper's Rivals where the nouveau riche baddy has an open garden day which turns out to be a horror of clashing bedding plants. I forget the details but you should look it up!