He who dares not grasp the thorn should never crave the rose

[Blackpuddingbertha]

New thread for the potting shed crowd using Rhubarb's rose suggestion and Squeaky's quote for the new title.

Spring is underway with promises of summer in our gardens big and small.

Elderberry wine for all

Morning all. Just caught up with GW and enjoyed watching the Camelia lady who owns our local Camelia and blueberry nursery . I'm enjoying my red Camellia from the kitchen window which came from there last year, a decent size, labeled 'unknown' and cost a tenner. We haven't had any flowers in the back garden before last year and it makes me happy every time I look out to see them GW reminded me I'd like to go to Abbotsbury one day. My Life is definitely too short for soil blocks, I was a bit .

My new border is nearly finished. Just need to add Bowles Mauve and Penstemon cuttings plus put in the dahlias. I can't be bothered to stick them in pots first, anyone had success just chucking them straight in ?

Congrats on the allotment Lexi. Great timing to start. Hi to everyone new, good to see you [happy].

I've persuaded DH I think that we should move the front door to the front of the house rather than the side and include the side (known confusingly as the front garden) into the main back garden. Also to lose the decking and the old steps it hides behind it and to make a new patio in its place as the lawn next to deck struggles. The back garden will then be round 3 sides of the house and make more sense of the plot we're on. Also got him to agree I think to an extension on the front at the same time so something to crack on with.

Wow, Wynken, that sounds like quite an undertaking. How soon will you start?

(Am one of the original members of the thread but have NC after all the recent security kerfuffle. Feel free to PM if you need more clues).

cunty no greenhouse was in a pot in the south facing front. We've not really had any frost though, even the geranium I didn't get round to bringing in has survived and flowered all winter.

For once I am ahead of Monty on the seed front, my sunflowers are quite big, I'm thinking of sowing another lot to prolong the flowering. Agree the earth pot was a bit of a faff- but anyone with a toddler should get them to do it

Dh has ordered all the wood for the patio decking, pergola, and more raised beds.

wynken I've put my Daliahs straight in - no sign of them yet though.

rhubarb well done re yew hedge :)

Ooo, I need to catch up on GW. I LOVE Abbotsbury. Is the camelia place the blueberry place, Wynken? My 3 blueberry bushes came from there a couple of years ago. They were settling in last year but fruited quite well. I'm looking forward to them this year.

I mowed the lawn but my neighbours have loud music on so I oculnd't sit outside and read. I feel cheated.

You all seem to have huge, glorious gardens.

lush great name I think I've worked it out. I've been on this thread a year now, out of interest how long has it been going ?

Oh, I just saw that you said Cameila and Blueberry place. Duh. I'm not well & i need a nap more than I thought!

I think I have narrowed you down to 2 people LushandVerdant but need to read more posts before I'm sure !! I think we'll sleep on the idea for a bit before deciding finally. The patio we will crack on with - thought I'd see whether sticking the decking on Freecycle results in someone taking it down and away.

Right, I am going to chuck the dahlias straight in, thanks. Grockle, I have three Blueberries from there. Last year they didn't do too well for some reason, fingers crossed for this year. I love going to the little local nurseries. Got an Acer at the one round here last year and want to go to Knoll Gardens again and see what they are up to.

Slugs are at the Acanthus but clematis Helsingborg has shy nodding bright blue flowers in a hidden shady place!

Not sure I can decipher who's who with the name change...still,... a rose by any other name etc....

Next door's dog poked a curious head over the fence and stared long and hard at the tulip display. He clearly has colour vision. He came from the pet rescue centre and barked day and night solidly for a year and shat in their back garden leading to terrible smells, but has calmed down and is toilet trained and doesn't bark at all and likes looking at my patio flowers!

wynken perhaps you could chat with camellia person now you have some capital for a joint venture?

Maud: I'm not surfeit would look right with slate either though have seen good looking contrast path designs: try googling 'tile on edge circle' and you will see what I mean.

Ah, a short but useful day in the garden here - glorious sunshine so we went for a walk at one of the local just-inside-the-M25 country parks, with a picnic, then we came back and I put in a clematis (bought last year from Costco, so breaking my new 'buy local/smallscale' rule) on the front path fence. The bed is stuffed - well, it looks stuffed but in fact has a low growing sedum all over it which does a good job of keeping down all the weeds other than the horsetail. Anyway, because I couldn't dig a very big hole, I looked closer at the pot and realised it was two distinct plants, so I pulled their roots apart and now hopefully I'll have two clematis covering the fence quickly (neighbour's ex, who recently left her, has a dirty horrible red transit parked on the drive which I hate. Hopefully it will be removed soon, along with the huge amount of clearout that she has been doing.)

