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.

I have a question about peonies, if anyone knows them well?

We had out garden sorted out last summer and a lot of new plants put in. One was a Peony Sarah Bernhardt. It looked healthy when it went in, but then went all brown and crispy and I assumed it had died in the dry summer and with my rather sporadic efforts at watering, but do peonies naturally die back in the autumn? It still looks utterly dead and I'm tempted to put something else there, but should I wait and see?

Lovely egg garden!
juneauPeonies die back in the autumn and grow up in late spring. I would wait and see!

By the way on the subject of rhubarb, on DD's birthday recently we went to a naice place for afternoon tea and had individual rhubarb crumble in egg cup sized pots (amongst other cakes and things) It was wonderful finding the rhubarb at the bottom! That bite size of crispy topping and sugar with cream and custard with the tart rhubarb was brilliant.

Enviously reading of everybody's gardening antics. I'm still trying to get my few bulbs planted. Bag of compost is sitting outside by the front door, bulbs and pots are sitting inside by the front door...and I still can't manage 10 mins. I don't want to go out for Mothers Day dinner - I just want half a hour to potter. My baby is un-put-downable at present and hasn't taken to the sling either.

Funny great poem.
Bearleigh I want a wisteria tunnel too!
Rhubarb lovely story about rhubarb!
Humph sorry about pelargoniums.
On my phone so I can't see the photos, egg gardens sound sweet!
Can't scroll back to see the rest of the posts so waves to everyone else.
Oh MrsMalarkey well done on planting your apple trees. It's kind of you to consider your elderly neighbour. He's lucky to have you!

Welcome all newbies

On the colour debate - at first I agonised over colour choices but everything I planted turned out purple anyway. These days I try to inject more hot colours and also white into the garden.

Bertha -£50 would have been my top price for the window, but I would open negotiations at £30.

Rhubarb - do you have lots of those lovely terracotta rhubarb cloches?

Humph - my pelargoniums have given up the ghost too

Today's inspection of the garden revealed 6 peonies have resurfaced from the dead! I really hope this is the year they flower. Does anybody else grow peonies? How do you make yours happy?

I also have 8 baby dark pink penstemon, 3 euphorbia and 1 wall flower that have made it trough winter - all cuttings.

It's judging day for the daffodil competition on Monday and DD1's is only 2 inches tall with no sign of a flower. She has no right to complain, as she refused help me plant it back in freezing cold December.

We are still 2 weeks away from finishing the rear extension (funny, I'm sure we were 2 weeks away last weekend...) and the builder has asked if we'd like a quote for the patio...

We had deprioritsed this as we are way over budget. But how tempting would it be to get the hard landscaping of the garden all sorted now, so we can fix the lawn and crack on with planting all through spring/summer... ?

Ps Homebase has 20% of fall plants this weekend. I just picked up a Loch Ness thornless blackberry.

Juneau - sorry, i posted before I read your question. IMHO, peonies are Lazarus like - in that they look like they've completed gone - then pop up out if nowhere. Everybody says they're easy to grow, but mine have never seemed to flourish. They've are only been in 2 years, i'm hoping they're just immature. I'd give yours at least another 4 weeks to make an appearance before digging it up to see what's happened to it.

The show was impossibly thrilling. The dcs won joint first prizes for their eggshells (let's gloss over the fact that nobody else in their age group entered...) and got some really sweet comments from the judges. I won a first, two second and a third prize for my daffs. And a cup for the best large Narcissi in show! Beside myself with excitement...

Funny I am positively dribbling at your description of that rhubarb crumble.

NANN I don't have any terracotta rhubarb forcers. I'd love some. We always just pick it while it's young and red.

I've never had any luck with peonies. I'd like to have another go, I just need to decide where to plant some.

castleough I feel the same : I don't want to go out for mother's day lunch.

I feel so ungrateful but I've been informed by bright-eyed offspring that I am taking my mother out to coffee and cake while they look after my dad and then going out with them to a late lunch. In short, the daylight hours will be entirely taken up with sitting around food in cafes and not gardening and the visit to the ngs garden is scuppered.

The only way round this will be to get up at the crack of dawn and get my gardening time in before the parents and offspring wake up. ie no lie in. Gladioli bulbs and hostas are waiting to be planted, the mulching isn't finished, the edges need doing, the dogwood pruning needs finishing, the lawn needs feeding, the geraniums need moving. The birds are all looking so lively they put me to shame.

Parenthood requires so much patience and so many early mornings. If only I was an extrovert all would be well but one of the reasons I like gardening is that one doesnt actually have to talk to anyone whilst gardening. Also I feel like a grump for feeling like a grump iyswim. I expect I will enjoy myself and have a really lovely time. I might kidnap mum to the ngs garden as it is quite local and we can have coffee and cake there.

