What have you done in the garden today? Part 3

[ThreeRingCircus]

The old thread was filling up so I've created a new one!

Link to old thread: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/gardening/4823202-what-have-you-done-in-the-garden-today-part-2?reply=128367673

Oh, I love crabapples! I have 'gorgeous' which has big red fruits that look like cherries, and beautiful blossom. If I had another one I'd have Veitch's Scarlet. John Downie makes really nice crabapple jelly, though.

We inherited an apple tree with the house, which the kind people at Brogdale identified for us as Jonagold. We’ve never much cared for the apples (prejudiced against their Golden Delicious forebears) but, come to think of it, the crop has become much more prolific since we planted another apple tree in the garden.

I have crab apples Golden Hornet and Red Sentinel in pots. Neither is doing very well. I suspect Golden Hornet needs to move to a sunnier spot and Red Sentinel may need repotting. The crop this year has been feeble.

The crop this year has been feeble My apples have been feeble this year. Suspect it's a combination of early drought followed by miserable summer. About 50lb compared with the usual 150-200lb. We'll have finished them all by Christmas.

I'm having increasing problems with the blackbirds. They used to just go for the Worcesters but this year they've even gone for the Cornish Aromatic, which is beyond the pale.

Medlars, pears and quince OK though. That's the thing about gardening - because you usually grow a variety of crops, you're not completely sunk if one fails completely.

Funnily enough, we have two small apple trees, neither is taller than me. One produced two apples this year, the other around 70! Neither are particularly tasty specimens so we’ve happily left them to the birds - and squirrels. We spotted one squirrel running along the back fence carrying a whole apple.

Quinces though, ours is pathetic and has never fruited in 20 years.

I don’t weigh the apple crop (perhaps I should). The Jonagold was feeble this year, while the ‘family’ tree from Woolworth’s was prolific until it dropped nearly all its fruit in the hot, dry weather. I haven’t counted the pea-sized pomegranates but I doubt there’s more than one!

Oh I hadn't even thought about what variety of crabapple! I'm not sure I'm bothered about making crabapple jelly, so am happy for the birds to eat them. Ours is very much a nature/wildlife garden - all our cherries get eaten by the birds.
This year I've planted a plum tree & an apricot in a pot. It would be lovely to get a decent crop, but we get lots of berries at least from our blackberry hybrid, blueberries & strawberries.

Haven't been around here much as too busy gardening. 100 Allium 'Purple Sensation' planted. 50 Narcissus'Thalia' in the white border, 100 crocuses (tommies) and a handful of anemone robinsoniana 'Blue Eyes'. Much ground elder removed in the process.

I was casting a jaundiced eye on the ground elder growing the crown of a rose 'Constance Spry' which was one of the first of the Austin roses. It's a pretty thing but it only flowers once. It's also on the corner of my white border where it joins a pergola, and it's pink- very pink. It was one of the first things I planted when I started the garden her so it must be 30 years old. Anyway, what with the ground elder and the pinkness I decided to move it - complete impulse. After much grunting, two big forks and a pinch bar I got it out and into a stock bed. Minus an overflowing bucket of those bright white strappy ground elder roots. It may survive or may not. I don't believe in hanging onto things at all costs. Good gardening is being prepared to be ruthless and edit, I think.

There's an incredible amount to do in the garden. I haven't even started on the big borders yet. The house is full of scented and Unique pelargoniums, a lemon tree and a banana, all overwintering wherever I can fit them in. Other stuff - cannas, brugmansia, dahlia and salvia are in the poly tunnel taking their chances. DH has wrapped the tree ferns in his fern garden.

Now I need to clearway the bedding away and plant hundreds tulips in the big Cretan pots and in the Perverse Parterre. But there's nothing so good as being out in the garden on just the right kind of autumn day, the sort that smells of leaf mould and the slight sugariness of changing leaves.

Good to see you again, Bideshi. These days, thsnks to age and infirmity , I find that any sizeable digging job in the garden entails a great deal of grunting and language unbecoming a lady.

There’s lots of aesthetic choices! Weeping or standard, green or purple leaves, yellow apples or red ones, etc

I was casting a jaundiced eye on the ground elder growing the crown of a rose 'Constance Spry' which was one of the first of the Austin roses. It's a pretty thing but it only flowers once. Beautiful scent, rather spicy, not the straightforward usual rose scent

There’s lots of aesthetic choices! Weeping or standard, green or purple leaves, yellow apples or red ones, etc

And blossom colour - 'apple blossom' or deep pink. I've got a Rudolph which is the latter.

