Blooming into Flaming June

[Blackpuddingbertha]

Keeping the potting shed party going from the previous Rhubarb Society thread and all threads before it.

Please feel free to join in all gardeners, whether novice, professional or aspiring. Plenty of blackberry gin for all.

I'm eating garden rocket too.

This thread is motivating me to keep planting things.

Your cottage borders sound gorgeous. I love oriental poppies.

They are great. It is funny, I remember NOT liking them before I had a garden, I have no idea why. They are just so huge and spectacular. I have one really wonderful cerise pink one. I will try and take some root cuttings of this one, it really is an excellent colour.

Can you take a picture? I would love to see.

There's a few things like that for me - I didn't really 'get' acers when I saw them in other people's gardens, then I realized it's the way they look in different lights that's so appealing.

I am currently being jealous of all the people around here who have gorgeous irises. I have some siberica, and a white one that doesn't look as if it's going to flower this year.

What are everyone else's favourites? And recommendations about how best to help them grow/which ones are least likely to die on me?

the figs the figs!
have just discovered that the figs that I left on the tree over winter have balloned in size and are actually looking nice and big and juicy. so hopefully we will be able to get some fruits this year.

have sown some bee friendly flowers, a second pack will be sown when these ones are nearly in flower so the bees have something in the late summer.

the lettuce is a bit of an dissapointment, the seed pack said 'seed to plate in 2 weeks' but they are still tiny 3 weeks on.

Anyone near enough to London who's an RHS member fancy meeting up on a Tuesday or Wednesday in June to go to Chelsea Physic Garden? Free entry for primary card holder as RHS partner gardens this month.

Also, we set up a Facebook group last year for sharing pictures - it should be searchable, it's called Osteospermumsnet I think. Has gone a bit dormant...

I'm taking notes of what you all have flowering at the moment as the fronts gone a bit quiet until the roses and clematis comes out. I swear someone has superglued my flower buds together, all my neighbours have far more out. Would love to plant lupine but have heard they give bad hayfever and DS is off school today after having the most horrendous attack of hayfever at cubs last night. I thought someone punched him.

I'd love some oriental poppies. The pot I planted last year hasn't survived the winter. Jealous of figs and Irises. Had forgotten about the FB page. Would be good to get more on there.

Have just put some pucs up. Sorry, got a bit carried away...

Just searched for Osteospermumsnet on facebook and nothing is coming up. I was going to spam you with my garden pictures

I checked, it's a 'secret' group. probably need to be invited or something... Will check and pm you!

It would be great to share more pictures - I don't do a profile on here. Will go and put some up now actually. Can we make it an open group?

Can I come on the FB page too please? GW on. I'll be back later.

Rakeabed, I would love to go to CPG but as I work could only manage an afternoon from say 16.30 onwards. I have never been and have always wanted to.

I'd like to join the FB group too please if I may?

The garden is starting to show that is more than just a collection of overblown shrubs and badly positioned conifers. Some alliums, weigela, sweet William, clematis Montana and a couple of unidentified perennials are all injecting some colour. FIL sat on one of the perennials though .

I had a cubic metre of topsoil delivered yesterday for filling in the hole left when the previous owners took the pond with them. I'd assumed it would come in a tonne bag - schoolboy error! It arrived loose on the back of a tipper truck. I had to scuttle around to find a tarpaulin for him to dump it on in the drive, followed by a frantic two hours of shovelling and wheelbarrowing across the garden while ds had his nap, so that the in-laws would be able to park when they arrived later in the afternoon. All in the heat of the midday sun. I didn't get it all done, there was about a third to a quarter left. But it no longer blocked the sun steps and allowed space for the in-laws Volvo.

I was completely wrecked though.

Good morning! How lovely to read everyone's news.
cutteduppear leaving a garden to create a new one is both a wrench and an adventure but DC and DP come first don't they?
I left a beloved garden and pined for years till I went back and a)saw that the new owners had completely altered it and b) it wasn't as nice as in my memory and c)my current garden is much better because I am a better/different gardener.
Anyway take as many of your own special plants and seeds as you can!
I have 21 pots in the front patio, 7 in the verandah and 14 or so not counting seedling trays in the back garden.
As a complete contrast I loved that the rhodedendron place on GW and the concept of creating a garden for future generations: it is making me think differently about my own and my mums garden.
I bought 3 different types of cherry tree. They will go in mums garden. Wrong season for planting but there you go. DD has a very ancient weeping cherry in her college garden.
Rhodedendron Yakushmanum survived in a pot and is flowering: I fed it a lot in the spring. Azaleas, Ceanothus, Alfred carriere, Gertrude jekyll, Peonies, Irises, Salvia, Dodecathon, Phlox, Valerian, Clematis montana elizabeth, Geranium phaeum, Geranium johnson's blue are all flowering. The little tiny whie flowers of the creeping cotoneaster look very pretty with tumbling purple aubretia over a wall. We have been eating rocket and salad from the vegetable trough (so wonderful to be able to come home to instant fresh food). Sweet peas and mange tout are growing satisfactorily up twine round willow sticks. Dogwood hosta ferns and various grasses all doing their foliage thing.It is garden heaven at the moment. What an amazing year.

Your garden sounds lovely funnyperson and the mention of salad troughs has had me going out to inspect ours. The lettuce are coming along, slowly but surely.

