When the hounds of spring are on winter's traces…...

[echt]

I realise it's later in the UK, but couldn't wait to start a new thread. If another title had been agreed, just tell me and I'll have this removed.

Other than that, seek out those deckchairs from the shed, check them for spiders and get nattering about the spring's promise.

Welcome Halsall! It's nice we're getting a lot of new people on the thread - the more the merrier - it's a very big potting shed, with plenty of chairs for us all.

I like growing edible things too. I bought my seed potatoes today -ludicrously excited, but that was possibly also because the weather was so glorious today, and there was a bee bumbling round my Daphne, and I smelled its scent for the first time too.

I picked up the hazel poles for my clematis wigwams à la Monty today from a woodland about 10 miles away. They're 8' long, and only just squeezed into our (estate) car. They were pressed up against the dashboard, and as I had rashly ordered 20, took up a lot of space. It was hard changing gear! They are rather magnificent though. DH says they look like I could build a medieval fortification with them.

I did nettles
Dh cut the grass which was good because I was convinced the mower wasn't going to start but it did.
Also saw a bee.

A question - when is the best time to move crocuses? A mass of lovely dark purple ones has popped up in my new herb garden but I know the perfect place to move them to.

Only a brief time in the garden today but got the sweet peas in, got DH to empty out the compost bin into the veg plot so I can sow the pre-germinated peas tomorrow. I also did my veg plot planting plan for this year. Also went through the seed box to see what I needed; don't need too much luckily.

I think you're supposed to wait until the foliage has wilted before you move crocus. Or move them in the Autumn, but quite how you're supposed to find them then I don't know. I'd imagine you could move them green if you can move a lump of soil with them to prevent disturbing them too much.

::waves to latest newbies::

Pah! The internet connection on our upstairs telly is a bit flaky and my plans to watch GW in bed have been thwarted. First the connection failed just as Monty was lopping bits off his apple trees, and when I finally got it back there was no sound. Woe is me. I do so love Monty gardening programmes on the telly.

Hello everyone, great to catch up on all your gardening news. Also great to see Monty, although I didn't think it was a very exciting episode.

Our rear extension is about 2 weeks a away from completion and I can finally get back out into the garden again - if I pick my way over the builder's concrete mixers, ladders and fag butts. It is a mess.

However, I do have 5 young peonies coming up! I am so please as peonies were the first thing I tried to grow and I didn't think I was having much luck with them. Question now is will they flower?

I've decided I need more shrubs to give my borders structure. I put a vibernum and a camellia in last year and both these look lovely. Any recommendations?

Halsall & donkey - welcome back!

Hello, NANN!

DH is out at the gym, DD is still aspect, the house is peaceful and I've caught the rest of Friday's GW. I rather liked it, because I loved Carol (and her orange coat) at Wisley and the stuff on pelargoniums was useful as I've just spotted a bit of mould/rot in the pop-up greenhouse. I did, though, nearly choke at Joe Swift's "small" garden of 38 metres - around here, that would be considered opulently large!

Which viburnum did you plant? Viburnum opulus (guelder rose) is lovely, although you need the one that produces red berries (which mine doesn't). Hydrangea quercifolia is also fabulous - the panicles of flowers are huge.

Still asleep ... Drat that autocorrect.

Hello nann I expect rhubarb will have some good suggestions.

It's lovely how the thread has got busy and I've enjoyed catching up on everyone's news. Welcome to all the new and old members :)

It's a race against bird nesting time to tackle our hedges, Dh and the neighbour drastically reduced the height of the one by the drive from 10 foot to 6 -looks much better and let's in loads more light to the front garden. We still need to do the back.

My Annabelle Hyderangea arrived, it's very small!

I bought a brilliant weeding tool from Lidl in the week and have been hooking out the grasses from the path with it. I also purchased snapdragon seeds on a tape and summer bulbs. They were selling good sized Camelia plants for £10 with fat buds on them which I resisted!

Enjoy your Sunday everyone, it's another lovely Sunny day here on the IOW :)

Thanks sugarplum Yes the swarming would worry me too. But I did read that if you 'wipe' the hives with lemon balm it calms them. I'm sure you know how thirsty eucalyptus trees are!

Hello Halsall nice to see you on another thread. We don't eat potatoes either .

I saw a yellow and emperor butterfly yesterday !! Spring is here at last!! Hooray!! I planted my quince tree but it was fiddly because the graft was very close to the roots so difficult to get one above the ground and the other below!

Joe Swifts 'garden' design company website is all about decking and paving and white concrete, not really about plants.
A friend of mine sold her mother's Chelsea period home, and the new owners dug under the foundations to put in a basement gym, and ripped out all the plants in the garden, some of which had been there since the house, and replaced the garden with 'designer' decking and paving and white concrete, essentially so that the basement gym underneath would be waterproof and tree proof. Joe Swift is an architect of that type of 'garden'.
Actually the garden on the programme this week had, remarkeably, no white concrete and no decking, which was nice. I noticed the beds had wood edgings. The size of the garden was 125 ft by 25 ft, probably a standard London width though longer than most. Here is the plan

Am jealous of all the gardening that's being done! I really picked the wrong day to use my baby free time to put more architrave and skirting boards up, oh well.

