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.

Echt you have a jade plant!

What's a jade plant? Pic please

I really like abutilon when in flower. Never thought of it as a winter plant though! Interesting combinations echt!

Nice article on tea from the garden,
www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/howtogrow/10988230/How-to-grow-your-own-tea.html

I need a new gardening book to read: does anyone have any recommendations?

Hallelujah, we have moved and we have a lovely big garden! I am so happy to join you all! I'm sure I'll be here asking all sorts of dumb questions soon. For now, I am pruning, weeding, and trying to identify what's already there. I acquired a bargainous hydrangea, which I have potted up in a huge pot and put by my front door. I feel like I've come home :)

excellent! Welcome!

Hello and welcome, michaelcaine!

We had proper rain today at long last. Big relief. And I harvested our single peach.

Funny - Jenny Uglow's 'A Little History of British Gardening' is a good read.

Funny & rhubarb - I am reading Uglow's 'A little history of British Gardening'! I am also reading Alan Titchmarsh's 'My Secret Garden' which is a real guilty pleasure.

Myname - Congrats on the move.

The near end of my garden is still the same mess the builders left, but the far end is blooming. The verbena is flowering again, after I hacked it all down, and my pelargoniums are thriving.

DD1 and I took part in the big butterfly count this afternoon, it was lovely to see how many were attracted to the perennial borders. DD1 even asked to buy more butterfly attracting plants, as if I need an excuse!

I have lots of tiny seedlings where I threw the foxglove seed heads around. Should I do anything to help these along?

Welcome Michael

Is a Jade plant what I would call a money plant or a friendship plant? If so I have a large one that thrives in my conservatory. It flowers every winter and looks amazing. I never knew they flowered, we've had money plants all through my childhood and never a flower. Mine is actually propagated from my Mum's ancient and scrawny plant. The fluctuations of temperature in the conservatory (freezing in winter to scorching in summer) must replicate its ideal habitat.

I've got a picture somewhere of it flowering as my chiropractor didn't believe that they flowered so I took a photo in at my next appointment to show her. I'll see if I can find it and I'll post it. It's my only houseplant. I kill everything else.

Here it is

Wellcome Michael, is there much to do in your new garden?

Not much rain here, was surprised to see the flash floods in Worthing on the news. I really love storms!

No gardening as such, just harvesting tomatoes, courgettes, and runner beans. I need to have a baking/freezing day and deal with them.

I had to google jade plant, I used to have one but no longer have any house plants. Is it just me or are they no longer fashionable? My mum kept cheese plants and rubber plants in the 70s. It was my job to dust them using baby bio oil and cotton wool.

Ah, I was thinking of a jade vine. Pollinated by bats. Amazing things.

I've never seen a money plant flowering before either - that is indeed impressive!

Gosh that jade vine is amazing, Rhubarb. I've just looked it up, it can be grown in Melbourne, though I've never seen one.

I've seen jade plants grown as a hedge in the centre of Melbourne. Like aspidistras and swiss cheese plants, they are fairly unfussy as garden plants, though asps aren't keen on full sun.

As for abutilons, they flower all year round, so are very good value.

Oh, and welcome, Michael.

:)Thank you all! It's a lovely garden, that's been a little neglected over the past year or so. Understandable when you know you're moving on, I guess.

My friend is helping me to draw up a planting plan, he is a very keen gardener, so I've given him a list of plants I want to grow, and he's going to draw a plan of where to put them. Most looking forward to a herb garden and a cut flowers patch :)

*flower

Both the 'jade' plants look lovely bit i'm confused which one have you got echt?

myname yes welcome ! I'm planning to buy a potted hydragangea for the shady side of my terrace!

i have a lovely book, you may have got though. funny it's called 'The Morville Hours' about the creation of a garden in Shropshire also the history of the whole landscape there, and I want to go and see it!

I took a pic of the jade plant in the front yard, though it'd going over a bit. It was here when we bought the place - a monster. To the left is the slipper orchid that's been flowering for seven weeks now.

It's gorgeous! It's the money plant in english then?

Yes, it is. Amazingly, you can just saw bits off, stick them in sandy soil and off they go.They never fail. When grown in full sun, the leaves are yellow with red edges. I had to hack a branch off last year and now have about 15 plants under the carport so will put them in the sun soon to get the yellow leaves.

It's amazing what grows happily in some places has to be nursed in others. Though thinking about it it's not really amazing just geography which some of us try to beat! I have a lovely dark blue salvia that literally just appeared in our garden and it's spreading beautifully. Mont Don was potting it carefully and planting it out hopefully .

The salvia reference made me go back to the salviaAnthony Parker we've been growing, but the pics are useless: the Australian sun bleaches out the inky blue.

This will have to do instead. It is often sold here as a salvia, but it is plectranthus ecklonii:

Blimey echt It looks like a totally different plant it's extraordinary I'm speechless!! It's soo beautiful.

That's an amazing colour Echt.

The ease of getting baby jade plants is why it's also known (to my family at least) as the Friendship plant. You can give bits of it away to all your friends! I stuck a couple of bits into DDs miniature garden and they're still going strong despite a hideous amount of neglect from the weeks spent in the school hall.

I'm calling quits on my hanging baskets and the pew planters as they've not recovered from lack of watering while we were on holiday. What can I plant in them now that will give some late summer / autumn colour? Obviously I'll have to get quite large expensive plugs.

Like the sound of a planting plan Michael. What's on your wish list?

Thats really beautiful echt, especially against the red bark of the tree behind and your fence colour