Am reminded from your stories of dealing with un-compostable garden waste that I am in one of the best local authorities in the country for recycling. Every week our brown wheelie bin is collected, and in it we can put grass mowings, cardboard, hedge clippings, woody clippings, and kitchen waste (cooked/meat scraps etc). This gets hot-composted and not only can we buy it back in bags sold at the amenity site, once a year they bring a flat-bed truck full of it to a local car park and every resident can come and take two compost-bags of it for free. Fortnightly they take three recycling types (glass, all rigid plastics + tins/metals mixed together, paper) and a wheelie bin of remaining unrecyclables. By volume, we probably have only about 20% unrecyclables, by weight perhaps 40% (including nappies).

Yet to start visiting any gardens this year (oh we did briefly take a turn around Hyde Hall in January when the ILs couldn't think of anything else to do on a Saturday in west Essex) but am inspired by the Great Dixter programme (and I've only watched half of it!). Am also secretly inspired to keep up domestic/allotment gardening as a consistent hobby by my boy demanding another gardening programme after watching GW with me on iplayer on Saturday afternoon - I love that he doesn't yet think it is at all uncool, but I'm sure that day will come, and I'm no Daisy Lloyd!

When we have an enormous estate, I definitely want a wild end of the garden and I love the description of it not being divided sharply from the more formal garden. Mind you, Chris Beardshaw's voice-over could tell me in great detail about his local authority bin collections and I'd be transfixed...

and the costco clematis is this - Comtesse de Bouchard

Agree about Chris Beardshaw, Lexi. Oh yes. Mr Twinklyeyes.

I have no idea who Lush is. [bit slow]

I tried burning some of the weed mountain on the yew bonfire tonight but it just made it really smokey and unpleasant. FIL however has just asked us to think of gardening tasks he can help with when he visits in June, so I think bagging up weeds and driving them to the tip will be number one.

We have been going since 24 March 2011. Pretty good going. Wasn't there also a potting shed before the first garden makes me happy thread too?

I THINK I know who you are Lush, but I am generally really rubbish at keeping track of name changers so very possibly wrong. Welcome back.

I liked the look of that plug making gadget, it seems I am in a minority.

I planted out the polka dot cornflowers and the ammi majus in the playhouse borders yesterday. I also pulled up the heuchera that were all woody, split them and planted them in pots up to the sprouting bit. There is a heuchera seedling in the stone wall of the pigscot! It looks great. I have been encouraging the little ferns but didn't expect to find a heuchera.

DH edged the front garden and the crab apple borders, they look so much better. I will put the rest of the ammi majus in here, I think they will look really pretty in the summer. We have also decided after endless discussion that was sometimes a bit heated to concentrate all the box balls in the pigscot borders. Will put in eschscholzia californica at the edges.

We have got a weed mountain behind the woodshed. It sprouted an amazing crop of nasturtiums last year and is worryingly growing mint too.

funnyperson, I love the sound of your border. You write so vividly.

I quite liked the look of the mud pie-maker, too - I was sold on the roots air-pruning themselves - but really don't want to buy another gadget. As I have hundreds of tiny lobelia cells to plant up, I will be trying to use up the vast stockpile of plastic trays I have accumulated over the years.

We're still on holiday and have been to the Weald & Down open air museum today. They have rehomed and rebuilt lots of historical buildings and have a few recreated period gardens (mostly modest veg patches with the occasional pigsty or privy). However, they did have a plant sale, so I came away with a yellow hollyhock (as in Beatrix Potter's garden) and a viburnum tinus (to brighten up the neglected area behind my trampoline).

I resisted the summer snowflakes (gravetye giant leucojum) as they seemed expensive (£4.49 for 4 bulbs in the green) - but I am regretting this as I can't find bulbs or anything about them online. Has anyone heard of these before? They had underplanted the pink magnolia at Arundel castle with them, and I really wanted to copy this idea.

I'm glad you all like the pine cones on top of the raspberry frames at Arundel. I thought they just looked cute but DH says the rain runs off them and stops the wood rotting - so we may copy this idea too.

Lexi - I would spray the dandelions, they are buggers.

Silk - I don't know how to, or if you need, to turn your compost - but I have the same kind of compacted plastic bin so would be interested to know. mine's full of grass, paper & veg peelings. I've read that it's fine to put vegetarian animal waste in - the nitrogen in their wee will speed the compost process up. I only have cats and DH refuses to wee in ours, so it'll never be ready.

