"in the midst of winter, I found there was within me, an invincible summer" Potting shed chat continues here

[funnyperson]

So as agreed (by 2 other people!) I have started this thread for spring gardeners follwing on from the previous thread : Welcome one and all. experts and novices alike and draw up your chairs and join in discussion on all things garden related (and even not garden related)

The weather is just so unpredictable at the moment.- it almost felt like autumn today -( dank and wet) and the weeds are just going beserk.
I wasn't going to garden today, as the forecast was wet. ( cake making instead) It didn't rain, so managed to pop out for an hour to weed a newish border, and plant out the plant sale buys from the other week. I found at least one fat slug under every plant pot.
But small joy at seeing a big clump of dozens of foxglove seedlings. I always debate to myself whether to leave them be a little while , or dig them up and prick them out.

Thanks funnyperson for the extra advice/knowledge and the beautiful Chelsea photos! Did you take these yourself?

I definitely want an English Cottage style garden, really fluffy and happy, but also really calm ... mostly greens (of course), whites, pinks, purples, with the odd spike of red/coral and a little bit of blue. And also a healthy dose of Provencal influence (love lavender, box, olive and irises...). I do love roses and already have four (Wedgwood, Mme Edouard Herriot, Scepter'd Isle and a climbing Blue Moon) but definitely wouldn't want the 'rose patch' separated from other bits... rather embedded within the whole scheme! And then I have to take into account DH's love of a lawn - whilst minding the budget... Man, this is complicated business :)

Basically, I'd love the garden to become a bit like this bouquet, bought for a fiver from a local's honesty table outside their gate... So good.

Aye bookbook it's really mad... I've got dahlias in pots with roots going everywhere, but we're going away soon, and with the masses of rain lately, the slugs have finally discovered our garden so I'm a bit wary to let the poor babies fend for themselves in the ground while I'm away!
So good to have so many foxglove seedlings, I bet it's making you look forward to next year already?!

It has been a funny year, my Roses and clematis are doing really well. My philadelphus has flowered for the first time. But I have 3 Weigelia which are usually covered in flowers. This year the one stuck down the end of the garden in the damp shade has been prolific. Not a sign of a flower on the other 2

That bouquet is rather fabulous and what a good idea to use something like that as your inspiration.

Funny the red plant you gave me a bit of, the name of which escapes me, is flowering at last.

Was it persicaria or penstemon or valerian?

The roses are stunning this year and the garden looking nice with the roses embedded and at home among other plants
Rather amazingly the rosa mundi is flowering! In fact all the roses, front and back are flowering at once! At the back is New Dawn, Pauls Himalyan Musk, flowering with ferns, growing acanthus and choisya. At the white border, Mme Alfred Carriere and Sally Holmes are flowering with white foxgloves, Astrantia Shaggy, hostas, bellis, stachys and others all yet to flower. At the West facing border, Rose Hot Chocolate smells divine with Rosa Mundi, clematis Mme Boissolet, honeysuckle , irises, and Rose American Pillar all in flower as well as Munstead Wood: just heavenly scents and other flowers yet to come.
At the front, Generous Gardener peeps from under the buddleia which is refusing to be contained as a peacock, and with thyme, oregano, sage etc in the pots on the side, are Lady Sarah Fisher, Gertrude Jekyll, Nuits d Young and Rose bleu all doing their thing with Alliums, fennel, thrifts and pinks, a violet clematis and the last of the forgetmenots
Alas the red Valerian has self seeded wildly so the front smells like nothing so much as rats piss.
Yes I did take those Chelsea Photos myself! I love that bouquet and think it would provide a brilliant basis for the colours in your garden

maud your rose was a cutting of Generous Gardener

Your roses sound amazing funnyperson! I could practically smell them.

I am really enjoying the roses here too, rosa mundi has just come out and the Frances Lester is looking amazing. I am bringing lots into the house as it keeps on raining

DS has developed an expensive tendency to buy bouquets from Waitrose.
Discovering today where the flowers at mum's house came from, I gently explained the concept of cutting flowers from their garden to him.
He thought this a brilliant idea and it remains to be seen how this develops.

I also today cut back the leggy herbs (mint, basil) in pots , showing him the shoots already coming up from the bottom. He is very in to mint tea and so I think he is going to enjoy watching the new herb growth come up.

Yes the rain is a good excuse though to cut the roses and bring them in!

I was wondering how your roses are, Humphrey and esp your rose arch!

I'm enjoying this rose talk and very glad to think that my cutting - which is now a small bush - is Generous Gardener. I'll have to move it, though, to give it something to scramble up.

Many thanks indeed funnyperson for your Chelsea pics! It’s so helpful to see these different ideas illustrated.

Gingeroots and Hiahia, it's good to know I'm not the only one wanting to get a better grip on the principles of design and planting.

Funnyperson, your photos and comments got me thinking. I do love a magnificent NT herbaceous border, but I realise I’m picking up ideas for individual plants and not so much of a vision for our small space. Something like Hiahia's bouquet might be a better starting point!

Gingeroots, yes I know exactly what you mean about the realisation that there’s a whole other dimension beyond choosing individual plants. For every accidentally harmonious planting combination I must have one or two that are truly painful to look at.

Linaria ‘Canon Went’ is now on my wish list. Thanks to everyone that mentioned it. Anything tall that does not flop over is good as far as I’m concerned. I must sort out some artful support for tall things in my improved garden of the future.

