"In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." This month's discussion in the potting shed.

[MyNightWithMaud]

Grateful thanks to the magnificent Margaret Atwood (via A Mighty Girl) for the quote.

I have just come indoors after a delightful couple of hours' pottering in the garden. It's far warmer than yesterday and everything feels optimistic and vernal again, after yesterday's Arctic blast.

High point: Realising that most of last year's cuttings have taken. Given that I am useless with seeds this, I think, is my propagating future.

Low point: Realising that my newest fairy lights have already failed.

Thanks Maud. I may try some holly prunings for a few weeks, if that doesn't work I'll rig up some chicken wire. I'm also worried that I'll deter them from using that bit and they'll just move along down the bed to a different patch and destroy another bit.

Thanks for the suggestions! DD is at the childminder today and my mum is visiting, so I plan to do some weeding, in between eBaying all the baby clothes. Got to start somewhere!

We have visits from the local cats too, including in the middle of the lawn.

Re bindweed soil it's in my drive because Dh thought it would come in handy

Welcome parsnip, I agree to lower standards. When my 2 were little I had quite a few Hostas in pots that looked really nice. No beds because I couldn't keep up with the weeding. The toddlers used to love watering all the pots with their teeny tiny watering cans whilst I supervised snoozed on a deck chair

echt lovely pictures

rhubarb I've got potting shed tidy tool envy and garden envy.

Bindweed is one of those things for which I do resort to glyphosate, painted on with a brush.

Looks like being a sunnier day here today. I was thinking of doing some cuttings today, but is it too early?

Yy to glyphosate unfortunately.

I've been wondering the same, I'd like more Euphorbias.

Lots of rain here in the past few days, it's all looking much lusher. I'm trying to summon up the energy (wiped out after dds 12th birthday party yesterday) to get out and sow sunflowers and runner beans.

Is it unreasonable to leave up the bunting for dd2s party in 3 weeks time? actually I know the answer !

Lovely pictures of echt's garden and rhubarb's visit

The choisya has just a few open blossoms today, which is enough to smell it as you brush past

Oh my goodness Rhubarb I thought that was YOUR garden for a while I was thinking ' she must have a full time gardener for her garden to look that amazing!' Then I reread your post.

Bertha I think that cats hate pepper sprinkled around the plants you want to protect, It makes them sneeze (so not cruel) they'll just go and poo on someone else's garden!

You still haven't said what you used UNDER your tarp. in your pond, there are soft liners you can buy, but I want to use newspapers do you reckon they'll be ok? It must be very tempting to buy lots of pond plants, (I'm looking after our granddaughter's goldfish that she won at at the fair at Easter, I bought a proper aquarium and fresh plants and a pump, they couldn't take them home on the plane and ex dil has said they have no room for them so they're ours now I suppose, another responsibility [sighs]!!) do you have a pump for your pond?

Hello parsnip - my DC (4 & 6yo) like to play with water and draw with chalk in the garden. I generally find if I am busy working on one area, they will be busy wrecking another. Swings & roundabouts... I make DD2 pick dandelions and I once persuaded Dd1 to collect snails, until she realised what I did with them.

Little rhubarb is super cute.

I'm excited about getting home as The builders have been marking out the new curved path. They say there is not enough turf to fill in the old straight path. This does not make mathematical sense, I tell ye.

Ppeat - no pump in the pond as not planning on having fish just little ugly, squirmy pond creatures. Currently we have lots of pond skaters, a few water beetles and the veg plot frogs have found it already. Which I don't think is bad for a couple of weeks.

I bought good quality pond underlay and put it at least in two layers, three in some places. My liner is guaranteed for 40 years apparently too. Our soil is really flinty, I would worry that newspaper would rot down and eventually offer no protection but if you've got smooth soil it's probably fine.

Here is a picture of the curved path in progress. The idea was to have just bed, no grass, on the side of the path. Now the thought of digging out all that grass is bothering me and I'm worried, if I do, the path will subside.

Has anyone tried the lasagne method to turn grass into beds? I.e. Cover with cardboard, compost and mulch - then leave well alone for 6 months? Will it become a weed bed?

