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.

NAAN, someone did think my cat was a squirrel! It has a long way to go yet.

Glad you had a good holiday Rhubarb. You don't think the DC tried eating the plant, realised their error and hid the evidence do you ? I'd decided from Geoff's pictures that she is far from a novice .

Geoff I have Foxglove envy. This is my first year with them and I have the grand total of two which I love, I've bought some seed I'm going to sow today along with some French beans and I need to buy some weed for the wildlife puddle pond.

Wynken - my mum really wants a topiary cat but can't find one. Perhaps I'll get her a squirrel and give the tail an extra trim

This morning I have been BRAVE! I put my verbena in last year, as tiny plugs, so this year I had several magnificent 6 foot plants all crowded together at one end. I chopped 4 down and moved them along to hopefully create a wall of verbena going all the way along the end of the sunny border. This gave me more room to plant the 6 red dahlias in amongst them. I pulled out all of the sickly penstemon and split a new pink hardy geranium in 2 to give me more ground cover. I dug up the ailing peony, to discover a healthy root system and new growth coming through, so I chopped the yellow leaves off and replanted it somewhere sunnier.

This is decisive gardening. I normally spend hours drinking tea, looking at stuff and googling, but being too afraid to touch it. I know it's too early/late in the year to mess about like this, but I didn't want to spend all summer wishing it was next spring so I could sort the borders out.

Fingers crossed everything recovers

This is mine I think. With hindsight some of the others on there might have looked more cat like. Well done onnth decisive gardening

NotAnother you're lucky with verbena I bought one in a pot and it died sadly because I love the look of them, would it have been happier in the ground perhaps? It makes lovely calming teas too.

According to my guru Bob Flowerdew topiary is the new craze. TBH I'm not keen. I can think of a lot more things to do with my time in the garden!

Just back from Aldi but was fairly restrained and just bought French lavender and wisteria sinensis rosea.There were two other varieties a white one and a sinensis prolific. I couldn't figure which was best and grabbed the rosea on account of it being the last one. Will plant it to grow up me new pergola.

For those of you interested in topiary they have reduced their buxus balls to £4.99. Love the cat wynken

Well done on sorting your border nann I like topiary I'm tempted to get a wire cage to have a go, I wonder how Montys' dog is doing.

Well done Geoff, I've just been to garden centre and was not restrained ! Loads of stuff was reduced so I got a six pack of herbs, 2 six packs of lupins, 3 six packs of strawberries, 6 pack of antirrhinum, pot of French beans, pot of those large poppies and a cucumber plant. I had vouchers they sent me so it cme to £14 which I was very happy with.

What do I do with my lupins ? They aren't particularly big, do I whack them in pots for now?

I would definitely whack the lupins in pots, douse them with Slug Clear and only plant them out when they are big, chunky and slightly more slug-proof plants. But that is because my garden is Slug City.

We went to a fete and an open garden, but I was very restrained. I bought another garden lantern and a little echeveria glauca. I think the garden would have passed the MN potting shed taste test - lovely planting in yellow and blue/purple and a little birch glade with a fire pit in the centre.

Oh and having failed for years to get verbena bonariensis to thrive here, I have found it self-seeded in a crack in the paving in the front garden. Go figure.

NANN you were very brave! I hope tour hard work pays off!

Wynken I love the cat topiary frame! And a great day's shopping you had too!

I want a little birch grove with a fire put in the centre: sounds fabulous. Wynken that is a good haul for the money.

Maud I too only seem to be able to grow verbena bonariensis when it self-seeds from our neighbours' extensive collection. My substitute is knautia macedonica, in that it's easy to grow, bees like it, it's deep red/purple and flowers for a long time. I realised today that its flower heads are pretty when they are setting seed, like green pincushions. They are fantastic for providing foliage in vases of flowers. Deadheading them was quite a pleasure.

It was lovely, Bearleigh. The garden was not huge, but it was well-designed (designer's own garden, natch) and the little grove felt like a very distinct and peaceful place.

I suppose I could try knautia but I love the airy waftiness of VB and always hope for better things from it. I have just planted some in a huge pot in the front garden with agastache Firebird and that seems to be doing better, although there are some signs of mildew appearing.

I didn't used to get to the stage of mildew/0: the plants would just die. Now I do have have a few plants but none are growing straight up they all grow along the ground then kink upwards. My SIL has a line of perfect specimens lining her path, that she says self seeded.

It's very galling when magazines/people say that VB will self-seed freely, because it certainly won't in my soil!

The birch grove does sound lovely. There are two big silver birches at the top of the drive on my neighbours bit. I'd decided to buy the house by the time I reached there, despite not having see it Thank you for the lupin advice, fair few slugs here.

I'd like some verbena bonariensis and do have a pack of seeds lurking somewhere. I 've only recently clocked Knautia but really do think I'd like some.

I have some garlic scapes to go with my broad bean harvest - all of about 4 pods. I was looking at the roses in the garden center, they all looked a right motley bunch, full of black spot. There was a healthy looking Ladybof Shalot (?) I think it was that caught my eye, lovely colour.

Some of my roses have bad black spot thiss year, not ones that usually get it. Yet Willaim Shakespeare which normally really suffers from it is doing really well. I wonder if it's because I gave it a really good mulch?

::googles::

Lady of Shalott does look gorgeous. I have some flowers now on my Shakespeare rose; they are lovely but almost indistinguishable from Darcey Russell, which (or should I say who) is next to it. Falstaff (my other David Austin rose) is very similar too. I think I should have aimed for greater variety.

Birch grove sounds wonderful.

Following repeated cross examination, ds eventually produced a rather squashed electric daisy from under the bonnet of his little ride-on tractor. Monster. Squashed but not completely destroyed; there is hope for it I think with some TLC.

Also receiving some TLC here is Rhubarbcat; finally home after weeks of radiotherapy. She's a bit thin and somewhat bald in places, but full of beans and very happy to be home.

My VB self seeds but never ends up where I actually want it. I too have some this year which is lying down and then kinking back up in odd places.

MIL (her of great gardening prowess) was over today so I gave her a tour of my long bed. Was concerned that she'd frown on my allowance of certain weeds but then she surprised me by asking for seeds from the white campion and the triffid caper spurge. Apparently caper spurge is good for deterring moles. I had no intention of letting it get to seed point but now feel that I ought to.

We're picking the first mange tout from the edible igloo.

My electric daisies are still tiny. Waiting for them to spring into action. They are great party trick plants.

Nutter's home! [Grin]

Hurray, Rhubarb cat home and the missing daisy is found, great news !!

Geoff I bought a wisteria which flowered beautifully in the first year but has gone downhill since i think it's not in enough sun and I don't prune it twice a year (like the books say)! Some round here are splendid and are NEVER pruned.

I'v tried growing VB from cuttings, to no avail, but they do seed like buggery here in Melbourne. I'm guessing it's the open sandy soil and heat. I've got lots of tiddlers growing in the veggie patch. In a couple of weeks they'll be big enough to lift and pot on. A couple of the older plants shot their bolt last year, though not before producing 2 metre stems. I'm banking on a fair show this year but humungous next, judging by previous years.

Ooh, glad to hear Nutter has entered the building.