Congratulations on all those prizes Rhubarb!

Thanks for the advice - I'll give it more time. There are quite a few things in the garden that are still looking dead, but I clearly need to have more patience!

Well done, Rhubarb and RhubarbOffspring! We have our own show coming up, but I'm not sure I'm going to have anything worth exhibiting. We need a week of sunshine to bring the bulbs on. DH often wins a cup, but then we have the task of polishing it, which I usually only remember to do 24 hours before it is due to be returned.

I have rhubarb forcers but no rhubarb to force, since it all went to the allotment. I dare not take them up there, as there is too much petty thievery. Grr.

Just going off on a slight tangent on colour: The hellebores are looking much nicer when the pinks and dark slates are together in the sunny bed, the deep maroons and burgundys are in another bed with pale yellow daffodils, and the ivories and greens are in the white bed. The yellow/ivory hellebore is brilliant with the purple speckled fritillaries and primroses out front.
It is all much nicer than having all the colours all together.

Re peonies. I watched that heritage flowers thing on the beeb in January (name escapes me). They had an article on peonies. Apparently the lack of flowers may be due to depth planted. At wrong depth they may have leaves but no flowers. Correct depth was 5 cm iirc. I planted my first ones last autumn before seeing that so also waiting eagerly. There are shoots already. Also I have read elsewhere they can take up to 3 years to settle and flower.

It sounds absolutely beautiful funnyperson. I wish I had planted some fritillaries, I must add them to my list.

Congratulations Rhubarb family, you did brilliantly. THose little gardens look lovely.

Castle, I do hope you get your bulbs planted! I remember last year my Mother's Day present was a WHOLE DAY where I only picked up babyCobbler in order to feed him, the rest of the day I spent sorting out the greenhouse. It was fab. The weather forecast is freezing for tomorrow though, but I will try to get into the cottage borders for a bit. It all needs cutting back, there may be peonies in there somewhere...

I've just been watching GW amd enjoyed the hellebore feature. I'm sure you're right, funnyperson, that a certain amount of sorting by colour gives a better effect than a complete jumble.

I was also very taken by Joe Swift's black wall and am wondering whether the bit of bare rendered wall that I was going to paint a lemony-cream would be better black. But it's a dark corner anyway. Indecision.

GW - I enjoyed the Joe Swift feature this week because I thought that garden was lovely - very cleverly designed, and well-planted. I think you should go for black Maud -if it doesn't work you can re-paint(!), but the black really did seem to make the colours sing, so it has to be worth a go.

Those hellebores were beautiful

Hmm. Maybe I will. I was going to get some black (well, slate grey) to do the sides of the elevated garden path, so I guess it might work. I'm just worried about what it will look like on a bleak day in November.

Waves at newbies.

I haven't posted for ages.

Autumn, possibly the best season in Melbourne, is well under way, with very cool mornings and warm, sunny afternoons. I smelt the first wood fire smoke from someone's chimney yesterday. It was 28 by the afternoon. :o No rain though, which is a bind.

In the garden, plectranthus ecklonii is well under way, with its almost luminous purple flowers, as is tibouchina which has sulked for three years and now decided to cheer up.

Two plants that have had two shows of flowers are an orangey-pink bougainvillea and the lion's ears, the latter a particular goody as the nectar-feeding birds love it.

My recently purchased brugmansia has been plagued by whitefly - new here, and the only year we didn't companion plant marigolds. It will still bloom soon, so will put up pics.

A few months ago, the stanhopea orchid bloomed. Each flower emerges looking like, er, a pair of pointy testicles, each of which turns into a large bloom that smells exactly like Palmer's Cocoa Body Butter. The smell fills the entire garden. A pity each bloom only last three days.

Here they are.

Congratulations, Rhubarb! And congrats to your kids too.
I have moved into a garden with wonderful established peonies but know nothing about them.
Garden centre today!

Wow just Wow Echt !!!! What's that white, light reflecting thing that looks like a drum above the flower?

countess You're lucky they don't like it here, Leave them alone and see what comes up is my advice!

Wow, echt, that is some bloom! Have you ever thought of writing a gardening blog?

Thanks everyone.

I was hoping for a gardening day today but no. I did sow some seeds with the dcs though - their prizes from the show were kids sweet pea kits, so we did those then did the veg seed kit that MIL bought them. They loved doing it.

I shall suggest that we give seed kits for our children's classes. We tend to give chocolate. ::blush::

Well, if you asked my kids which they would have preferred, I fear the seed kits wouldn't have stood a chance, Maud!

Echt I meant to say those flowers are stunning.

When I went out to the garage just now I found a cereal bowl on the garden table, filled with grit with sempervivums and bits of plants stuck in, just like the egg gardens. Someone clearly smuggled it outside and made up a new mini garden all by themselves!