Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.

[SugarPlumTree]

Potting shed thread for those who enjoy talking about gardens and plants. Plenty of garden chairs and the wood burner lit now there is a chill in the air, please join us !

Back to a previous conversation I love beechgrove too! Monty took a while to grow on me, mainly as he makes me feel guilty for the many shortcuts I take

Speaking of which I have moved all my pots of dahlias and lilies into the greenhouse to overwinter them, I will not be pulling them up to store dry so may not work but I am all about the quick and easy at the moment.

My weigela has flowered all year and is now showing some lovely autumn colour so that's my star at the moment

Still waiting for the garage base!

Blimey Squeaky That must be a record for weigela! Mine lasts 2 weeks in spring if I'm lucky !

I never know the 'correct' way to keep my pelars. happy overwinter; how much to water etc.

I had a full day in the garden yesterday, mostly tidying digging up Dahlias and dismantling/pulling up various climbers and the Cosmos. I planned to do the same in the front today but oh my aching back!

Frost last night so not sure if its too late for the pelagoniums which are still outside and I'm too cold to investigate

I've been reading Nov Gardening world, I am the gardener that likes to collect plants without thinking about design sorry Monty.

I am the gardener that likes to collect plants without thinking about design

Me too.

I am fairly new to growing dahlias, and have had a few casualties over the last couple of winters, first with some tubers going mouldy (not dried enough?), and then with some getting very shrivelled, and then not growing (too dry?). What do other dahlia lovers do to keep their tubers over winter?

I too have a tendency to think much about plants and too little about design, but I have got a little better in recent years. Concentrating on certain plants - such as geraniums and heucheras - helps (I hope) in making the garden look less bitty.

I've found that I repeat plant some largish herb perennials; lavender and rosemary, with sage that I've moved about, serve as the backbones of my bedding and I plant more colourful plants around them since being on this thread . I'm lucky in some ways though because the semi natural rockery is everywhere.

There are also some yuccas that the previous owner grew I don't much like themoh and trees of course!

I have a snail farm. Partly I think because I have a lot of low dry stone walls around raised beds. I built them from ironstone dug out of the ground when I started the garden. Snails love them, as do newts and ants.

I don't have a large fruit and veg space ( not a large garden compared to most of you) so I try to grow things that are worth their while. Raspberries and blackcurrants keep me in soft fruit all year.The raspberries were becoming like sleeping beauties forest so I have been ruthless and removed all but 4 or 5 stems. They are all summer fruiting so I have put a couple of autumn ones in as well.
I am the only salad eater in the house so I don't need much but I hate buying leaves. I have struggled with germinating lettuce in the last few years and then the snails eat them so I cheated this year and bought a 50p pack of supermarket "salad leaves" which have kept me in lettuce since April.

Oh you're joking, are you? GrassyBottom Because I had the idea before moving here (being as the French love them). Then discovered that there is a proper snail farm 4 villages away! So as I didn't want to get into trouble I now sort of let them run free,except for putting them in the dalek compost bins and on the bird tables.

I love raspberries but we're often not here to water them in the summer. So we buy from the local markets. My lettuce plants seeded ALL over the lawn; which is self seeded grass and weeds on the pebbles which were put down by the previous owners for 'hard standing' for the cars, that I keep short. I like it .

bear it's my first year of growing Dahlias and from what I've just been reading I could have just done what squeaky did and bought the pots into the greenhouse. Stupidly I thought the frost would kill them and dug them up prior but apparently one lot of frost stimulates next years growth so I should have waited a few weeks, damn.

grassy an actual snail farm? Or do you mean your walls attract them. I've never eaten snails, I remember Hugh fearnley Whittingstall tried to cook his beer trapped slugs and they were vile!

We were recently talking about toxic plants, a 33 year old gardener has just died from suspected aconite poisening possibly absorbed through the skin. I hope know one has this plant!

Ref. dahlias, a kind neighbour gave me some tubers some of which were slimy, some dry. I potted the unslimy ones and ONE came up happily but a darling slug has got it before it could flower . So I'm going to give up. Probably would have been better in the earth but I don't have a lot of space that's unstony and very sunny!

GeoffI ALWAYS wear thick gardening gloves to stop getting thorns and prickles in my skin and stop poisoning I cannot get my head round those oddbods who do nude gardening!!!!!

ppeatfruit Yes I was joking! at self seeding lettuce.
I don't bother to dig up Dahlias, mostly they survive in situ and I grow them from seed as well.

Oh gosh grassy We also have stone walls and a number are in sore need of repointing ,they're not dry stonewalls, that would be much simpler because ours need lime mortar, that I can do ,but look a bit odd in mask, eye protectors and gloves etc. every time I have to do it on the outside ones. Just my luck that the 2 or 3 locals who pass by will
choose the time I'm out there . Though because it needs quite bit of dry weather to 'dry' I may leave it till the spring. (Lazy emoticom) !!

Well last year was my first year of growing dahlias which were wonderful from Sarah Ravens Venetian collection and some grew in pots and some in the ground. All got left where they were over last winter. The ones in the ground did get a nice mulch. Some of the ones in pots got left in their terracotta pots others got lifted into plastic pots covered with soil and moved to a sheltered place. They were then ignored. None of the ones in pots came up this year. The ones in the ground came up, budded and then got slugged. Only some newly bought ones from B and Q's end of line trolley came up in the pots. They were not the varieties as labelled.

