A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

[MaudantWit]

Join us for ongoing gardening chat in the MN potting shed. Blow the cobwebs off a deckchair, help yourself to a glass of elderberry champagne and tell us about your garden.

Yay! Pops a cork on some elderflower champagne and leaves out glasses! We haven't had a party in ages!

It may be a bit late to start a party now, but I'll certainly join you in a glass of elderflower champagne!

MaudantWit you must have read my mind (what's left of it): that line from "My Garden" was exactly the one I was thinking of suggesting.

It's the Queen's Birthday weekend, so a holiday on Monday. Gawd bless yer, yer Majesty. Thanks for the day off.

I dug up the ivy geraniums I had planted last year, due to possum damage and planted two trachelospermum jasminoides, a mandevilla Aloha and an orange trumpet vine. They none of them will grow as fast as the geraniums that grew to six feet in one season, but may prove to be unattractive to possums, certainly the jasmine is.

Thomas Edward Brown. 1830–1897

793. My Garden

A GARDEN is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern'd grot—
The veriest school 5
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
Not God! in gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine.

Fringed pool and fern'd grot. I like that. I want a fern'd grot.

Hello new thread.

I've put some pics of the orange garden up on FB as I can't do it on here, sorry.

A bit early,but why not after 3 yrs looking miserable ,my pyramid orchid has decided to flower,am hoping it's gonna self seed.took some pics of it yesterday.

Gorgeous, Gooner.

Maud I meant to say that I concur with your friend, nothing is more dispiriting than revisiting a garden that's been let go to pot. I've had that. I've also had the annoyance of clients thinking they need to 'fill the gaps' even though you've explained a dozen times that the gaps are there to allow room for growth. Especially as it's always shrubs that are going to grow vast that they've put in up close and personal to carefully positioned specimens, and it's always "oh but mother-in-law bought us that for that gap, we can't possibly move it now"

I'm actually better as a bog standard maintenance gardener than a designer. Design can be very frustrating.

Karaoke the Starlight Express rose looks beautiful! Googled it!

That orchid is lovely, Gooner!

Pressed post too soon.

As always, Echt, I am beguiled by your description of your garden. Geraniums growing six feet in a year, imagine!

Ooh a shiny gardening thread.

Me likey.

I have a very full greenhouse with plants I am looking after for my students and in a fortnight they will have all either been sold at fairs or have gone home with them and I can set up my tomatoes and peppers for meeeeeeee.

I would leave them at college but the [full time, paid] groundspeople are so shit they forget to water them and they all die. So I ferry them between college and home every time.

I also have a shed load [and I mean thousands] of marigolds self seeded that I have to dig out for the students to pot on for selling, but of course I need to dig the buggers out this weekend. I always leave stuff to self seed and usually compost it but we have two fairs to do between now and end of term.

I like a garden that's gone to pot, normally something really interesting has found it's way there and if it can be salvaged and brought on, it can make it seem all worthwhile. Plus - you can build a huge hot composting heap from all the trimmings.

I like gardens that have gone to pot in the sense of a bit of self-seeding and having lost that slightly bare just-planted look, but when it reaches the point of being a jungly mess then I tend to agree with my friend. And, of course, it must feel different for her because it's her energy and creativity that have gone into the design and been lost.

Heavy rain here, so a day for gardening shopping but no planting.

cobwebs on my deckchairs? how offensive

I love the sound of potting on the marigolds for selling on funky hope you make loads of money from them.
I think I have to give up on the tomatoe seedlings, I suspect the seeds were just not good. took ages to germinate and ages to grow and now baby magpie has derooted a coupe of them.
maybe I will just seed parsnips where they were supposed to go.

I love calendula. I didn't plant them - they just blew on and now self-seed everywhere. I have never deliberately planted anything orange but in fact their zingy colour improves just about any grouping of plants.

Hello sparkly new thread! I love calendula too,but the only colour that grows for me is a lovely clear yellow that came with some manure from a friend's field. It made me realise that I like yellow flowers, and I haven't looked back. But I sow other colours of marigolds and they just don't germinate.

Lovely new thread with pictures on already plus a mention of possums, bliss

I'm having a quiet cuppa as I've just sorted my Friend's Mum's garden. Sadly she died recently and the house is being rented out so the garden needed a good overhaul before tenants as it was hard to get up the steps.

She obviously loved her garden and got a lot in a small space- lovely big fatsia japonica, hardy geraniums, ferns, lavender, snapdragon, lilac, ostespurmum, carnations. Apparently she used to do strawberries and tomatoes the neighbours were telling me. It's all done now and I dispatched friend off with a half oak barrel to plant up and keep to remember her Mum.

Meanwhile here things are growing pretty well. My calendula which came from the allotment is huge so hopeful next year there will be lots more plants. Still only the 2 flowers on Mme Alfred but some of the other roses are out now.

Happy new thread

Ran out of time today to do anything substantial but I did dig up the self seeded valerian and popped it in along the fence by the track that leads to the front gate. I'm hoping they'll spread happily out there and crowd out the thistles and nettles selectively leaving the forget me nots, dog daisies and wild aquilegia to continue to thrive and make the track look all pretty.

My lupins make me happy every time I look out of the window. My bed is now in its 3rd year and the roses are looking established, if a bit lanky in places. Do you keen gardeners stake yours? I'm a novice rose grower!
I also have a semi shaded bed that is waiting for colourful inspiration, having culled a patch of geraniums.

I garden (now passed tense) just hired a gardener and he starts on Monday (oh what has my life turned into).

DM had a surprise visit from our difficult uncle to inform her our (derelict) grandparents house has been burned to the ground.
Am so glad I took the Rose cuttings back in December now. They aren't doing very well though. There are only a few growing leaves on about 4 or 5 now. Should I transplant them or how can I rescue them? I had planned on going back and taking more cutting at the appropriate time this summer. Not looking like an option now.

Burnt to the ground!
Keep nurturing the roses in their pots for a bit to get a good root system going. Or in a nursery bed.

Well, as the rain stopped I had a bit of time for gardening this afternoon. I refreshed the compost in the standard bay tree's pot and under planted it with pelargoniums and salvias. I am very pleased with the salvias as they are my first successful cuttings and seem to have good roots.

It's lovely to hear about so many other gardens but I'm sorry that Castle's grandparents' house has been burned down. Rural arson?

Greyvix I am jealous of your lupins. My rescued one in a pot was destroyed last month by a serious white fly attack and the one in the bed which I found somehow germinating in my veg plot has just, at the point of flowering, had the flower spikes chomped off by slugs/snails. So cross as I was really keen to see what colour it was as I have no idea where it came from. Grrrr.

Were the roses all up against the house Castle? Or is there a chance some of them have survived the fire?

I weep at the mention of lupins. Every one I plant is destroyed by snails.

Maud the house was in a town. Squatters broke in and set a mattress on fire, which then escalated. Roses were about 10ft from the house. Maybe they survived....

I was going to dump some of the barren cuttings but when I pulled one out it had little roots, so I stuck it back in. Should I feed them, do you think?

I love lupins!

We have a beautiful purple one in our school bed in it's third year and flourishing. The other died though. Planted lots of little Lidl plug lupin plants a couple of months ago but they are all struggling and definitely won't flower this year.

Have you tried broken egg shells on the ground around the lupins to discourage slugs?