What have you done in the garden today? Part 2

[ThreeRingCircus]

A continuation of the last thread.

I think Toby Thingy is taking it over. Carol Klein had a rant at how it was never a woman.

I love deep reds, although I realised after I’d planted a lot here that they can make the garden feel quite sombre, especially in low light levels.

I am very fond of dear old Monty, but a few months ago gardening Twitter seemed convinced (possibly not on the basis of any solid information) that Adam was going to take over as main presenter.

Oh, cross post with Bideshi! The same Toby who did it previously and got the boot for (or so I heard) not being popular with the viewers? If I ruled the world, or just the BBC, Carol would be main presenter. I loved her series for Channel 5.

Adam's had some sort of mental health crisis,I heard. Recovering but he's scaled back. Hence the move to a smaller house and a period with few appearances. He seems to be back but I don't think he wants the big job.

Incidentally that Max and Meg is me. It's my phone and doesn't want to change so I'm stuck with it.

Yes, there was a lot of prurient speculation about why he’d left that lovely house and garden in Lincolnshire.

I twigged upthread there probably weren't two posters with wonderful repurposed dolphins

Everyone should have a repurposed dolphin.

I rather like the smaller scale garden, it’s closer to what most of us work with. We don’t ( in the main) have room for whole huge beds of onions or greenhouses full of tomatoes. The young presenters cram it all in as I tend to do. I love Monty and his gentle style of presenting but there is a limit to the number of times we need to be shown how to plant seeds. I like new design ideas and seeing how they can
fit in the smaller plot 🙂
Here’s a photo of my raised beds a few weeks ago; they are very full now!

Those are lovely!

I find Adam’s garden easier to relate to, simply because it’s closer in size to my patch. I like many of Monty’s planting combinations, but whereas he can devote a whole garden to it, I have to scale it down to one corner or a large pot!

Somehow, I find the annual cycle and the repetition from year to year far less irritating on GW than I do in magazines. Again, I guess it’s because watching Monty sow seeds is very calming. I gave up GW magazine, though, because although I don’t mind watching the same demonstration every year, I don’t want to read about it.

@daisychain01 those dahlias are stunning 😍. And the water lilies are lovely @Bideshi

I do love Monty. I agree that I'm very happy to watch him show how to take cuttings/sow seeds/prune roses time after time. I enjoy lots of other presenters too, especially Carol and Adam but Monty so gentle and calming. I love his writing style too. I hope he stays on our screens as chief presenter a bit longer.

My DH and I both have the dreaded SAD like Monty, The right amount of natural daylight is so essential for physical and mental wellbeing. I feel thankful that Monty has always been open about his MH challenges and esp SAD. Gardening has been an immense source of comfort for me. Getting out in the depths of winter raking leaves is the best therapy.

I still like to treat myself to the occasional copy of GW for all the sumptuous colour photos - normally when there's a section on greenhouses!

@Pottedpalm love your veg plot, beautifully organised. I'm tempted to do similar, probably next Spring. Either that or go on the waiting list for a section in our village allotment. Can't quite decide....

Thats a very attractive pond, i like the oblong shape@Bideshi we went to an Armed Forces Memorial Day event in a local woodland come crem, which had a lovely pond. The lilies were so thick they looked like a carpet. I'll try to post a photo if I can find it.

Lilies

I’ll miss Monty - none of the others really do it for me. And then there’s Nellie and Ned and Patti…
I found Longmeadow (it’s not really called that) very relatable to, not really because of size and style, but because he’s in the wet west and struggles with the same things as I do. And box blight.
The BBC team call him ‘the one-take wonder’ because when you seeing him ‘talking to you’ he really is. He hasn’t done it 8 times or had to adjust phrasing etc. He is pretty much what he appears to be.

@daisychain01 They look like the lotuses I’ve seen in China with not a chink of water visible. Mine need thinning but it’s a messy business.

If you have access to BBC Scotland (or it's probably on iPlayer) I recommend Beechgrove as a gardening programme. They have lots of smaller plots and allotments as well as the actual Beechgrove garden, and presenters with all sorts of different gardening styles and levels of experience.

Beechgrove is on iPlayer. If you watch a lot of GW on iPlayer, the algorithm buried deep within it will take you automatically to Beechgrove. According to my friend. Ahem.

