What have you done in the garden today? Part 2

[ThreeRingCircus]

A continuation of the last thread.

I love persicarias too @ComeIntoTheGardenMaud - we have loads of bistorta superba and taurus (plus another I'm not sure of the variety) elsewhere in the garden - and tbh @Bideshi anything is encouraged to go a bit mad here, lol - we need all the help we can get 😁

@ThreeRingCircus Blushing Turtle seems to be a popular choice - hopefully it will establish itself nicely here!

@BestIsWest it's definitely cooler here - today has been particularly chilly, so much so we actually lit one of the wood burners, albeit briefly, this evening! Never had to do that in July before.....

Today I enlisted DH's help - he's on 'holiday' aka decorating - to move a huge stoneware planter (complete with akebia) from our undercroft up to the newly planted area. This involved heaving said pot up ten stone steps. It was too large for my suggestion of the heavy duty sack truck, so brute force was called for. The akebia had to undergo a severe haircut as it was entangled amongst a wisteria. Hopefully it will survive the experience.

Popped out to hunt for interesting things to fill the gaps in the newly planted area but failed to be tempted by anything.

I'd been hoping to take some pics of the new planting in the sunshine today but as it remained dull/damp, I'm adding a couple from before they went in the ground and before we added the final pieces of reclaimed hard landscaping.

@LibertyLily II love that so much, and it’s right on trend with all the natural stone. Hard earned beauty though, sounds like tough work.

That is beyond gorgeous, LibertyLily! I’m not entirely sure which persicaria I’ve got. There’s Red Dragon and virginiana, but the others came from plant stalls and fetes where the plant identification is often a little erratic. I give my akebia regular haircuts because I planted it in the wrong place (rookie error) and it just grows more triffid like in response.

Biggest gardening job today was moving the last of the huge pots in the front garden. Luckily DH was able to enlist help, as this too would have crushed our heavy duty sack trolley. Another pot has blown over in the wind, so that will be a job for tomorrow.

That is absolutely beautiful. I'm very jealous!

@LibertyLily That is so very beautiful 😍

We harvested our first pink fir potatoes today! I was hoping the broad beans might be ready too but when I picked a pod to test, they were very tiny!

That looks lovely @LibertyLily.
We’re still away. I can’t believe how cold it is after the weeks of warm weather. We sat in the cottage this afternoon reading and looking out at the giant scabious outside the window waving in the wind. It’s going on my list of plants for the new border I plan to dig next year.

Thank you so much @BestIsWest @ComeIntoTheGardenMaud @Zebracat @ThreeRingCircus @catwithflowers - it makes all the hard work worthwhile to hear you approve our efforts 😊

As it was too wet to get on with the painting outside, yesterday we had a day off and went for a road trip in the Landy/picnic in the mountains. Stopped off on the way home to look in a salvage yard for garden related bits but came away empty handed. In the evening we did a small amount of weeding and dead-headed a few roses.

Today the last of the bamboos have finally gone in, one of many massive ferns has been relocated from the mini orchard and I've done more dead-heading. Sunny here but still not terribly warm.

Love scabious @BestIsWest but all ours - including the white ones in my 'not as white as I'd intended' bed were lost over last winter.

Away in Cambridge and missing my garden. However, an afternoon spent in Cambridge University Botanic Gardens gave me a substitute fix. I enjoyed all those plants I struggle to grow like santolina, perovskia, echinacea and great billowing swags of lavender and rosemary. Lots of covertable trees too which occupied DH who is a tree man. It's a very good botanic garden, I think. One of the best.
We were interested to see that Impatiens tinctoria, a statuesque and showy giant busy Lizzy from Uganda was given the protection of one of the beds between heated glasshouses. With us, despite being nearly 300 miles further north, we grow it without protection in the open garden. furthermore, our plants are half as big again with bigger leaves and flowers and longer spurs. The same plant but a different climate. We wouldn't consider it tender at all. West of Scotland, warm and wet, obviously suits it.

@LibertyLily we've got the beginnings of a white bed/border too! Had to work round the fact there was a very well established Magnolia (stellata, but I'd read they were compact and this one isn't) and a palm tree that grows everywhere here in the South.
And you gave a beautiful garden!

Just an hour's weeding/deadheading today. Itching toplant things but know I can't!

Most broad beans go from pointing upwards to hanging down when they are ready.

@MereDintofPandiculation I had no idea 😄. Thanks so much for that tip. (I'll be checking them every day now!!)

No 1037 in things my mother taught me about gardening

I don’t grow broad beans as imo they are such a faff for so little return ( I buy the frozen ones) and I have very limited space, but am tempted to grow some next year to watch for this.

Broad beans are one of the things I do find it worth growing for the taste. Fresh taste very different from frozen, and fresh broad beans from shops have often been picked too late, so the skins are tough If the little pug fastning the bean to its pod has gone black, the bean is past its best.

For general cooking, frozen beans are fine. Oyr meagre crop of fresh beans we eat like asparagus, on their own with brown bread and butter.

I love broad beans. My late Dad called them ffa (the welsh name) and would announce this time every year that ‘I have had a feed of ffa’ which would be a huge bowl of beans with just butter and bread.

I've finally finished my restoration on the bay tree/s! I'm so so pleased! It's been about four hours solid work in total, and probably another four hours spread out inbetween reassuring myself that yes, this is the right place to cut, no, you're not going to kill it, etc etc! All the dead twigs and medium branches are gone, and I've shortened one trunk considerably, there's so much more light in to the centre and top of it all now. The local blackbird is having an all you can eat buffet in and around it now. No nest I promise, I checked thoroughly before I even thought about starting. It doesn't look half bad at all, a little bit sparse on one side but green and leafy nonetheless.

