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'm away for the weekend and staying in a wonderful old house (B & B) with a swoonsome garden. It is huge. On a river, and with a courtyard garden full of hellebores, a big magnolia and clematis just starting to bloom. Plus yew hedges, lawns, lots of trees, and an amazing potting 'shed' that's the size of a small house.

i'm deeply envious, but also daunted at the thought of something that size. I get antsy because I know my (probably biggish-by-most-standards) garden isn't really under my control. I don't know how I'd cope with the worry of anything bigger.

Anyway, my sweet peas were unfurling when I left, and I've finally got some tomatoes going, so I feel I'm making a start, at least...

I visited Knoll Gardens today and bought a Myrtle tree, Salvia Caradonna Agastache black adder and Miscanthus Nepalensis

Their myrtle tree is very old and they have peeled the bark so that it is very soft and red and lovely and smooth to touch and see too. They have some nice old rhodedendrons under evergreen trees and grasses -though most of these have just been cut back.

halsall that sounds nice. Perhaps I'll create a temporary potting shed under a sail.

Sounds wonderful, Halsall!
at the river.

Been to the garden centre. I want some Johnson's Blue geranium, damn it! They had everything else I wanted but not that.

DH bought dd a statue and she has decided she wants to plant a butterfly garden, as per the latest Jacqueline Wilson book. Luckily we have most of the things already (buddleia, lavender, red valerian) so we can just move things, take cuttings etc, and then she will only need to sow a couple more herself.

I love flower names. I wouldn't have minded an Iris.

Oh FP you should have given me a shout, would have loved to have joined you

Just been constricting a raised bed which will be part of my cutting patch if I get my act together.

Where are you sugarplum?

Halsall that sounds wonderful, where is it?

I get anxious about my large garden and how much there is to do.

I think that sometimes rhubarb but you know if you ignore the garden it often grows just as well and sometimes it grows even better than if you do stuff. Really that's why I like plants. For example (this is obvious I know) tress carry on growing whether one does any gardening or not. I tend to plant perennials because they don't mind being ignored and will still come up.
There really isnt any urgency about gardening, I mean how many of us have planted autumn tulips in January and they've still flowered! I like it because it fits in with my inherently lazy nature.

I watched 'Kew on a plate' today and Raymond Blanc visited an old Yorkshire rhubarb farm and made rhubarb and custard. I thought of you!

While the autumn flowers of plectranthus and rosemary as well as the brugmansia and fuchsia are doing well, cosmos and salvia have yet to get a move on.

The slightly cooler weather has brought a new flush of gardenias and nasturtiums, the latter a winter/early spring-flowering plant.

A true sign of autumn is the first cheap bulbs in Aldi , quickly consigned to the salad crisper in the beer fridge to wait until the Queen's birthday. I'm trying broad beans in containers this year, to give the veggie bed a rest.

I'm now considering where to plant the eight huge colchicum bulbs I picked up cheaply.

I get anxious about my medium-sized garden, sometimes! That B&B does sounds fabulous - the idea of a garden on a river seems so romantic. I am also impressed that Jacqueline Wilson encourages butterfly garden creation, as well as at a DD being given a statue.

I went to our local, newly-refurbished garden centre today, to get some of those £1.05 largish plugs of tender plants like geraniums and petunias. I was thrilled to see they had scaevola, Fan plant, a large and expensive plant of which I bought last year, and loved, but it is so tender. It died over winter. They also now sell £1.99 small but very healthy shrubs, including Lavatera Barnsley, and Colvolvulous Oenorum. (Just googling, I see Lavatera B. looks wonderful in pots, so I may pop back, as I don't have a space in the garden).

get anxious about my medium-sized garden, sometimes! That B&B does sounds fabulous - the idea of a garden on a river seems so romantic. I am also impressed that Jacqueline Wilson encourages butterfly garden creation, as well as at a DD being given a statue.

I went to our local, newly-refurbished garden centre today, to get some of those £1.05 largish plugs of tender plants like geraniums and petunias. i was thrilled to see they had scaevola, Fan plant, a large and expensive plant of which I bought last year, and loved. They also now sell £1.99 small but very healthy shrubs, including Lavatera Barnsley (lovely in pots I see from googling) & Convolvulous Oenorum. Both of them grow quickly so £1.99 is a great bargain.