Oh dear@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn. Despite being in Scotland, I really dislike Beechgrove and never watch it because it annoys me so much. When they came to film here they were so ignorant and so uncurious - only interested in doing the obvious and going for the absolute cliches. They were in an out in 2 hours, whereas GW and similar usually do a day and a half. Budget I suppose but engagement doesn't take longer than apathy. Nobody knows better than I do that there's a knack to informing whilst keeping your audience engaged (I wrote for the Daily Record on gardening - quite the Glenda Slag of horticulture!)but Beechgrove seems always seems to take the line of least resistance. But it's been years and it sounds from what you say that it's improved. I should give it another try, perhaps.
I do understand the GW with Monty must feel a bit elitist, but I don't see why it should be. His garden is divided into small subsections and the plants he grows are available to anyone online: not even from upmarket nurseries but from places like Ebay. My daughter grows aeoniums thanks to Monty and that's been an entree into gardening for her. I suppose that somewhat patrician air of his rubs a few people up the wrong way but there are other presenters on GW. In fact they've obviously gone in for box-ticking in recent years - 1 woman of colour, 1 disabled gardener, 1 vegetarian feminist with an allotment and so on.
Anyway - a miserable day here so I doubt the open day will do much for charity. Not that bothered to be honest. I have made cake and will deliver it to the village hall shortly. DH is hoping it will come back.

Oh, that's disappointing, Bideshi. They do seem to bring in new presenters quite regularly though so perhaps a different lot?

I like that they always seem to have a couple of quite newly qualified people who are still doing a fair bit of trial and error - which is very my non-expert approach to my own garden. I can see it wouldn't work as well for a viewer who really knows what they're doing and has proper plans, though. And it probably helped that I discovered it during their lockdown series with everyone just in their own gardens - or flats with houseplants - and it was all make-do, unplanned and personal.

I really should try to start watching GW again! I got out of the habit when Geoff Hamilton died so tragically early and suddenly and then didn't get back in the habit. I've very much enjoyed some of Monty Don's series though.

Not a bad day. I went off this morning along our twisty and somewhat mountainous road with a strawberry cream sponge and a carrot cake in the back of the car to deliver them for teas in the valley hall. We don't have a village hall but our social life is along the valley so there's this classic corrugated iron village hall in the middle of nowhere that's actually in use all the time. I did have to reassemble the cream sponge somewhat when I got there.
Anyway, despite a dull and rather cold day that threatened rain, we had more than 60 visitors and they will have made good money on the teas. Better than I expected. Garden looked nice enough but it so needs sun and a bit of warmth now. Anyway, that's my yellow book openings done until next spring.
@BinturongsSmellOfPopcorn it's very seldom that I see a garden, no matter how small it is or how neophyte the gardener when I don't note something I can borrow, use, or be inspired by. Everybody's got something to offer. Thanks to pictures upthread now I'll have another look at dahlias and consider how I can use vegetables more creatively. Sometimes it can be a plant combination, or something that challenges my preconceived garden snobbery, or just some random spleenworts growing in a wall, but there's always something. I love looking at other peoples gardens.

I love looking at any garden. The very dull ones are particularly interesting to me because I think what I would do if it were mine. I recently visited someone with a plastic lawn, plastic border plants and aplastic living wall. I’ve been repopulating that garden ever since, so wish Id noted the orientation.

They were like a carpet, and each flower was so perfect @MaxandMeg

I'm glad you had a good show of visitors, 60+ on a day like today made it all worthwhile @Bideshi

It has been G.R.I.M. all day here, rained almost incessantly! This is the third weekend that has been almost a complete write-off. This time of year if the weather pattern doesn't pick up, it almost feels like the summer is written off.

Today I retrieved 4 planters I'd made up for King Charles' coronation weekend in May that were decorating our village sign (over the road from our house). They looked bedraggled and sorry for themselves. It shows what an awful spring and summer we've had - I'd planted them up in late March and kept them in the greenhouse, thinking by end of April they'd be ready to put outside. I had to keep them inside until 4 days before the event, it was so cold, windy and wet. Here we are in July and no change. They did look lovely in full bloom - nothing particularly exotic but hard workers / a bit bombproof : blue lobelia, bright cerise, purple and white petunia and lemon and purple pansy. All rather regal for the King and Queen.

I spent this afternoon in the warmth of the greenhouse, 'refurbishing' and consolidating the 'best survivors' trimming and deadheading, refreshing the compost, and then a feed of Tomorite. They actually looked quite presentable so DH and I put them back over the road. I bet the dog walkers of the village are going to look twice in the morning and wonder if a miracle has happened since the last time they walked by 😊

night all!