I haven't but see no reason why it wouldn't work, I often have to patch areas of grass that have had no light and died due to various things left on the lawn, -pots, dogball, various toys esp the extension to the slide! it doesn't take that long to kill it IMO.

So what are you going to plant? It's going to look great :)

Thanks Bertha how do you keep the liner 'fixed' down ? I've got quite big heavy stones but there'd be spaces between them, maybe put in a lot of smaller stones?

Brilliant you've already got life and your frogs are in there, you won't need to 'borrow' any frogspawn it'll just appear . We had a pond in London but it was one of those plastic preformed ones and was there when we moved in.

Yes NAAN It works well, kills all the weeds. Maybe leave for a year to be on the safe side though.

I definitely second leaving it for a year! It will work.

I have tried several ways of dealing with grass, and honestly I haven't found a better way than covering it for a long time and then digging. I had a particular disaster in my first garden, where I decided to dig down a spade's depth into the lawn and turn the whole sod over, effectively burying the grass and (in theory) killing it.

I effectively created a great weed bed and it took me 3 years to pull out all the weeds that kept sprouting. The worst thing was that it was really, really heavy clay - the heaviest I've ever seen, there was a clay works just up the road - and it was backbreaking and totally pointless.

I'm a no dig gardener shove I follow Bob Flowerdew's advice about raising beds (well I would if I grew veg.!) I have made a new raised bed for my hedge. it rises with the mulch.

I use ivy as ground cover which works ok for SOME weeds the others I try and get to, to pull out early in the season!

I used to have clay in London it's good for some plants (great for making pots and lining ponds though!) and not for others like my sandy calcareous soil here.

I'm also a convert to no dig. We double-dug the borders when we first started the garden - I can't remember whether we double-dug the allotment - but since then I've been heaping mulches on the soil and leaving the worms to get on with it. I've even been wondering whether to relocate some worms from the back to the front garden, to help the process there!

Ok here we go again with my pathetic attempt at posting a pic or2.
The first is hopefully my mauve garden. Before I planted the mauve wallflowers.

And a photo of some flowers that I couldn't, name till I went on Google and found they are Stars of Bethlehem,I originally thought they edelweiss!!

How lush and lovely!

Thank you Maud The mauve garden is down to this thread, I started seeing the garden as 'others' would see it. So then I realised it needn't a facelift, hence the new magnolia and wallflowers which i have always loved and never planted for some reason!

The no dig method is fantastic for the health of the soil, we've got worms now, 10 years ago there were hardly any. Would yo, or anyone, have known the name of the pretty star flowers?

I would have called the star flowers triteleia. I planted lots (a pale blue variety) years ago between the ophiopogon as I wanted the contrast between the flowers and the black foliage. Like many of my, ahem, inspired planting ideas it didn't work. I bought the tiny bulbs at an amateur plant sale and I suspect they were duds (or simply unhappy in my soil, which bulbs generally don't like).

it does look idyllic. my grannie has star of bethlehem so i know them from her garden - i don't know whether i would ahve recognised them "out of context" though iyswim

Wow! How gorgeous. It looks like the perfect garden for a fairy!

lovely pics ppeat. I'd call them Star of Bethlehem too, we have them at the front of the border closest to the house, where they grow through the alchemilla. I didn't plant them so heaven knows how they got there!

I've been off-radar for a while because I usually read this on my ipad, but the MN bug seems to hate this thread with a passion, and refuses to load it . Since I was last here I've sown some beans under cover, got some very healthy-looking borlottis but a total no-show for 'Wisley Magic'. I've just sowed another lot and am keeping my fingers crossed.

Sweetcorn and leeks are sown too, and tomato plants re-potted, so I feel as though I'm finally making a bit of progress.

Mine just arrived too Halsall, I love borlotti beans btw!, maybe it was the fairies , shove thanks for the kind words all.

I think they are related to the lily family Maud.

i've had that problem too halsall - i've had to switch to 100 messages a page as it just wouldn't load otherwise

Aha, thanks Hap - good tip. I'll try that.