@MereDintofPandiculation Yes it's lovely and I won't lose it. I'll find a better place. And in fact it split into 2 as I lifted it so I'll have a pair.
I have 'Susan Williams-Ellis', 'Lichfield Angel' and the ground cover white 'Kent' in that border and I need one more repeat-flowering white or nearly-white. Looking at 'William and Catherine' but the name puts me off. Don't like to feel manipulated by rose names. I'm inconsistent though. Couldn't bring myself to buy a rose called something like 'Loving Memory' but was drawn to 'Vanessa Bell' and Nye Bevan' when scrolling through the Austin list despite the fact that neither are ideal here. Oh well....
I have room for a smallish hydrangea and am dithering between 'Runaway Bride' and 'Fireworks'. I dislike the paniculatas so it'll be one of the smaller lacecaps.

My crabapples are all 'Golden Hornet'. I wish I'd chosen red ones.

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde I am old but (touch wood, unberufen a hundred times over)not yet too infirm Except when it suits me...

My crabapples are all 'Golden Hornet'. I wish I'd chosen red ones. My mother had a Golden Hornet, and it was a wonderful cropper (and the birds didn't recognise it as edible, so the apples stayed on all winter). But pure plain yellow is a bit brash and boring. The red on yellow flush on John Downie is far prettier in my opinion. In the same way as Wayfaring Tree looks better when its fruits are half ripe, and you have green, red and black in the same bunch, than when everything is a uniform red. Or that giant red Crocosmia that everyone grows, which has a phase when its seedpods have a traffic-lights effect of green at the base, yellow in the middle, and orangey-red at the top.

I have a vague memory that Golden Hornet are what His Majesty has at Highgrove. I’ve got mine because I won it in a raffle. It was magnificent in its first year.

I probably said before that I can’t buy some plants because of their dreadful names (Japanese anemone ‘Frilly Knickers’ being the most egregious). I’m waiting for standard Vanessa Bell to come back into stock, as a late birthday present to myself.

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde What a great piece of self-gifting.
I really coveted standard Vanessa Bells, and thought long and hard but I just can't think of the right place to put them. I have 3 yew 'shapes' in my white border and if I didn't have those I could have done a row of standard roses. But the yews are good and give the whole thing a bit of 'bottom' which the roses wouldn't.Plenty of room in my big borders but they're just too wet for roses. I'll go on thinking.

My Vanessa (so to speak) is going in the front garden, where everything is in pots and I want something to add height. I’m a late convert to yellow; I’ve never really used it in the garden, but was given Charles Darwin and since then have added a few more touches of it so he doesn’t look so isolated.

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde I'm developing a yellow bed too - so far it has a white/yellow honeysuckle growing up the back wall; evening primroses & David Austin Tottering By Gently. Also has a choiysa ternata with yellow hued leaves.

I love 'Tottering by Gently'. Paeonia mlokesewitchii @APurpleSquirrel ? Kniphofia 'Wrexham Buttercup?' I'd love to do a yellow border.

How do kniphofias do for you, Bideshi? They’re hanging on doggedly here but I can tell they’re not very happy.

Intruiged by the name, I googled 'tottering by gently' ... very pretty and the hitherto unknown to me cartoons as a bonus

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/tottering-competition--123075002308504638/

And the yellow Crocosmias

Kniphofias on the whole do well. Some I've had for years. But I think on reflection they either fizzle out after the first winter or they're mine for life. Lots of things are like that I think, I think. Slightly tender when young but once they've acclimatised they can be classed as fully hardy.

We do actually have a Kniphofias in another part of the garden, but it's a more orange/red variety. We've actually just moved it out of a pot (which it's been in for over a decade) into the ground - this will be its first winter in the ground, so hoping it'll survive. It's never really thrived in the pot.

For the last couple of years, I’ve gone out and taken photos from the same spots around the garden. So far, the main conclusion is that the garden this year looks remarkably the same as it did the same time last year, and the year before that. So much for “the leaves are staying on the trees-a lot later this year”

Ooh. It’s getting very lively on the thread about Monty retiring (or not) from GW!