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.

Elderflower champagne . Can you bring it to the virtual potting shed when it's done?

That would be lovely, wouldn't it?

I thought I might have a go at making elderflower cordial.

Hello everyone, long time no posting due to hols etc.

Been enjoying catching up with all your gardening news.

Hostas - used to get munched every time. Put mine in pots this year surrounded by horti grit and they are untouched (slugs have eaten everything else a few sunflowers and dahlias I planted in the borders, but hey ho!)

Tis supposed to be hottest day of the year here today, however it is just cloudy and muggy. I am v disappointed as I'm off to the coast with DD in an hour.

Has anyone had any luck with their wildflower seeds? I made a wildflower meadow and was expecting great things. It looks distinctly, well, crap. Its all sort of pathetic yellowy foliage with not much flowering yet. However all the other stuff I let self seed from last year (poppies, snapdragons, candytuft) is lush green and riotous with many flowers.

Ooh, I also have sweet peas flowering already.

Hi, just back from a rather sad trip to Spain so not done any gardening for a few days. Travelling without the dcs did allow me the pleasure of reading old copies of The Garden that have lain unread in a pile for several months, though, so that was a treat. I'm now feeling all inspired again and have decided that I need a Prunus 'The Bride' and a Hydrangea anomala subsp. petiolaris 'Summer Snow'.

Sorry to hear about the injuries our pregnant cohort have recently sustained, I hope you are healing well.

Elderflower champagne - yes please, I'll fetch the glasses!

Oh, and while enjoying seeing (and smelling) rosemary and lavender growing wild and healthy in its native glory in Spain, I was reminded of the old 'right plant, right place' adage - it's no wonder my own plants are such miserable specimens languishing in my damp heavy clay. I have now abandoned my plans to plant lavender all along the front path - back to the drawing board on that one.

Yes, it's very sad to have to give up on lavender but I gave exactly the same problem with it struggling in cold wet clay, however much grit I dig in. I now have a couple of plants which seem happy in pots in the front garden (which is hotter and sunnier) but had to abandon any idea of edging the back border with lavender.

have not done a lot in the garden apart from watering, really.
the honeysuckle has just started to flower,beautiful. there is some shrub with white flowers which are about to open, but have no idea what it is.
the sunflowers have grown enormously, the dc are really excited about them.
roses - getting there :) lots of flower buds on all of them.

of fizzy elderflower stuff from shop + bottle. I've been thinking about creating a squareish area in the sunniest spot beneath the west facing wall and edging it with lavender and planting the bearded irises in a symmetrical arrangement inside, but you make me wonder if this will work, because I too have heavy clay soil and the lavender already in the garden has never really taken off. I do love irises: the colours are superb. At the moment I have a deep velvety rusty coloured one and a light frothy creamy coloured one and a deep deep purple one in flower. Some haven't flowered though the foliage ooks very healthy, and I have een exposing the corms to light and sun as one is supposed to, keeping the area clear of other plants, but no flower spikes yet.

Hydrangea petiolaris is looking good everywhere at the moment. It is a very cheerful lacy climberThere is colour variation from cream through to white. One neighbour has a very pure white variety. I think I will wait for the one I bought in a pot earlier on to flower before deciding whether to plant it. If it is white (because I'm not that keen on yellowy cream) I will plant it in a corner and next to it I will plant Garrya Elliptica.

My hostas are in a damp spot from which ferns were transplanted last year, and though no slugs have eaten them they are but tiny little specimens. I'm wondering wether to dig them up and put them in pots.

Regarding yellow roses this seems to be an unusually good year for them: they are in profusion everywhere. maud you may be interested to know that 'wimbledon' rose is only green when in bud: the flower is yellow.

Oh dear, it looks like I'm too late and everyone's left already. Oh well.

::staggers in::

I'm here, funnyperson.

The best thing in my garden tonight is the rose Winchester Cathedral. I still haven't finished the planting, though.

Hello. We gave up on Lavender too. That is why there is giant catmint (Six Hills Giant?) everywhere in the garden. It is a v useful plant in that it tolerates clay, the bees love it and you can keep cutting back and getting another crop of flowers. We have it down the rose walk and the wall by the herb beds where we were planning to have a lavender hedge.

Gertrude Jekyll is out and looking stunning. Found a billion greenfly on the lupins so sprayed with soap. Alfred carriere is the only rose really going for it on the rose walk, but Young Lycidas and the Guinea roses are flowering.

Winchester looks lovely.

::perks up no end:: company!!
Gertrude Jekyll smells divine by the front door. It is such a good place for wafting etc that It remains there in a pot.

I havent finished the planting either. The patio is littered with full of plants waiting to be planted out. This weekend it wil happen. I spent a happy half hour deadheading alfred c this evening- it is abundant with hundreds of flowers and buds.

Winchester cathedral looks and sounds lovely

It is a good year for Alfred. I can't reach high enough to dead head though. Need a ladder this year.

My sympathies to those who can't have lots of lavender: a child who kicks the tiny pebbles on the drive into the beds has guaranteed me good enough drainage to enable me to have some.

My yellow rose Teasing Georgia is doing her stuff and looking lovely, and a white one, Susan Williams Ellis, has settled happily after her third move (woops), and has loads of lovely scented flowers: last year, in deeper shade, she only managed one poor straggly flower.

Am going to pull out the tulips from the pots and put the red pelargoniums I have been nuturing from plug plants tomorrow. If it doesn't pour with rain.

I forgot - Francis E Lester is going strong and looking wonderful. This rose moved here with us and we put it in far too close to a wall we knew know better It seems to have forgiven us and is thriving.

NO better

I wish I knew the names of my roses. one is 'pride of england' it said on the pot, but which one....the others are yellow (the massive mature one), thunderstorm pink, orangey pink.
one of my neighbours has the mist magnificient specimen on roses in the front garden. they are about 5 feet high, have astounding big lushious blooms and the smell is just amazing!

Visited Borde Hill Garden today because the local rag said the new rose garden there is at its flowering peak right now. Felt a bit cheated - not many out yet, I think it needs another week. It was still nice to walk round the garden though; the roses that were out were beautiful, and there were some truly gorgeous peonies ('Zuzu' and 'Bowl of Cream'). Also, water lilies blooming in the Italian garden pond - that was a treat.

Interestingly, the rose garden made use of lashings of Nepeta 'Six Hills Giant'; it set off the roses perfectly and was a clear winner as an alternative to lavender.

I noticed tonight that the rosa New Dawn that has reached the top of the apple tree is flowering at the top, but the other New Dawn on the fence is nowhere near flowering.

I would like to visit Borde Hill. I have ehard good things of it.

Our New Dawns are not doing as well as some of the other roses. I think they are not in very good soil, I should remember to feed them a little more.

I am really glad now we didn't uproot all the six Hills Giant from the rose walk, DH has been trimming it with a hedge trimmer so we can get down there (this was a real problem last year) and it looks lovely and romantic with the pink geranium. There is so much of it that I can cut lots for the house too. It smells wonderful as you brush past it.