We had a stroke of luck today having gone on a road trip to a bit of Victoria we hadn't been to before, it being the Queen's birthday long weekend. Staggeringly lovely hilly country with windy roads and heavily forested with gums. A great name too: the Wombat State Forest.
A gardening centre was propagating verbena bonariensis in long thin glass vases of water in the open, and they were sprouting roots. This is in area that was -3 C last night. I'm encouraged, as all my cuttings planted in soil/rooting hormone died like flies. The ones on my garden have stopped flowering but are busily growing new side shoots, so I've chopped away, got lots of cuttings, and am hoping for a result this time.

The final buy for spring flowers was some tulip bulbs, nothing special, but cheap, and DH loves them. The QB weekend is traditionally the date for planting tulips, which have to be kept in the sale crisper until then.

The three gardenias in 40cm pots that I pruned severely, are all sprouting tiny new leaves, so I'm banking on a heavenly pong in early summer.

Salad, not sale.

You get a long weekend for the Queen's birthday, that's handy! Absolutely love the Wombat State Forest, what a great name. I am a Facebook numpty but have worked out how to add people . If people could PM me email addresses I'll sort it.

It was lovely to see all the Rhoderdendon on GW. Though Carol was suggesting they are hard to grow in Dorset, the purple ones are one of the plants I associate Dorset with. There are loads all out on the verges on the way to Dorchester and they look stunning when out. We've also got a lovely camellia and blueberry nursery locally. The PYO blueberries are superb. I think there's a lot of old heathland which I read is good for all those types of plant, or something along those lines. You do see a lot of them around. I'm sticking a camellia in where the old conifer was so hopefully that will thrive in years to come.

You are all worrying me about my Mme Carriere, two people have mentioned it's out. I'm going to have another year of no flowers again aren't I .

I'm going to look at cameras today.
Echt those gardenias! I remember your description of them last year(or the year before)Maybe I shall get some for the verandah.
Monty always seems to be pulling up stuff as well as planting stuff. I never pull up my tulips. They just stay there, though I do take the seed heads off.
Alfred Carriere only has the start of the roses here wynken I think there are a load more to come. I want to take pictures when it is fully out.

In DD's college garden there were some really pretty aquilegia colours- purple are looking brilliant everywere this year, but they also have splashes of yellow and orange ones.
Last year I divided what I thought were a ring of day lilies which hadn't flowered, into maybe about 20 new plants and planted them round the garden. It turns out they are a deep royal blue iris! So now there is a very pretty flowering spot with dark purple geranium phaeum, fire of ice hosta, a velvet deep russet bearded iris, the tall blue iris siberica and ceratostigma in leaf :behind is the apple tree, the american pillar rose and the clematis polish spirit due to come out (though no buds). And violas and fading daff foliage and various weeds (which I though might be viola seeds coming up but arent).

I was meandering round the garden last night enjoying the smells and investigating my perennial sweet pea[which i though was dead but isn't] only to find my neighbours had pulled the stem of my climbing rose through the slats of my fence and were training it onto their supports.Now given that there garden look like a concrete wasteland[they don't like gardening but they are otherwise lovely] isn't it cheeky?.How dare they enjoy the fruits of my labour.Anyway i pulled it back[probably damaged it a bit in the process].I think they must have thought i wouldn't notice as it is at the side of the house.But given that i removed the very tall shrubs from that side last year[partially due to their request for more sun] and replanted the area with lots of climbers and peonies i am definitely going to be aware of what is going on in that particular spot.

Teta I would go ballistic if my neighbour did that. One of the laterals, ok, but the stem? How cheeky can you get.

FP you have encouraged me not to give up hope with my Mme Carriere. I will talk to it nicely.

Spent a lovely hour or two at Compton Acres this morning admiring the woodland walk with all the rhoderdendrons and the Japanese garden. Oh and the Italian Garden was lovely. They had hostas with alliums on the way into one section which was lovely.

I am sitting in garden heaven in the sun heaven drinking iced pomegranate juice. The garden has got to the stage when although there are gaps, there is something interesting and pretty to look at so it is nice to sit in, and anyway when one has worked very hard all week there is no guilt at all in sitting in one's comfy ivory colonial chair with a William Morris cushion or two, and doing nothing in the sun with the blue blue sky above.
I owe so much to this thread, and to Monty and Gardeners World. It is really not so very long since it was touch and go whether a plant from the garden centre would survive in my shady north facing garden. I lurked on this thread for a long while, reading Lexi's and Maud's and Humphrey's and Bertha's doings, and it gave me the courage to plant out stuff and take a few risks, and of course when Monty showed one how to plant clematis or how to mulch, or how to rake a fine tilth, all the while saying how easy it is, and indeed it didn't look that difficult, all that helped.

Every so often there would be a very astonished moment like when I saw the fb photos of lexi's little garden, or when Maud posted about clematis, or echt would write about her Australian garden, or Rhubard writes about her family, and I wold realise that you lot are really quite something.

Then there are the incredible moments on GW when Rachel looks at Hepatica and says they make her feel greedy, or the Agapanthus guy says how happy they make him feel, or the clematis lady with her viticella last year, or when the city chap showed us his garden with a geodesic dome in it, or the programme about ferns, when horizons expand, and the garden becomes something else than just a place where pretty plants grow, and is a place of creativity and passion and detail and infinite planting variety and possibility.

So the shady garden isnt just a dry shady garden any more. Lots grows here, and I have realised there are quite a few very sunny places in it, where lots flowers. It is a friendly place with seats and a table and a veg trough and pots and I want to say thank you to you all

what an incredibly lovely post funnyperson.

Gardening and sharing our news about it really does make us all happy, doesn't it?

Lovely post funny - you made me all weepy

Teta - that is cheeky beyond belief! Will you say anything to them?

It certainly does! And funnyperson's post is touching and moving.