Gardeners' Chat

[MmePoppySeedDefage]

Chat. For gardeners. About gardening, but we can go off piste and chat about things like non-gardening clothes, or food or whatever, without being told off

I worked in a garden centre in the 90s and loved it. There was me and two other women and we spent our days 'pricking out' seedlings and chatting in a giant polytunnel. 'Whack 'em in, girls, whack 'em in!'.

That's a gorgeous space, Mavis. Although it doesn't look an easy one, with the slopes.

Takes macman at least an hour to mow it all - alas I am far too weak and dainty to push the lawnmower around, tried it once, 24 years ago.

Would it be worth shrinking the beds a bit so you can use a ride-on mower?

You could get a robot mower. (But putting a guide wire round all those edges might take most of the year.)

It’s too steep for all but the most tractor-like (and expensive!) ride-ons, we really wanted to get one when we moved here. The photo distorts the extent of the slope.

How about getting someone else to cut it?

Or a herd of guineapigs.

I’d like that, but for as long as macman does it for free I’ll wait till he’s dead or incapacitated.

It used to be ALL grass, so for the first couple of years “we” just mowed paths and let the unmowed bit go wild, long grass. Eventually the wild bits turned to weeds, nettles, brambles, docks, so we put down a load of black weed suppressing membrane on the unmowed bits then gradually, over quite a few years, filled up all the membraned bits with plants and compost.

Did you get many ant nests when the grass was long, Mavis? Fair enough about macman cutting it while he can, though I do hope he does the edges.

Not that I’ve noticed. We sometimes get them in the low stone walled beds, or right by the house on the cobbled bit.

My main place of work is Ant Central when the grass is long. Maybe it's the soil, which is clay over brash. Dunno. Now that the ground has dried out the ants are especially busy near the surface.

That’s a beautiful space @MavisMcMinty

Thank you Mavis: that is so gorgeous.

We went to Wisley today, to see the wisteria tunnel. From a bit of a distance, it looks stunning, although when you're actually in it, because it's quite new. there are lots of gaps: you still got the scent though. Quite a lot of people just seemed to be taking photos and not walking in it, which was a shame because they missed out on the beauty of the racemes against the blue sky And the scent.

The rest of the garden was gorgeous and it was not very busy (as we went to get there for 9 o'clock). There was a wisteria growing up a huge tree in the woodland. It was beautiful. I then spent the rest of the day in the garden, planting things in warmish sunshine, into damp earth, with the birds tweeting - my idea of bliss.

My holiday job as a student was in the restaurant at Wisley 🥰

I'd love to go back to Wisley - haven't been there since 1986

When I first joined RHS about 15 years ago, Wisley was a nice garden, reasonably well maintained.

Now I think it's a gorgeous garden, very well-maintained. There's one small garden that used to remind me of ours, partly because of the planting but mostly because there were always quite a lot of weeds, like our garden: now it's immaculate - I wonder if they got a huge legacy... but it's been dramatically improved everywhere and is being kept up to.

The new Hilltop vegetable garden and surrounding area are really special. We're lucky to live quite close, so go about once a month.

I’m just 10 miles from Rosemoor and used to go a lot, joined the RHS and everything, but Covid/lockdowns got me out of the habit, appointments had to be made, couldn’t just turn up on my way back from the Simply Food in Torrington. So no longer a member and haven’t been since 2019… really must remedy that.

Our "local" RHS garden is Harlow Carr. Love it. We used to go at least once a month. Also, whenever we went down to London to visit friends/family, we'd try to pop to Wisley as well, fabulous place.

But after we got rid of our car, it became more of a mission to get to all these places (we're in an excellent car club, but it just adds that little extra hump to the process). And then like @MavisMcMinty having to also book slots to go, and the annoyance if your slot was on a bad weather day... All these things together just meant we'd lost the spontaneity of "Oh, weather looks great today, let's just hop in the car and go to Harlow Carr!"

We cancelled our membership in 2021.

Now in t'north there is also RHS Bridgewater, it's still a bit new and shiny but I am eager to see it.

I think we might renew our RHS membership next year.

Our new bees arrived yesterday. They’re really lovely. So docile (buckfast). So yesterday which was supposed to be about Tidying around the pond, became all about touching up the paint on the hive, sowing some wildflower seed around it etc.

We’re not near any RHS gardens but I’m not far from Aberglasney which is beautiful and I’m a member there so go often. The tulips there were wonderful this year as always.

I envy your bees Wednesdaysplaits wish we had a bigger garden so we could have some.

Oh, I'd love to have bees. I'd really want native black bees though, and they're not exactly a beginner type. And we're a bit too close to the neighbours.

We have tadpoles, but hopefully the orfe will be too tiny to eat them. Green tench are totally vegetarian, but unfortunately totally invisible.

Our "local" RHS garden is Harlow Carr. Love it. We used to go at least once a month. Agree about that, but they’re too busy reinventing themselves. I was really sorry that they got rid of the historical gardens.

I also wish that the things in the garden could be found in the garden centre. I told them that once and got a response to the effect that it would be nice but they were far too busy trying to attract young people.

Harlow Carr was deliberately chosen by the Northern Horticultural Society because it was frost-prone waterlogged clay, so very much like my garden. So if it grows there, it’s worth me trying. Probably shouldn’t have tried the Vitis coignetiae though. It’s in at least 8 trees now.

I've got mixed feelings about keeping bees. We had a few colonies for a while and it was fascinating and very enjoyable, but a couple of things came up for us. First, whilst they would produce an excess, we became increasingly aware that any honey we took had to be replaced by sugar syrup and manufactured supplements, so not the Good Stuff the bees had made. Even when they still had plenty of supplies the bees went for the syrup, rather than the honey they'd made. Then there was the proliferation of bee keepers. I know someone who has 15 colonies, which makes me wonder what forage the wild bees have left available to them. I'm not criticising anyone who does keep bees, I just realised it wasn't for me.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/