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.

I tried an electric daisy today, then talked my brother in law to having one,he wasn't around to witness my reaction, blimey is all I can say!

Bearleigh your potatoes sound delicious, and your salad very creative!

Maud that's promising that you received a voucher. I bought directly from DA website so hopefully they will be as understanding!

Geoff I'm curious as to what happened after tasting the electric daisy?!

Bertha it sounds like you've put in good work on your veg patch.

Thanks for sympathies people! Hopefully it will get easier now I'm in the second trimester, although based on Humph's experience that doesn't sound as though it's a given!

Bertha if you go to Weald & Downland I recommend taking a picnic. It's a super place let down (4 years ago admittedly) by a very so-so café.

castle perhaps you need someone to do some of your autumn planting for you when the time comes?
I'm ill again. All I did yesterday was sleep and stare at the garden without planting anything. I wanted to plant stuff : the mind was willing but the physique didnt comply.
Lilium regale are in flower, astrantias still going strong, and various saxifrages and geraniums johnsons blue and pheum looking good with the Stachys in flower. Countess of Wessex clematis is still flowering but there are no buds on the viticella clematis (Polish Spirit and Abundance) even though the foliage looks healthy.
American Pillar rose is making the sunny border look very cheerful, and I know Sackville West was very scornful of it but I love it, and it is reliable and always cheers me up with its bunches of open flowers, and the bees love it too.
Rosa Magenta bleu is really a very beautiful old antique rose colour out front, with a scent which made DD say "oh is that a rose, it smells like a rose" and looks wonderful with allium Christophii, a combination I borrowed from Sissinghurst and which works even on a smaller scale in a pot

At mum's house Lady Emma Hamilton, planted last Autumn, is a stunning apricot peachy colour with a very nice scent, and though it makes no colour sense, is good company with Darcy Bussell.

The buddleia has no butterflies, oddly.

That salad sounds wonderful and very imaginative bearleigh Did you eat it?

aaah poor funny Your garden sounds lovely, I love lilies ,do they a shortish life span? because some of mine have disappeared this year they haven't self seeded either.

Bear that salad sounds wonderful so does the place in Edin. We love it there do you know Valvona and Crolla? One of my fave restaurants there we're thinking of going to the Fest. this year (we often think about it though ).

In the sunny bits of the day I potted an Emperor satsuma, a climbing rosa "Black Boy", a grevillea superba in the ground, as well as tying in the broad beans. While weeding the veggie patch, I'm nurturing, i.e.not digging out wildly, the verbena bonariensis that have seeded so prolifically, waiting for them to get big enough to transplant.

The local sad plants unit yielded two excellent philodendron Xanandu and a double-grafted satsuma (imperial and emperor) that looks a bit yellow, but has fruited, so I'm doing a rescue job on its sorry ass. We'll see.

OOh echt emperor satsumas sound good can you offer advice about our lemon trees which are not very happy at all? they have yellow leaves a few buds but nothing like they used to be. I feed them once every couple of weeks and they are having their summer airing on the terrace atm.

Ooh funny you have Emma Hamilton. Love her - one of my favourite roses and definitely on my planting list for my orange and copper border. I am seriously considering Magenta Bleu too, for my vintage border - also inspired by our trip to Sissinghurst last summer. I'm jealous yours is already done and flowering and mine is still just a list in my head. Sorry you are feeling poorly; hope you are back on your feet soon. In the meantime, enjoy looking at your garden. That's what they are for!

Castle I hope you feel better soon too. Morning sickness is horrid, I remember it vividly. I think I whinged my way through most of my pregnancy actually, I found the whole thing uncomfortable and inconvenient! It'll be worth it in the end.

I popped round to the hot colours garden this morning to help my clients plant out the Alcea and Aquilegia seedlings that I grew for them. The Sisirhynchium are almost over now but the Crocosmia Lucifer have exploded into bloom, along with the Hemerocallis. The Euphorbia is also looking really good. It was a delight to see the enthusiasm of my clients - they were in the process of treating their lawn to a weed and feed when I arrived, and excitedly showed me a red rose in their front garden (planted by the previous owners, so we don't know what it is, sadly) which they had had a stab at pruning in the spring and were being rewarded by a beautiful show. They have been converted into keen gardeners! Warm fuzzy moment time.

Yes, Lady Emma Hamilton is a very very pretty rose shape too.
Lol at warm fuzzy moment, though they are the best! The hot colours garden sounds exciting.
Are crocosmias already in flower then? Everything is early this summer. I'm trying to play catch up.
I daren't go to Hampton Court as I musn't buy anything (except allium bulbs possibly as the ones I got from there last year flowered very well) even though I really want to meet Maud and dangle feet in the long water again!

Rosa 'black boy' looks very sultry!

Just sharing a few photos.

