Advice for a novice gardener please

[morningcuppatea]

Hello,
I'm trying to take more interest in my garden this year and looking for a bit of advice on a couple of things please.

I've got a small flower bed which I filled with bedding plants and it's doing pretty well, apart from that there is one other small area but it is very shady and next to a brick wall.

I also have a really nice sunny patio, currently I have pots of rosemary, thyme, mint, parsley, some flowers and a grow bag with tomatoes in, all doing well.

So my questions are:

1. any suggestions for plants to put in my very shady patch?

2. any suggestions for anything else I could plant in pots on my patio? Ideally things I could plant now for the winter or next spring? I'd like to have a go with some other vegetables but no idea where to start.

Thank you so much if you've managed to read through my post.

For the small shady area; a Hydrangea, or Japanese Anemone. They are pink or white and love the shade.
They bloom from now until late autumn/early winter

Sorry I can't advise re veg!

@AlwaysOnAbloodyDiet that's lovely thank you, I'll have a look in the garden centre for those.

How big are the beds?

Ferns love shade. Fuchsias can tolerate it too - buy the hardy ones so they survive the winter and grow back in spring/summer. Begonias are fine with shade too if you want some late summer/autumn colour. They could potentially be lifted and the corms saved but I have nowhere to store them so I just replace with new every year.

There's a thread on here called Shady Characters with lots of suggestions.

You could fill your patio pots with spring bulbs this autumn? It's encouraging to watch them come up when nothing else is in flower. I've heard the best way is to use plastic 'liner' pots inside your pots/planters so that you can lift the whole thing out and get on with planting new things for summer once the bulbs have gone over. You're supposed to leave the bulbs in situ with the leaves all flopped over as it puts nutrients back into the bulbs for the following year/display. But they're messy to look at and you can't get on with planting
anything else as they're in the way!

This depends on you having space to store the bulb pots out of the way until autumn - greenhouse, corner at the back of the garden etc
I've not quite got the hang of it yet - nor the space - but some bulb gurus may come along with better advice!

You could grow courgettes on the patio next year? Start them off from seed indoors - dead easy - then transfer to grow bags (2 per bag I think - leave the middle space free) or big pots. You can get patio varieties that produce compact plants with crops of smaller courgettes or stick with the normal ones. You won't need too many plants unless you want a glut of courgettes
Remember to water them well in the cool.of the evening and feed occasionally. Cutting a 2L plastic bottle in half and pushing the neck in the growbag/pot will direct the water to the roots as you water.

Wilko are good for veg seeds. They're reducing them now instore and they should be in date for next year if you keep them dry and warm indoors.

I like nasturtiums too for cheap and cheerful patio colour. You can add the flowers and leaves to salads! Bees love them too. Do you have any lavender? English lavender is hardier and should come back year after year. French lavender is less hardy and you will have to buy more next year

I germinate basil in the kitchen for cooking - tomato, mozzarella and basil salad is a fave!. I don't tend to have it outdoors as it attracts pests, I keep it on a sunny windowsill instead.

Re. your shady bed - you could plant a climbing hydrangea or shade-tolerant rose against the wall. Mme Alfred Carriere is a prolific flowerer suited to N facing (ie shady) walls. There are other more colourful shade loving roses too. I'd look for one that's happy in full shade. Many say partial shade bit ime don't flower very much.

Morrisons is great for cheap plants although they're starting to wind down a bit now. Aldi, Lidl, B&M, The Range too.

Have fun!

Also for shade - fatsia Japonica. Lovely glossy green leaves very easy to grow. Loads of great ideas from other posters.

Wow, thank you for such a helpful and informative post @GarethSouthgatesWaistcoat

You're welcome, you'll soon have the bug! I agree with newyeardelurker - I love my fatsias. They do get rather large but you can take off the lower leaves and underplant with more colourful stuff. Great evergreen structural plants.

It can be quite good to mix in some evergreen stuff for year round interest or you risk looking at bare soil for 4-6months until perennials make an appearance in the spring!

I often pick up pricier plants on the shelf of death in Homebase/B&Q where they tend to end up once they've flowered/ been neglected a bit. As long as they look reasonably healthy (not mouldy or crispy) you can snip the dead bits off and give them some TLC to bring back to health.

I often end up googling things in the garden centre to figure out its preferred conditions/ max height/ hardiness and whether it will be happy in my garden.
I'm not really interested in things that the slugs ravage or too many tender plants - I don't like gardening disappointment

Veg - swiss chard can be sown in July/Aug for later use - if you get "rainbow chard", the stems on different plants can be white, yellow, orange or red. Also look at "japanese vegetables" - many of them bolt (go to seed) if sown in the first half of the season, so they're good to start now.

Bulbs - a good plan is to plant in two layers, eg daffodils half way down the pot, then a layer of compost, then blue chionodoxa or scilla, then some more compost - you'll get either a longer season or two colours at once. Go for the shorter growing daffodils, 10inches max, taller ones tend to get floppy. Tete a tete is a very reliable easily available one.

Shade - on my north wall I have Rosa Mundi, a red and white striped rose, which flowers excellently, and a yellow winter jasmine, which will start flowering in about October and go right through to April. At ground level you can try oriental hellebores (related to "Christmas rose") which have tiny flowers in the centre of huge white, pink or purple bracts - being bracts not petals, they last for a long time. Or hardy cyclamen - Cyclamen hederifolium flowers in the autumn, and C coum flowers from early Jan, earlier than any of the spring bulbs.

Remember soil at the base of a wall tends to be dry, so plants may need extra watering in this area.

Thank you everyone so much for replying. @GarethSouthgatesWaistcoat and @MereDintofPandiculation loads of really great info, that will definitely keep me going. I'm terrible at remembering plant names so I'm going to write down your suggestions and keep a look out when I'm shopping.

