What's making your garden shine at the moment?

[Chippychop]

I'm just back from holiday and my garden looks a mess.. Granted the grass needs a good cut and the weeds had grown but the garden looks a bit bare and land. The garden is only 3 yrs old (building site beforehand) so it's a work in progress. I've got shrubs and herbaceous plants mainly - and I do need to add more but I could do with some colour or something - any good ideas?

I love coming home from work and seeing what has changed since the morning

We have lots of primroses dotted around,I split them every year. Also lots of the little violets. The tulips are out and the Cheery tree is flowering. DH noticed the pink Phlox on the walls yesterday (so it must look good) and the Iberis looks lovely. Bowles Mauve from a cutting has got big now and been flowering loads for a fair time.

I also have a big crop of Dandelions that I am tackling. The grass verges are full of them round here at the moment.

I have dandelions, daisies, selfheal, creeping speedwell, red and white clover and scarlet pimpernel in my lawn in the summer. I weed them elsewhere, but I'm not keen on a plain slab of green.
My father has leatt to cope with it, he just twitches a bit.

I love this time of year, everything's sprouting up, my peonies have sprung into life, my bleeding hearts are in bud as is the clematis. My primroses are doing really well this year (I'm going to have to divide them) and the spirea has flowered. The cherry blossom has disappeared now and they're all leafy and green instead, but here's a pic of how it looked last week.

I have many lovely things in flower or in bud, but I am also wondering whether to seek national collection status for my comprehensive selection of weeds.

No, come the zombie apocalypse, you will need them all for medication and food and insect repellent and...um... bedding and the like. You don't want to have to share, do you?

Ah yes, I had never thought of my garden as a bastion against the zombie apocalypse, but you could be onto something!

Definitely the crumpled crimson unfurling leaves of my Rheum palmatum atropurpureum. The pheasants haven't discovered them yet. (Had to protect the new hosta shoots with upturned old hanging baskets). I'm waiting for the amusing phallic shaped 'knob' that turns into the flower spike.

The best thing in my garden are the orange tulips and blue for-get-me nots. I also love the potted Camelia -I think that's what it is. It's flowered all winter and is putting on one intense final display. I have a north facing kitchen so it's great to look at through the window.

Last year I went a bit mad with forget me not seeds, it was a bit late in the season and thought nothing more of them....and now they are EVERYWHERE good job I love them, they look so pretty.

My only stand out at the moment is my Frittilaria Imperialis- Maxima Lutea. They are gorgeous early bloomers- nothing else is really going on at the moment so will be taking some of your answers and planning for next spring! thanks to all!

We have tulips, hellebores, aqeligium (sp?), some alpines, primroses, primulas, cowslips, bluebells, (had snow drops which are gone) hyacinths and crocuses are just about gone, loads of muscari all in bloom.

Tons of lupins on the way - they have self seeded this year, and i LOVE them. Also loads of campanulas in bud so will have a big show of purple soon.

From this thread I have identified that I need auberita for our walls - thank you for that tip!

At this very moment -solar lights.
In the daytime,bluebells,primroses,violets,and hellebores.

my anemonies! they make me

What a great thread ! I love the photos and descriptions of your gardens

very jealous of self seeding lupins KiteKit

Mine are always eaten by the slugs

I have this bush, don't know what it's called but it's my favourite :)

Raptor I know, this is our 3rd year since we started planting our cottage garden bed (just had grass / trees before then). The first year I bought well established lupins from the garden centre and we planted them in for some instant flowers / colour and they were savaged by slugs. We had a HUGE slug problem (in every sense, huge slugs and huge volumes of slugs) as we have stone walls and it was like a slug ghetto it seems. Dh was a slug vigilante that year and would go out at dusk and pluck them off the plants and put them into a bucket and release them in the field across the road. The poor plants were decimated.

Last year was less intense and all the plants did a bit better and this year they are thriving. We have gravel in front of the cottage garden and in one area of it we noticed about 8 or 10 teeeeeny tiny lupin plants growing in the gravel! Not sure what to do about them, my gut feeling was to let them get a bit stronger and then carefully transplant them to the actual bed?

I think we have a couple of other flowers that have seeded into the gravel including foxgloves and primroses!

That beautiful White shrub might be spirea arguta. It's stunning. I have a smaller one and it's only just coming into leaf now . I'm in scotland and we must be several weeks behind those of you in the south .

I am very of the self seeding lupins and also of the slug hunting DH . Do you hire him out ?

If the lupins are in a suitable place in the gravel, I would just leave them. Unless you are a tidy gardener and they annoy you .

That looks like my spirea, which has bee been in full flower for about 10 days (Hampshire), looks as though someone has sifted flour thickly over the branches.

That white bush is stunning!

stacey I would be happy to leave them on the gravel but it is at the front of then house and I am nervous that they would get trampled on or driven over. I am guarding them like I don't know what as I am so ridiculously proud of them! They are SO bloody cute!

Dh hated the slug duty but he had put so much hard work into the flower bed that he was damned if he was going to see the slugs munch their way through it. In the beginning he was very gung ho about just whipping them off the leaves with his bare hands but there were so many of them that the slime from them became really hard to wash off so he had to start wearing gloves! I'd say we wiped out the population of the wall of slugs that year so there were less babies the following year and less again this year.

I had to stay indoors while he was doing it as the heaving, squirming bucket of slugs used to literally turn my stomach

I could hire him out for the right fee...........

Oh yes our spirea is out too (it's named something bridal or wedding), although it's not as lovely as the one in the picture.

I'm more a live and let lie person with the slugs (mainly cos I think they're gross so I'm not picking them up - total wuss), over the years I've worked out what not to plant, I remember planting out some marigolds that my friends dad had grown from seed and they'd completely disappeared the next morning

I've got lots of aquilegias coming up that have self seeded over the years (mind you, I've planted loads of different varieties over the years and now it's all Nora Barlow - except for a huge purple one that's appeared from nowhere in the front garden).

One of my bamboos is looking very sorry for itself at the moment - they're in pots and have to be moved to a sheltered spot over winter (mainly so they don't get blown over) and got a lot bit neglected. I've given in and pruned it back to grown level so it'll put it's energy into new shoots.

Perversely the bamboo in a pot in the front garden that has been totally neglected is looking so healthy I need to repot it.

I have a kerria too which is looking stunning!

Spirea arguta " Bridal Wreath " ??

Aquilegia are notoriously promiscuous I'm afraid