So anyway I am going to leave the ones in the soil and feed and support them a bit more next year. The ones in pots are going on the compost heap. Next year I am buying more Sarah Raven dahlias and putting them in the beds.

I am the gardener who likes to collect plants without thinking about design

This is so true for me too, though I think about shade and clay and alkaline and seasonality and dont buy plants for sun and acid and try and have something for each season.

I quite often stare at spaces in the garden and wonder what I would like to grow there and then get those plants. I quite often see something growing in an ngs garden or rhs garden or Chelsea and buy it to plant with a tentative idea of where to plant it or what next to.

I do think about foliage a lot, shape of plant a lot, and the vertical. Except in spring, when the garden is filled with hellebores followed by a mass of tulips and forgetmenots everywhere, very little repetition happens in my garden because it is small. So I tend to provide the continuity with colour of flower. So there is the all white border which is the shady border and opposite are the same types of plant but in colour and some others too as it is sunnier.

It would be nice to know what you all would say or what Monty would say, (even though he is growing grumpy) It definitely would not pass a Chris Beardshaw test!

I'm keen on foliage too FP I like the shapes and all different shades of green.

I try not to let other people influence me (except on this thread if I agree with opinions!). Everyone has different ideas and we need to have the confidence to go with our own! IMO MD does put too many plants together which makes more work for the normal gardener (who doesn't have lots of help) with all the eventual thinning and pruning etc.

If I allowed the normal french people to influence me I'd have straight lines and would spray vile insecticides etc. everywhere. It's sad to see some of their 'dead' looking gardens. DH would cut down too much as well if I let him! Luckily he has a busy job .

That aconitum story is very alarming. The poor man. When I started planting this garden (when the beds were entirely empty) my mother gave me a large clump of aconitum. It is a lovely plant, but then my friend told me about her rabbit, who nibbled her aconitum plant and died so quickly that she couldn't even get him to the vet's. So although I have other toxic and poisonous plants in the garden, I decided that, at that level of toxicity, the aconitum had to go.

It looks like harebells doesn't it Maudant? It sounds alarming

It was very pretty - a lovely dark blue/purple and it did well in a shady spot - but it and rue (which gave me horrible photochemical burns have been the only plants I've ever got rid of because of toxicity. One year I grew larkspur, its annual cousin, and that was lovely too (but also toxic). When DD was very small, I didn't replace some euphorbias that died, in case she ever fell into them and was hurt by the sap, but she is older now and barely goes into the garden, so I'm not so bothered about all the other things that might potentially be harmful.

I just answered my own question too (in my book) thanks maud there's wolfsbane "once used to poison wolves". and cammarum they are all pretty and all poisonous . Also winter aconite that looks like a large buttercup. Yikes

Yes, people often refer to aconitum (monkshood) as aconite but they are two very different plants. (Come to think of it, I planted winter aconite one year and they amounted to nothing).

DH and I have just finished putting up the plastic greenhouse and the brugmansia and lemon tree are now safely installed (after a certain amount of huffing and puffing by DH, as it has rained a lot overnight and so the pots are saturated and very heavy). Here's hoping it will be enough to keep them alive.

That Aconitum story is strange and we're probably not getting the whole picture but the papers say he 'brushed against it', and died, yet RHS says 'all parts are poisonous if eaten. My newly-planted one has been slugged so probably won't survive which is a shame as I love the deep blue.

I have had a mysterious disappearance of pink Malva Moschata seed. A beautiful, pale pink one self-seeded in my 'rockery' - quite the wrong place but it stayed as it's so pretty and it's flowered all summer. There were loads of smallish seed heads but when I went out just now to collect some, most had disappeared; either snapped, or cut, off. There were lots of tiny snails on the stems but surely they can't be responsible?!

Yes, I agree that aspects if the aconitum story seem strange. I wasn't aware that the toxins could be absorbed just by brushing against the plant - I can't remember whether I always wore gloves while handling mine - and I would have assumed that a trained, professional gardener would have been aware if the risks and taken appropriate precautions. But the fact remains that the unfortunate man died and it seems that working with aconitum is being held responsible.

Could birds have eaten the seed heads, Bearleigh?

Maybe the 'mummy' snail was responsible Bearleigh. .

I know that you can die from inhaling that tree with the grape -like yellow flowers. (sorry forgotten the name). Isn't there an Agatha Christie story about someone being poisoned with aconite?

It is a strange and sad story about the gardener (which I also read in the Times) and I agree with the comment upthread that aconite is said to be poisonous when ingested. Death from brushing agalnst it seems like bad luck as there must be many gardeners who grow monkshood and cut it back and put it on the compost heap without gloves and without dying.
lol about the Agatha Christie comment, she surely made a study of poisons for her novels.
Did anyone see the centenary rerun of Under Milkwood with Mr Pugh reading about poisons at the dinner table whilst eyeing Mrs Pugh.?
Anyway the main issue is to keep children and animals and ourselves safe. aconite is probably best not grown in family gardens.

ppeat fruit do you mean laburnum? You dont die by sitting under the tree ans inhaling its scent. You die by eating the pea like fruits which are black and in pods so little children think they are peas.
Best thing is an emetic as soon as possible if this happens. Try and make the child sick, being careful they are leaning forward so as not to inhale any vomit and take them to hospital at once.