Gardening chat

[Procrastatron]

I find some areas of Mumsnet quite stressful at the moment due to strong opinions and covid related doom and gloom. Not the gardening section though.
I spend a lot of time daydreaming about my little, slightly wild, London garden and all the lovely things that are on order with various online nurseries or stashed on the decking for planting out soon. I’m definitely novice gardener and happily so and my criteria for plants are along the lines of hard to kill, colourful and weed suppression.

Right now I’m pondering where I should plant my verbena and how well my rose will respond to the cavalier pruning I have it at the weekend.
I’d love to hear what gardening related things other people are thinking about at the mo.

@Happyinheels love your fence transformation too, we have gone with a dark Cuprinol shade 'black ash' as I like the way plants 'pop' against it. Have a detatched brick garage we're going to paint too, and have gone for an odd white to match the house. Nervous about it though as it's going to completely change the look of the garden!

I’ve been following this thread for a week or two and I’ve enjoyed it so much (it’s actually one of the most pleasant threads on MN atm) I’ve been inspired to hire a skip and tackle our garden. I love the patio area upthread that has been transformed by painting the fence a lighter colour.

DH and I are total novices but we are going to get stuck in this weekend. I’m self employed and my industry is shut down currently (thanks covid) and I doubt I’ll be allowed to open any time soon. So what better way to spend the next couple of months.

We’ve lived in our house for 3 years now and apart from mowing the lawn we let the rest of the garden do it’s own thing but it’s looking untidy and everything needs pruning. DH grandad is of the “hack everything back to 6-12 inches tall” school of thought and his garden is glorious, so we are going to follow his lead although not quite that extreme.

Our borders are about 2 metres deep, picture one not so bad though I can see plenty of dead stuff that can come out, and I absolutely adore this bamboo bush? in picture two.

On the other side of the garden we have the most enormous rhododendron bushes in the borders, about 3 or 4 of them, I reckon about 8-10 ft tall and god knows how wide, and almost everything else in that border has been overtaken by them or has died from lack of sun, so any tips on where to start with tacking them would be great!

@DarthWeeder I love your bamboo too. I love the sound they make. You have lots of room in you beds for lots more lovely plants. I am a very novice gardener. I like buying plants, digging and chopping things 😆 I've got a vague plan of what I want but I'm a sucker for a garden centre bargain.

I have a rhododendron bed with some very large and small specimens. If they’re getting too leggy I prune some of the longer branched, perhaps one out of every three, after they’ve flowered. They soon sprout from the base where the light has reached.

My Rhododendrons

Feeling really jealous about the sizes of the gardens in these pics!

Mines titchy. But it's pretty and I love that it's manageable.

Can't wait to get the dahlias going again this year. They're my absolute favourite.

Mere sometimes the nicest things come in the smallest packages!

GuyF it's gorgeous, lucky you

Ok, so just googled dahlias (how did I not know!) any tips @GuyFawkesDay? I’m thinking of pots on my sunny decking.

@MereDintofPandiculation my garden is small too, I have one small shallow bed and some decking space for pots.

My dahlias don't do well in lots, I think they need really big, deep ones to thrive. In my clay ridden soil they absolutely thrive. I start mine on April in the zippy greenhouse and they go out end of May once frost risk is gone. These are some of last year's crop, i didn't but cut flowers from July til October

Beautiful Dahlias. I’m just getting into them, gre two types in large pots last year. I’ve bought some more to try this year. They’re so colourful.

Does anyone know if I can reuse last year’s compost that I used for a container garden? I have so many potential full of old roots from dead plants and the top of the compost is quite full of tiny weeds. Concerned the weeds might overtake the new pots if the compost is reused.

I was given a 'plant theatre' as a gift which consists of 6 pots which will degrade in time, 6 plugs of growing medium which will need dampening to activate and various mini packets of seeds to plant in them.

My main thought is where am I to plant them? My tiny pocket handkerchief garden is bursting at the seams so I've very little space. I usually buy either small plants or plugs as I'm not very successful with seeds so never buy them. However, I must remain optimistic.

@nomorecrumbs last year's plants will have used up a lot of the nutrients, so mix in some slow release fertiliser granules. That will also turn over the weeds into the soil where they'll rot down.

I would normally use last year's container soil as a mulch, and use fresh (home made) compost in the container.

Thanks @MereDintofPandiculation! I have some homemade compost as well, just not as much as last year’s compost.

@nomorecrumbs yes I would always replace container compost each year if possible, however I have a few perennials in pots where I haven't replaced the soil for a few years... will be one of my jobs soon.

@GuyFawkesDay I love those Dahlias! I have been wondering about getting started with them. I have clay soil and a new bed cleared with space for them. I will go off and read up ...

So excited today, my hydrangea cuttings looked like dead sticks, but today I noticed small signs of green buds!
Spring is wonderful!

@Beebumble2

Spilsh Splash is a lovely purple and white geranium. I have a little one called Cappuccino, pink with bronze leaves. It’s very small so I hope it survives the winter. Elkie is another pretty low growing spreader. I’ve planted the more common Wargrave over a patch of ground elder and it’s managed to swamp the weed. I’m planting more at the base of next doors leyllandi hedge.

Ah this is good to know about the ground elder. It comes in both sides from the neighbours...wild strawberries under a hedge are doing an OK job of competing with them one side, but I was thinking geraniums on the other after reading that 'rozanne' has something in its roots that actually inhibits the ground elder as well as competing with it. Maybe lots of geraniums do?

@Zenithbear

I'm planning another bee friendly border under the wildlife hedge on the driveway. So many beautiful plants attract bees, I'm going to include Alliums Teasels Cornflowers Globe thistles Hollyhocks Penstemons

Oh this sounds lovely. Bees love my penstemons and so do I as they're so easy and flower for so long. And my daughter is asking if we can plant thistles for goldfinches, but globe thistles will be a much prettier alternative!

@GuyFawkesDay those dahlias are absolutely stunning!

Love this thread! I'm planning a vegetable patch to grow lots of goodies for our guinea pigs!

@Beebumble2 I’ve just come on to say something very similar. I bought my first hydrangea in January and I was worried that the snow had killed it. Today I can see the tiniest green buds emerging.

Procastatron it wonderful to find that plants survive despite us, isn’t it?

@Beebumble2

So excited today, my hydrangea cuttings looked like dead sticks, but today I noticed small signs of green buds! Spring is wonderful!

Everything’s moving so fast! Yesterday I realised the colour range from the cyclamen county had expanded, and saw a whole lot of pinky purple crocus had joined them. Yesterday, a single daffodil in the orchard, today a dozen in the lawn. From the house you see an 8ft contorted hazel festooned with catkins, in its untidiness bearing an uncommon resemblance to our PM - I may need to remove it - then a witch hazel in full flower dominating the lawn, an at the end off the garden a Cornus mas covered with yellow flowers. Something new to look at every day