I am getting pretty anxious about my garden, DH is much busier than usual and I have too little time! Still, DH planted the new whitebeam next to the drive today and replaced the one downy birch that didn't make it. All of the green and yellow cornus has arrived and been placed in the irregular beds, it is going to look really nice I think and will be low maintenance.

I tried to hoe some weeds with DS2 in tow but he threw a massive strop because HE wanted the hoe and so I abandoned the attempt. He spent a good twenty minutes throwing sticks into a large puddle in the orchard, I had to hang on to the back of his hood to stop him diving head first into it.

We have frogspawn in the pond! Great excitement all round.

I get anxious about my garden and it's tiny. I fret when were on holiday in case my carefully-nurtured babies are suffering without me.

Things have been very hectic here but I was thinking the other day that the garden was doing its own thing without much input from me. There's a bit of planting I must do when I get time and I do want to strip the turf u der the raised bed md get it filled. Yesterday someone came amd took away a load of old metal garden things, broken swing seat, goal post, old table and chairs etc. Didn't cost me a penny but looks clearer. I have some plastic garden chairs to go that came from Mum's so need to chuck those on freecycle.

FP I have PM'd you . Thought of you all yesterday as went to look at Mum's new Home and noticed they have a section named 'Charabanc Way' . Can't wait to see the garden develop, it's a decent size and hoping to get her out there in the summer . My Dad is down this week and wants a 'tour of the garden' today, that won't take long ! Bought some little pots of sweet peas yesterday for 50p and am going to have two lots this year and slightly stagger the season.

Yes yes funnyperson I don't worry about the garden ,I think about it though!! Maybe being where we are in Fr. helps because things just 'come up' my method of seeding is this; If i have some cut flowers I like I wait till they die then literally throw them on a bed and if they come up then great if not, well nothing is lost! It works !!

countess Snap! I was looking for more hyssop (my friend gave me a little pot but I need quite a bit for effect in the front) the garden centre had everything else but. I will ask if I can order some.

Today is dh's birthday and I bought him a lime tree (to replace the now dead very sad lemon trees) and an olive tree (small ones though!) Sadly a frost is forecast for next week so I'll keep them undercover.

I have just helped the dcs make little alpine gardens. They have been nattering all week to do more eggshell gardens, so I thought we'd do something a little more permanent.

We went to the garden centre for troughs yesterday, and they chose some baby alpines - dd chose a white Lewisia, a pretty white variegated Arabis and a pink Arabis. Ds chose a black Viola, a blue Anemone blanda and a deep red Pulsatilla (there may have been some steering by me in the direction of the Pulsatilla).

We had fun this morning mixing up compost and grit, arranging the alpines and the leftover sempervivums from the eggshell project, and watering it all in.

End result:

they look lovely. Beautiful troughs too.

Gorgeous troughs! However did you woman handle them into place (or are they lighter than they look)?

I have always fancied a lewisia. Pulsatilla is one of the many things I have killed by hoping I could successfully create the right sort of microclimate in a pot. I couldn't.

Thank you.

There was indeed some woman-handling - they are heavy. And some yelling to small children to get out of the ruddy way as they were doing their best to get under my feet, and get their fingers and toes crushed.

I fell in love with pulsatillas when I was volunteering on the rock garden at Kew. I hope this one survives, although the dcs love its furry stems so that may doom it.

Yes, it was the furriness of pulsatilla that lured me in.

I am going to adopt ruddy as my rude word of choice.

funny I forgot to say - I saw the lovely rhubarb feature on the Raymond Blanc thing too. It made me happy. Janet Oldroyd is a heroine of mine. She has done much to save the Yorkshire rhubarb industry - what's left of it anyway.

Yes lovely troughs your children are lucky and may catch the gardening bug Rhubarb. I have killed pulsatlla too apparently it doesn't like rain . It's my fave homeopathic remedy for hot flushes and I had visions of using it (silly me). It didn't last one season.

I liked that programme at Kew too; Raymond Blanc is such a typical frenchman flirting shamelessly with Kate Humble!!