I've also finally cut back a swathe of overgrown winter jasmine right next to the bays. Nothing massively special about that but it's been shoved to the bottom of my list so many times, it's just nice to have it done!

So next call for help - a large, fairly neglected spirea, again needs renovation pruning. Chop the whole lot by half? Or down to lowest budding nodes? It's about 4ft high, finished flowering, but many of the canes are only leafy at the last foot or so. Inside is fairly bare.

I didn't know this about Broad beans! Mine are still downward facing, but am checking every day.
I love home grown BBs. They always remind of my grandparents and picking them on a warm summers day, splitting them open and then eating the fluffy inside (which I think you aren't meant to do). The smell just takes me straight back.

Nothing much happening here, it’s too warm to plant plus we really need to get some fencing in first. The neighbour is replacing the boundary fence this month so I'm waiting to see how the two solitary shrubs I have on that side survive the ordeal.
I walked the garden this morning to try to get a feel for the future layout. I’m driving myself mad with it frankly. One very lopsided honeysuckle bush has come into fruit all of a sudden and the chokecherry is galloping away. Debating whether to keep one, both or neither. Probably depends on how they survive the trampling when the fence goes in.
The honeysuckle seems utterly indestructible, they’re supposed to be mounding 3ft shrubs but mine didn’t get the memo. I think someone cut it to the ground a few years back and it has regrown from a collection of suckers rather than one cohesive plant. If anyone has experience with these beasts I’d love to hear it.

Actually scrap that, a neighbour had told me it was a “northern honeysuckle bush” (Diervilla) and I never actually thought to check, I presumed she’d be more au fait with the common species here that me, it isn’t, it’s probably a Lonicera proper though I’m not sure which one.

So next call for help - a large, fairly neglected spirea, again needs renovation pruning. Chop the whole lot by half? Or down to lowest budding nodes? It's about 4ft high, finished flowering, but many of the canes are only leafy at the last foot or so. Inside is fairly bare. If it has lots of stems, you could try taking out the oldest at the base, up to one third of the total. Repeat next year and the year after.

Thank you @NorthernChinchilla! Our 'white' bed started out with good intentions (lots of lovely libertia, brunnera Betty Bowring, white irises, vinca Gertrude Jekyll, Japanese anemone Honorine Jobert to name but a few), but soon went off the beaten track when several of the digitalis Pam's Choice turned out to be bog standard pink ones and my three lollipop bay trees succumbed to last winter's cold snap because I didn't think to fleece them.

Fortunately the bay trees - whilst needing to be removed as they no longer provide the structure intended - can hopefully be saved in some format as a few signs of life remain, so, like @LostAtTheCrossRoad I plan to give them a haircut and keep hoping!

Talking of haircuts, apart from some watering the only gardening achievement yesterday was tidying up a rather nondescript small, weeping tree (I haven't a clue what it is, but it's one of the few things we inherited here) which is in a rather prominent position. I actually wish that had been lost as it doesn't bring a huge amount to the party where it is, but DH likes it so it stays for now.

I'm another one that loves broad beans although we've never grown them. This year we've only got runner beans and some gherkins in the courtyard raised beds. The rest are full of herbs plus a few of DH's favourite (lavender) and sweetpeas.

Today is a sunny one, but there's more painting planned - outside for DH, inside for me - so not sure what will get done in the garden...probably more dead-heading and there's some ornamental grasses and a yucca that need to go in the ground later perhaps.

@LostAtTheCrossRoad I love spirea, it has a really pretty and delicate flower, a real staple in the border. To add to what @MereDintofPandiculation has posted, spirea enjoys a good haircut and does tend to suffer from a lot of deadwood. Don't worry if it looks really drastic when you first thin it out, you'll be thinking OMG have I killed it! They're pretty bomb-proof especially if pruned at the right time, closer to Autumn. My spirea is inherited from the previous owners of our house, and has survived the Beast from the East, several floods and Storms with two names that I can't remember . I love how every Spring it comes up like old faithful, even after chopping it to half the height and spread and taking out 50% of the wood, not all in the same place but selectively around the plant.

I love reading everyone's updates 😄

Today the soil finally arrived for our new raised beds, so I built up one, planted some Salvia 'Hot Lips' (stupid name, lovely plant) and a slightly random load of bare root perennials (aster, echinacea, rudbeckia, ranunculus) that may or may not actually do anything but that were so cheap I'll take the chance.

Also moved a pretty pink hydrangea from a pot into the back of the bed as I am heartily sick of it constantly bring blown over in the wind. I've lost so many pots that way! However it now means there's a big gap by the front door where the pot once stood, so sadly I'm going to have to buy something lovely to fill the space (oh, what a shame).

It was boiling hot and I tried to get ds to help but he's yet to be converted to the joys of lugging soil around in 26 degree heat.

Ideally I'd do the other bed today but it's my birthday weekend so 'unfortunately' I have to go out to a fancy dinner and a hotel tonight then a family party tomorrow 😂Hoping for a big stash of garden centre vouchers as presents though!

Obviously that should read 'yesterday the soil arrived', not today!

It drives me nuts when it's sunny and dry all week then when the weekend starts we have rain most of the weekend. C'on weather fairy, how's that helpful, stop messing about!

I've got quite a lot I can do in the greenhouse like potting on some wallflowers ready for Spring., rocket, two types of basil and in between the showers plant out ranunculus which are busting out of several troughs (I've had to clear a space for them in the border).

grass cut and edging done yesterday so I suppose a drop of rain won't come amiss.