Thanks also for the budget tips, I can't spend loads, I did my flower bed and pots for £20, I do like the satisfaction of bringing a plant back from nearly dead so I'll start looking at the reduced ones too.

There was a mention of slugs eating plants, I definitely have a problem with that, they've had a real feast on my marigolds! So it's interesting to hear there are plants they don't like!

I'm going to enjoy the gardening boards I think, time to head over to the shady characters thread now.

@GarethSouthgatesWaistcoat sorry I didn't answer your first question the shady bed isn't very big, I'd guess at about 30cm wide at the most and about a metre long, so maybe more a border.

I do have a lot of nasturtiums, I bought a packet of seeds and was amazed how many were in the pack! I love seeing the bees around them.

I've got some dwarf sunflowers in a pot and I put a couple into my flower bed, they haven't flowered yet but the leaves look a bit sad as something has made a meal of them.

Slugs love sunflowers! I've never been able to grow them.

@GarethSouthgatesWaistcoat. I don’t suppose you can advise any more about roses for north facing walls? I’m moving house and will have a space about 6-7ft at the front that would be ideal but I think is full north. Thank you 😊

@MereDintofPandiculation any ideas of anything to keep slugs away? I wouldn't use any slug pellets as I've got a toddler and DDog.

Slugs - no, no ideas of anything that actually works. Coffee grounds, crushed eggshells aren't that effective, copper tape is expensive and doesn't work once it's tarnished. You can buy nematodes which each the slugs, but again it's expensive, and they have to be reapplied each year. People who achieve some control usually go around at night picking up slugs and either drowning them in salty water or cutting them in half with scissors. I draw the line at that.

I have frogs, newts and toads. Despite what they say, they're not that good at keeping a garden slug free.

Oh nope I'm not up for drowning or chopping up slugs, think I'll learn to live with them!

We do have frogs that pop into the garden for a visit and they're not doing a very good job either!

An organic gardener told me to put small plates on your beds at night. The snails will use them for shelter.

So all you have to do is look under the plate and collect the slugs, and dispose of them.

Worth a try

I have a mixture of ferns with different leaf textures in my shady corner. Originally they were a last resort but now it's my favourite part of the garden. I have a little bench there with stepping stones in front of it.

Sorry OP I was writing in such a hurry - so many typos

The shady bed isn't too deep or long so you could maybe have a mix of hellebores+cyclamen (winter) then ferns for spring/summer and a climbing rose or climbing hydrangea? Ferns tend to unfurl everywhere covering the plants beneath but if you have any gaps you could squeeze a fuchsia or begonias in.

Is it very dry shade?

I buy my hardy fuchsias for £1 from Morrisons. They have all sorts in 9cm pots with a plastic sleeve and a piece of card. Some of them definitely state hardy on the front if you have a rummage. They've been stocking them for a couple of months but I didn't see very many on my last visit. Have a look next April-June though. They have lots of climbers and wildlife friendly plants for £1.79 or 2 for £3.

Fuchsias do well in sun too and I plant trailing ones in my baskets. Big fuchsia fan here

You could look for bare root roses in September/October. They tend to be cheaper than the potted ones that are sold in spring/summer. They even sell them on eBay. Get them in the ground and you should have flowers next spring/summer. I've not bought bare root roses before (I intend to this year!) but there ought to be a guide on Google or YouTube. I find YouTube quite handy for instructional videos

As per pp the base of fences, walls etc is quite dry as it's in the rain shadow. Most guides advise planting out from the base by 30-50cm and training them in to the wall at an angle.

SoundofSilence that sounds divine!

I have no luck with slug treatments. It gets so bad here that I resort to the blue pellets sparingly until my most at risk plants establish. Everything else has to fend for itself. Hostas stand no chance.

Do beer traps work? I've heard of people boiling up garlic cloves and using the liquid in a spray bottle on their plants.

My sunflowers have survived! I started them in pots indoors with canes then planted out (with taller canes). Snails have had a munch but I admit I used the dreaded slug pellets until they settled in.

I grow potatoes in bags / flower buckets on my patio, usually Charlotte potatoes. They do pretty well. This year I'm also growing a few flower buckets of dwarf french beans and carrots.

I've got a huge pot I bought cheaply from Wilko that I use for runner beans, although it needs to be in a fairly sheltered area as I've had it blown over before.

Strawberries and blueberries also do ok for me in containers.

Didius I'm far from an expert! I used to hate roses - the thorny bastards - but I'm getting quite into them now 😂

My most prolific flowerer is on a S facing fence. I have one called Iceberg (?) on a NE facing fence although that's white. It flowered a lot about 6 weeks ago. I cut all the spent heads off and I'm hoping I get a repeat flower.

Did you have any colours in mind? I can take a look David Austen roses are the creme de la crème so I hear but can be ££. Great for birthdays

@GarethSouthgatesWaistcoat thank you! I really don’t mind about colour, I would just like one that had the best chance of survival/flowering. I have a David Austin in my current garden called ‘a Shropshire Lad’ which is gorgeous but gets quite a lot of sunshine.

Didius I have a North Facing wall with two climbing roses growing on it, both repeat flowering. One is Golden Showers and the other is Generous Gardener. They are both doing very well.

I was about to quote Bee from another thread!

Sarah Raven recommend these (including Golden Showers):
here

I planted New Dawn on a NE facing fence but it had a fit and nearly died. It was from B&Q so possibly mislabelled. I'm nursing it back to health but won't see flowers this year to enable me to tell what variety it is. I've relocated it to a partially sunny position but it doesn't have much growth although appears happier.

David Austin has these picks:
here