Back to the actual garden this year and I have been given two tiny physalis peruviana plants (edible cape gooseberry). Has anyone grown them successfully? They are half-hardy so if I can find a space to overwinter them (no greenhouse here) then maybe I can hope for fruits next year.

I grew cape gooseberry from seed last year vc it fruited in its first year. I do have a greenhouse though. There are leaves back on the same plant -I wasn't sure if it had died but the leaves do look like Himalayan hunny suckle which may have seeded in the pot.

Linnaria is everywhere in my garden easy enough to pull up if its in the wrong place, I did have a white one but no sign if that's spread so far.

I'm loving the rose talk, I tried to take a hard wood cutting of one last year but I am too impatient and checked it for roots too soon. I must try again.
However I have managed to get 4 more Dahlias from cuttings. They are teeny though -cant see them flowering this year.

Echium Pininana seedlings are every where -I've just retrieved 3 from a small pelargonium pot. If any of you are visiting the I.O.W
do come and get some.

Talking of Linaria, I was at Woolbeding on Friday (which is now my favourite garden) - they have a lot of Linaria - the purple common sort, a big one that is yellow/pink, and Canon Went - lovely in a pink border, obviously allowed to seed itself. I only took these few photos as I only had my iPad with me, and it was a bit of a hassle to get it out. As a result the photo of the long border has people in it - taken on my phone it would have been empty of people. They only allow 200 people in a day, and on Friday as they had a coach expected in the afternoon there were only 100 so it was gloriously empty.

Spent half the day hacking back stuff. It all grows so fast! It was like a jungle on the lower path.

Crocus have 20% off all plants until tomorrow night - code 90252

but a lot of stuff is out of stock already.

Lovely to see the Chelsea pics.

I'm in weedbound early winter, and it's finally stopped raining enough for me to get out there. The veggie bed was a lot of work.
Lots of pruning of the tea trees, and tip-pruning of the new banksia trees to promote a more bushy habit. Because this is frost-free area, nothing really stops going, and winter is weed heaven.

A massive agapanthus, and several smaller ones I put in two years ago have gone tits up with a white mold, so called it day, dug them out and into the bin. I'll put new soil and try again.

Orchids are good; a pot given to me a neighbour on the grounds that it didn't bloom was stashed under the carport with an occasional watering, and is now flowering prolifically.

A favourite is the salvia Anthony Parker, a bit of a bully, but good for autumn to winter flowers and loved by spinebills, which look like hummingbirds, but bigger.

I really like your posts echt they make Australia sound so real and the difference in the flora and fauna is magical.

The Linaria in mothers garden is quite different.

Anyway I just want to post that mother came out of hospital finally. They got her better thankfully, but she then had two weeks of sleep deprivation which drove her into a mad, incontinent, head drooping, 'unpredictable' zomble, so some tactful negotiation and pointing out of the obvious ( that no one can sleep with 24 hour neon lights, alarms going off, 4 beds in a 15 by 15 space, closed windows and no fan when its 24 outside) was needed to stop them filling her up with sleeping tablets and antipyschotics and since she came home she has been sleeping solidly and able to go to the loo by herself poor thing. It will take weeks for her to put on the weight she lost and get her confidence back. But at least they treated her infection and she had rest for her pain.

The roses in pots have had their last summer of being in pots I think. They need to spread their roots in the ground, so I will plant them at mother's and take cuttings for the pots.

The scent is divine though. Deadheading the roses in the morning is a very pleasant task , with my sussex trug and secateurs, inhaling the scent of blooms still flowering.

Rofl at Monty cutting grapes out with his hairdressing scissors! I do like him very much.

Last week I had a clear out of the patio ( again) and emptied the plastic bowl of water where the water lilies failed to appear.
Anyway it took me some time to realise that as a consequence the birds had no where to drink in the garden.
So yesterday I filled it up again with fresh water and put it out and first the robins then the squirrels came along happily to take a drink and flap their wings about, bathing, and the garden is once more filled with early morning birdsong.

Midsummer is approaching and what a glorious midsummer it is in the garden this year!

Sorry to hear your mum has had such a rough trot, as they say here, and wish her all the best, funny.

Ah, midsummer's day. I remember the last time I was in England, and midsummer's evening in London when it didn't get dark until about 10.00.-ish. I don't miss the long evenings, but very much the longer summer evenings here. It's 7.30 before the sun gets up right now, and set at 5.00. It always makes me when Aussies go on about the dark winters of the UK. However, the preponderance of sunny skies is good, being overcast is very unusual.

As they say, the days will be drawing out after Tuesday, even though the coldest weather is yet to come. Which is weird.

Really pleased to hear she is home FP, but so sorry to hear what she went through.

Horrible grey rainy day here doesn't make me feel much like going outside. I'm jealous of DD who has just gone to Finland to live for a bit and arrived in time for midsummer which is a big thing there. I would love to go to one of their bonfires on the lake.

I am glad your mother is home at last funny, and I hope her recovery continues.

I have taken to reading the English Garden which recently featured a lovely garden in Edinburgh (Scotland!) with a big water bowl from - company called Urbis which was really lovely. I would like one, but we have cats on 3 sides, and I fear birds drinking will not last long - such a shame.

best wishes for your mother funny, that she continues to get rest and her confidence back.

I had a lovely time ambling round garden squares near Nottinghill today
Here are some pictures

Thank you all for your good wishes for my mother who, having slept loads, is slowly making sure that everything at home is as it was. Lovely to see.