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.

@nomorecrumbs

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

You have to make do with what you have. In your position I’d probably mix it half and half with garden soil if available, and add the fertiliser granules.

What's everyone's plans for the garden this weekend?
Weather is set to be mild here and no rain forecast! Myself and DH have been busy finishing painting the fences so now I can start planting up our new bed. Need to chunk a bunch of spent and homemade compost on it, then going to start with planting some reasonably mature shrubs and climbers that have been in pots for a long time.

I’ve got a bit of weeding to do before it turns into a mountain of weeding. I want to cut back my jasmine, I think it got scorched by the frosts the other week. I also need to snip back some ivy so I can see my camellia from the kitchen , it’s covered in buds ready to pop! I also want to use my new compost turner to turn my compost.

I had a peep at my sweet peas today and some are beginning to germinate, so I want to have another look at them and feel smug.

Then I am going to sit on the bench in the sun and make plans.

I emptied out the greenhouse and put in new pavers and gravel. A vast improvement on the bare earth and weeds! Tomorrow I plan to paint a wall while DH finishes off the new raised beds. I'm also hoping to get the greenhouse disinfected and a louvered vent installed but that may be ambitious. I have next week off work so hoping to get lots done around the homeschooling.

Hello !
I'm not a gardener but we have a long, thin, mainly grass garden leading to an unloved , overgrown bit which has a tendancy to flood-but the plan is (hopefully) to have it paved /proper path put in and use as a seating area . It is enclosed on 3 sides and does get good sun.
So some huge pots with plants will be in order .
I want to put some support up for them , planning sweetpeas ( I love the scent) , a climbing rose (not sure which one) and maybe a Passionflower ?

Not a fan of honeysuckle .

I have a huge compost bin waiting to empty , properly mulched .
Just need to keep the cats out of the plant pots

It was delightful weather here in the Highlands yesterday; a joy to be out in the garden. Today’s plan includes cutting back the brambles coming in from both next door neighbours, pruning the hydrangea and weeding around all the hedge plants we planted last year. We have large raises planters coming next week for below our front windows (concrete area sadly) so if it does rain can enjoy making final decisions about contents indoors with a cuppa. Sweet peas are coming on nicely, looks like we have 12 out of 18 germinate.

I’ve created a pile of last year’s compost, it’s amazing how black and rich looking it is compared to the grey clay that’s already in the ground of the garden. That pile is currently at the back of the shed along with a pile of dug-up weeds while I decide what to do with it!

What's everyone's plans for the garden this weekend? Taking the kitchen steps down the garden and pruning the apple trees. I've done 3, got 5 to go.

After that, anything else is a bonus. I've got the roses, some holly trees, a Pernettya, a medlar and various other bushes all waiting in the queue. I may get round to them all before spring or I may not.

Hi all, can I join your thread? I have a teeny tiny yard which I'm doing my best to turn into a pretty container garden.
Does anyone have any good recommendations of places to order plants etc online?

Sarah Raven sells lovely plants but they are very expensive! But it is worth looking at her website because she does have the knack of putting great combinations of plants together for containers. If you make a list of the plants she uses you can probably track them down elsewhere. Try having a look on eBay as a place to buy plants, look
for sellers with good feedback, plants will probably be quite small (saves on packing and postage) but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if you are planting up pots to establish.

Think about having some pots with herbs in, they look great and are useful and often very attractive to bees and other insects.

Ooh never thought of ebay thanks! And thanks for your other tips too.

Garden novice here. Ours is rather a large garden, which we inherited 2.5 years ago. Rather neglected. I'm learning and loving it. I spent yesterday pruning, hacking back, ripping up ground ivy (grrr.. bane of my life) and digging up things that are where they shouldn't be.

I'm about to go out today (the the help of my four year old). I'm always spoilt for choice. But think I'll finish weeding a bed I'm half way through.

I really need to do some design work and decide what to keep, what to change and how, but it's so overwhelming.

Daydream Your Garden Made Special BBC 2 Thursday. Is tackling a small garden space. ( small part of programme) Might be interesting for you.

@Beebumble2

Daydream Your Garden Made Special BBC 2 Thursday. Is tackling a small garden space. ( small part of programme) Might be interesting for you.

Yes I'd spotted that! Definitely going to watch it. They hardly ever cover small spaces in those programmes.

We were busy in the garden earlier, planting up the new bed . Transferred a clematis alpina, montana, pyracantha, hydrangea petioaris, and various perennials that had either been in pots for too long or in the wrong place somewhere else. Looking good but still bare..: looking forward to ordering a few more perennials to brighten that corner up in summer.
It's a bit of a shady spot though, I'd love to have salvia, penstemon and verbena borianesis, but think they'd need full sun?
Going to mix in a few logs too to make bits of it a bit woodland-y as we seem to have a graveyard of dead trees throughout the garden

It's been a lovely day here so I've dragged my boys up to my newly aquired allotment to dig up an elder tree, stump. It's only a half plot so I wanted to reclaim the space as I want to grow as.much veg/ flowers as possible. Hoping to plant some more seeds tomorrow.

I have compost , Sweet Peas seeds , nastursiam seeds and a couple of those seed planter thingies so I 'll get a move on.
I usually wait and plant too late after finding out the hard way not to plant too early and my plants dying .

They can go on a windowsill so I'll remember to check them.

We are getting quotes soon for garden landscaping >

We've had some lovely weather this weekend so have spent most of it working on the garden. Managed to dig a wonky apple tree out of our little patch of lawn. We've bought and potted up a new acer, added some snow drops and a fern to an empty spot that's needed some life. I planted a peony bulb last weekend and can already see it peaking through the soil which has made me ridiculously excited.

We also bought a Firepit and ordered a garden sofa. The sofa is out of stock until mid-April and I'm hoping it won't be delayed beyond that but won't hold my breath. The local garden centre said that manufacturing has been back on track for ages but they've been struggling with shipping delays. I'm dreaming of being able to use and enjoy the garden this summer. We have a dining table out there already but it's not really something you use to relax.

My sweet pea and coriander seedlings were on a windowsill but got completely infested with fungus gnats, they're everywhere so I've had to put them outdoors, might try them in the porch as they survived 2 nights.outside.

Great excitement here, I was poking about outside and found 2 pasque flowers and a tiarella that I thought were done for beginning to sprout.

So exciting when you find something that you thought was lost. I love Pasqueflower but they don’t seem to like my garden.

Especially when they were lockdown purchases that arrived too late to flower!

My sweet peas have finally started germinating! I brought them in to a warm windowsill, those in the porch and conservatory have not come up yet. Clearly it's still too cold at night under glass here. Going to see if I can sneak some more into DD's room to germinate on her windowsill.

Good work sweet peas!

Some hyacinths bulbs I only got in the ground in January have started coming up!

The cosmos seeds I sowed on Monday are going great guns and I have about 15 seedlings so far. Finally, two weeks after sowing, I also have a couple of catnip seedlings coming up too. I've never tried growing anything from seed before so I'm loving the (almost) instant gratification of the cosmos. The first seedling popped up after just 24 hours.