It's raining here today but am hoping to fit an hour in later, and then I am off for a massage! GW is my treat to watch whilst doing the ironing tomorrow so looking forward to it.

It's starting to be light when I get in from work now, which is lovely.

Glad to see so many new faces and to keep up with the familiar ones!

Funny I totally agree with you, he's like the gardening equivalent of an aggressive, 'progressive' architect IMO. As I said quite a long time ago, concrete, decking and mirrors are not my idea of a garden. Your friend must have wept when she saw her beautiful old house desecrated.

Maybe though he's growing up a bit because the garden on GW was fine. Your plan looks much better than his !

Yes, ppeatfruit she did but it wasnt a one off- it is happening to so many gardens bought by the rich and famous in town

It isnt my plan it is Joanne Bernstein's copied off her website!

I sowed sweet peas and pruned the summer jasmine today. Later on I will prune the dogwood. The quince is in flower, and more fritillaries!

Oh dear. I thought the mania for decking had ended when Alan T stopped doing Ground Force, where it was the ubiquitous quick fix.

I am exhausted. I have finished digging out the compost bin and have spread that and four bags of farmyard manure over all the beds, according (I do hope) to what likes each. I have had two mishaps. I trod on and broke my salvia Hot Lips, and then I overbalanced, my gardening clog fell off and I trod on a fox poo. That sock is going straight in the bin.

On a lighter note, for NANN, my designer friend and I were fangirling over certain shrubs and thought of callicarpa Profusion and pittosporum Tom Thumb, both lovely if (like me) you love the colour purple.

Maud You've worked hard I thought you were going to say you broke yr. ankle or something!! Yes decking is loved by rats ( underneath is a nice cosy place to live!!). Yuck yuck fox poo .

I thought that planning is being withheld in favour of more natural 'flood aware' surfaces now funny No one cares about the world really do they?

No, no broken or sprained ankle but a sock impregnated with fox poo seems bad enough! Boak, as they say everywhere on MN.

Yes, planning regs these days forbid non-permeable surfaces (as I understand it). We're fortunate, in a way, that front gardens on this street are just a bit too short to make hardstandings for cars, so we've been spared the worst excesses of concerting-over.

How old is your quince funny?

Cor: well done maud on the compost/manure thing!

I still have many perennials in pots which I need to plant in beds
Also I found some forgotton allium bulbs at the bottom of the trug and need to plant those. My problem is that when I go in the garden at the moment I end up sitting down with a cup of tea and looking at it!

Yes I thought impermeable surfaces were ecologically unsound but look at Joe Swift's garden website modulargarden and that is all there is!

Welcome all newcomers!

The quince is probably 10 years old. I pruned it in the winter as if it were an apple tree, as last year it bore a fruit which was thrilling and now it has a lot of blossom on!

Monty is so reassuring, for example when he explained that spurs on apple trees would take 3-4 years to bear fruit. These things are probably obvious to professional gardeners but not to the likes of me. I consequently continue to nurture my lidl fruit sticks now coming up to their 3rd spring.

Thanks funny Has it fruited since you moved there? I'm really looking forward to having quinces, do you cover it if a late frost is forecast?

Yes I love Monty and helping with the trimming of the pelargniums, I enjoyed GW a lot and thought of you lot when Carol was at Wisley.!

I have just been trimming the pelargoniums; some are not much more than stumps, so I hope Monty is right that they need to be cut back hard! He is indeed very reassuring and gives off an air of general competence which is very appealing. (And who knows whether it's justified? We wouldn't know how many casualties he has to dump on the compost heap!)

Well I took my supervisory status very seriously yesterday and made DH dig out the compost bins (and turn over the autumn bin) and oversaw the hacking down of the brambles -they were huge and had been untended for several years so needed drastic action. Today I had a potter round the local garden centre, I was very restrained and just returned with the raspberry canes and compost I went for.

Ah, yes. I have some sort of berry/bramble growing up the back fence that needs attention. It's a cultivated variety, but I can't remember what, so I'll have to trust that lopping off last year's stems is the right thing to do. I wimped out of trying to tie the Japanese wineberry to the other fence, so will have to try again when I'm feeling braver.

I have a herb pot - quite like this - in which nearly everything dies. Thyme doesn't like it, because it doesn't get enough sun and the only thing alive in it at the moment is a rather stunted rosemary. Any suggestions for robust herbs that will survive?

This is/was a cultivated variety of blackberry (3 of them along the fence) but had just grown upward and outwards in a huge mass. I am hoping that DH will put some post and wires up for me so when the new growth comes through I can train it properly. I know we have sacrificed any fruit this year but this should make it more manageable.