Hope you feel better soon Funny

ppeatfruit I wish I could have wise words to say about lemon trees. We've had one espaliered against the garage wall for three years now, and not a flower, ever.

Oddly, a kaffir lime that sits a big pot, barely attended to, does very well.
It gets fed twice year and the roots cut back every three years.

So I'm thinking is the lemon tree pot bound? You might need to take it out, bonsai the roots and put in some fresh compost.

Oh funny sorry you are feeling ill. I hope you'll feel better soon.

Echt your garden sounds so exotic - satsumas, lemon trees and kaffir lime? Do you grow avocados or macadamia?

Need to get on computer to see the photos!

castle I remember when I was a student hearing good things about a trial with Andover midwives, did a quick google and found this www.morningwell.co.uk/ might be worth a try although I can't personally vouch for it. The electric daisy made my tongue go numb for about half an hour, bit like a trip to the dentist!

bertha lovely pictures

funny horrible being ill.

Our garden party was a big success, everyone commented on the garden and it only rained a little bit, we'd borrowed a party gazebo which housed Dh's enormous table.

Rose advise please - I have a rambling rose that is so high I can only see the flowers if I lean out the bedroom window. It has a single thick stem width of a babies arm to about 15 foot then lots of branches full of flowers. Is there any way I can reduce the height and see the flowers from the ground and when? It's possibly rector has creamy flowers and yellow middle.

hope you're feeling better funnyperson.

Memo to self for next year:

• Do not buy lots of plants just when it stops raining for weeks.
• Do not buy plants that do not actually have any place to go.
• Do not think that it will take an hour or so to, effectively, create a small raised bed under that bay tree where you are planning to move one plant so that you can plant another one which you have already bought. It will take considerable time and effort, and you have not really planned it properly nor thought about the effect on the tree, have you?
• Hours of googling about plants late at night should never be followed by purchases. Wait and see the actual plant growing somewhere before you attempt to buy it.

No doubt I will want to add more to myself as the weeks go by.

bertha what lovely colour combinations

Thanks echt Is your lime in a terracotta pot? I was wondering whether it's the plastic (heavy duty)pots that aren't good for them. I trimmed the roots a couple of years ago and threw some new compost on top of them !This year.

The lime is in a big plastic pot, probably bigger than it needs but citrus like a pot wide in relation to depth, and these aren't easy to find. I use very little terracotta now as it's so heavy to move. The pot is very ugly, though. I really should replace it.

The poorly mandarin is in a permanently sunny part of the garden, in a medium half barrel on bricks for drainage. I'll see how it does this year; apparently they're not fond of getting their roots cooked, so may opt for a pot inside another. When I turned it out of its pot, it was both waterlogged and root bound, so new citrus compost, a handful of chook manure pellets and away we go. I hope.

Thank you, people for your good wishes wot I still need and cheer me up no end.
traviata haha my thoughts entirely and frequently.
also add
-do not allow 5 minutes for planting and then get side tracked by weeding watering pruning and hacking back and then an hour later realise the planting didnt get done

Though I did plant humphrey's penstemon today and vey nice they look too.

blackpudding I like those lilies a lot.

echt I thought your DH wee'd on the lemon and it fruited last year?

Oh funnyperson, get well soon. Glad you got out in the garden!

Those penstemons are very easy to propagate and also hardy.

No, funnyperson, the weeing continues, but nothing has come of it yet. It should produce this time round as it's old enough. I'd taken the kaffir lime as my measure, seeing as it flowered and fruited straight away, even though we only use the leaves. About once a year.:o

Sorry to hear you've not been well, and hope you feel better soon.

Lovely photos Bertha.

I am also guilty of many of those points on your list, traviata.

My Auricula that I got at Chelsea has red spider mite. Eek! I've transferred it to outside, removed the dead leaves, potted on the largest offsets so that the stem is less crowded and will buy some spray tomorrow.

The south wall of the house is being prepared for pointing. I allowed the contractor to cut down the Virginia creeper (wrong place for a Virginia creeper anyway), and he asked if he could cut back some of the other plants growing at the base of the wall - roses, fuchsia, pinks, Erigeron karvinskianus. I said yes "if necessary". They have been razed to the ground. And I caught him using my trug to transport something that looked like cement but wasn't.

I have given the Wisteria a prune myself, and will later this week attempt to untie it from its wires and peel it away from the wall, and re-tie it to the scaffolding. Mme Alfred will receive similar treatment.

All this plant hacking filled the compost bay, so today I started digging it all over into the next bay along and giving it a good stir. It is cooking nicely, although I have been putting too much woody material into it. I had to dispatch a baby rat which I had accidentally damaged with the shovel, and needed finishing off. It quite upset me - I rather like rats (I know, I know) and I can still see its downy fur, little twitchy whiskers and silky ears in front of my eyes.