And yes, the first hangout (or two?) was a potting shed.

I agree that CB is rather appealing even if he is a decade too young for me. Part of my haul from Hampton Court last year was an umbrella he had designed in support of a charity. The ladies selling them - forgive me if I am repeating this anecdote - were suggesting that we should take them home and lick them.

They had leucojum Gravetye Giant here but they're sold out. The RHS has information about them here.

My regret is that I passed up the opportunity yesterday to buy a plant that shares my daughter's name because I thought it was too expensive. I have never seen it before and who knows when I will see it again. I shouldn't have been such a skinflint, should I?

I geddit. I liked the old name so much though.

Lush have you tried googling it? NANN, I have some Leujocum in my garden, and have seen them for sale reasonably frequently. They flowered one year then not the next so I thought I'd lost them, but they may have been too dry and a wet winter or two has meant they have now increased.

Someone on another website that I visit mentioned a Scottish gardening programme which features the lovely Chris Beardshaw - to quote:

The Beechgrove Garden (BBC Scotland's gardening programme), BTW, is available on iPlayer and is very much recommended to everyone , especially those north of the midlands. Much less upper middle class than Monty & co - a very good complement to GW.

He was right. After reading that I have watched it and it is a bit more practical. It features some very jolly people, and seems to deal with things in slightly more detail. They could do with putting plant names on the screen though.

I have created my self yet another bed to fill today, by digging a load of Spanish bluebells, and some plants that I dislike out from a south facing bed. It needs a lot of organic matter, like the bed I mentioned earlier, so I shall be busy spreading and digging, and then can start on the fun bit of choosing and planting.

I want a CB umbrella to lick.

NANN do you know how they'd fixed the pine cones on to the posts?

I have leucojums. They run along the bottom of the east facing wall in the orchard. I love them.

Bearleigh we are overrun with Spanish bluebells here. It is going to be a major project to dig all the buggers out.

I've been pondering the pine cone fixing problem. I wondered whether I could knock a galvanised nail into the top of the post, drill a hole in the base of the cone and then slot it on. Would that be better than glue? I guess so.

Good luck Rhubarb: this afternoon I dug out about 3 square metres of the things. I got them before too many were flowering, and I am glad I did as I think that now, with their foliage being quite strong means it's quite easy to grasp them and help pull them out once you've loosened the ground. And of course you know where they are.

I also rediscovered a tall shocking pink geranium that appeared last year for the first time. I didn't plant it I'm sure. I can only think that the previous dry weather had stopped it doing anything and the 2012-13 wet winter had given it the fillip it needed to start flowering last year. It has weak stems so needs to scramble a bit.

Hi all

Funnily enough I have caught the beech grove programme on TV the past two weeks and was going to come on here and recommend it.

Gubbins is my new favourite word, it was used to describe all the stuff raked out the lawn but its a general term. I lived near Aberdeen for four years and never heard of the garden so that's a wasted opportunity.

Doric is the local language/ dialect there and it has some great words!

Am still trying to get on top of the weeding and trimming/pruning before I can even think of mulching borders monty sorry, will try harder!

Am confused by NC but will persevere and can anyone explain how to get on to the FB page? Cheers

My tulips are struggling as they are last years and just left in pots so may come and join the neighbours dog

It is indeed a great word - there's lots of gubbins in my garden, hence I too will not be mulching my borders. This year I have loads of speedwell for some reason.

Bearleigh you asked upthread about what UK plants you can grow in Melbourne. Quite a lot, though much depends on soil - sand in my case. The rest depends on how much water you want to use.

Plants I grew in the UK and still grow here are Chilean potato vine, trumpet vine, bears' breeches, salvias, verbena bonariensis, pelatgoniums, thunbergia.

Roses and camellias do very well here, though I don't bother with them as I find camellias boring after the flowering, and only like climbing roses, a possum's dinner.

Looking around the garden, what I have a lot of UK house plants that can grow outdoors: clivia, aspidistras, swiss cheese plants, bromeliads, plectranthus, gardenias, hoya, this all down one side of the house, shaded by NDN's trees so spared the scorching heat that rakes the rest of the garden at some point in the year. If the image I've attached turns out right, that would be it.

Today I did something new - beheaded a very large agave attenuata that was ridiculously pot bound. I could make no headway with the roots, even with an axe, so had at it with a pruning saw, popped it in a pot of cacti mix and we'll see what happens. They look so exotic and are very easy to grow, though rather rampant.