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

Whether they’re naff or not, I’m loyal to my windowboxes! They help me squeeze more plants into my very small front garden (although I need to remove the violas which didn’t return my love and promptly expired).

I've found my people! It is interesting what's considered naff and what isn't, don't you think? My mother is definitely on the 'windowboxes are naff' side. I didn't like hanging baskets before I had to do them for work, but now I've got quite into them.

Hmm. Obviously I’m not impartial here, but even if (moot point) we accept windowboxes as naff, I think that’s only because of what they’re made of or what’s in them. They are not, I would posit, naff in and of themselves.

Speaking of judging and evaluating naffness, I find it interesting that (say) gardening social media will acclaim a plant when it’s still quite obscure and not widely available, but will denounce it as naff once it’s been propagated en masse and sold by garden centres to the hoi polloi. I rest my case on verbena bonariensis.

Yes and no.

The hedgerow guelder rose has quite delicate flowers something like small lace cap hydrangeas and then wonderful bright red berries later. The 'snowball bush' is a sterile cultivar which has distinctive pom-pom flowers and no berries. Personally I much prefer the former but it's the latter we've got (come to think, another of DHs picks, his parents had a big bush of it) ...ours gets badly infested with viburnum beetle so I periodically hack it back.

That is so on the money!

There is also a class element, isn't there?! There's that gentle snobbery about window boxes and hanging baskets, because they are what you have when you do not have rolling acres of manicured grounds.

I'm always fascinated that my boss, who refers to absolutely everything by its proper Latin name, does not extend this courtesy to bedding plants, which are resolutely English and usually nicknamed ('busies' for Busy Lizzies, etc.).

Thank you! That is really useful. I guess that's why I didn't know the name.

Window boxes don't suit all houses but are wonderful on others. Picture an alpine village type of house in summer....

..did anyone not visualise window boxes over spilling with scarlet geraniums ?

I agree with you that you need some kind of harmony with the house. I live in a terraced cottage, and I can get away with very frou-frou windowboxes in a way I might not if it were a different sort of house. But I think the scarlet geraniums thing is also to do with what's considered foreign, exotic, and therefore acceptable, and what is worryingly like your nan's semi in Eastbourne.

(Not my snobbery, but I think the snobbery I come across quite a lot.)

The lace cap guelder rose also has lovely amber autumn leaf colour so gives very good value through the year.

And lovely red berries. Another of the names is 'cramp-bark tree,' because people thought it could help with period pain.

I have a 'manger' type window box outside my front window - it's full of parsley and chives, so I can just lean out with a pair of scissors when I'm making an omlette! It's sheltered by the house so everything grows all year round out there.

Today I pruned some roses, I left them until the birds had had the last of the rosehips, and because some of the thorns are half an inch long and they are brutal to deal with. Also scatted out some old lavender, bit of weeding and preparing to put up another piece of fencing, when I can get round to borrowing my daughter's drill!

Sadly, my viburnum opulus - which has long since gone to the great compost heap in the sky - was the sterile variety.

I agree completely, SarahAndQuack, about the class element. Anything that the masses can buy cheaply and easily in a garden centre is automatically beyond the pale, in the eyes of some. But then, I speak as someone with a windowbox full of begonias because they thrive in my garden’s darkest corner.

scarlet geraniums

Years ago, I wouldn't have dreamed of having scarlet geraniums, but I started liking them when a woman I gardened for, and had become fond of, had a lot and I began to appreciate them. Then I saw a pencil drawing of a small potted geranium on the floor in the doorway of a brick potting shed and was immensely taken with the leaves, so since then I've had geraniums of one sort or another every summer. There's one called 'Lord Bute' which is gorgeous.

It interests me how our tastes change over time. There are plants I once loved and now don't look at twice, but the only one I've never liked is Busy Lizzie. It's insipid and watery looking and whilst they're good doers, I can't see any other appeal.

https://www.sarahraven.com/products/pelargonium-lord-bute

It's funny about plants being 'beyond the pale' isn't it. When I first work in a garden I ask the owners if they have any 'banned colours' and for those who do, it's almost always yellow and orange. Then there's a lovely old chap I work for who has a teeny garden and in summer he crams in every colour he can get hold of, which he refers to as 'rather fun'. It's glorious and after my session we both sit a while and gaze at the brightness.

For myself, I like lots of colours, and all at once, and imagine that my taste is no doubt 'beyond the pale', but I honestly don't care and revel in the brightness.

My garden has all the colours, but they seem to come in waves. Now it's all white and yellow, but in a month or two all the bluey purple flowers will start, then the red, orange and pink later in the summer, with some late purple for autumn and back to white/yellow for the winter.
My planting "strategy" is to plant a load of stuff and what lives stays.
I don't care what's naff, I just make sure that there's something a passing bee could visit any day of the year.

Today I planted some spring flowers in tubs and in cold frame under fleece and started clearing out the shed!!

Yes! 'No yellow' is the commonest comment I've had, too.

Although, there is a rather wonderful woman - with a very posh voice - who always orders 'vulgar colours, darling - all clashing, please!' And they do look wonderful. I'm not sure there is so much distance between that and all the tasteful Sarah Raven, purple/lime green/apricot, which has become so trendy.

@GertrudeJekyllAndHyde, there's a begonia I absolutely love, that's a wonderful orange colour with cascading pointed flowers. I don't so much enjoy the little white/pink/red ones you get, but there are some that are really joyful.

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast - that's such a lovely story, and such a lovely memory. Gardens are so emotional, and so nostalgic, aren't they? I can't look at a pelargonium without thinking of my lovely grandpa, who grew them (and that's probably true of 50% of people my age!). Lord Bute is gorgeous - there's a very snob garden near me (Jackson's Wold) that had it looking very nice in an elegant pot this year. And my mum grows what she calls 'Not The Marquess of Bute,' because years ago, a friend gave her a slip of a dark-red pelargonium, with the advice it was 'Not the Marquess of Bute but similar'. In the pre-internet days when you couldn't so easily research these things, mum assumed there was a bona fide geranium called 'Marquess of Bute' and she'd got something that wasn't quite the true specimen. I suspect her friend had meant to indicate she was just muddle about the name. But I like 'Not the Marquess'.

SarahAndQuack - that sounds very like the begonia I have!

I hanker after Lord Bute every year, but it (he) seems always to be one of the first to sell out. I’m not confident that all the other fancy pelargonia I bought last year are going to survive the winter.

I'm not on any SM apart from here - are hay baskets classed as naff or naice? - confession, Ive got one on either side of our gate.

Caveat: no manicured lawns or David Salisbury orangery (note Orangery= naice, conservatory = naff).

My planting "strategy" is to plant a load of stuff and what lives stays.
I don't care what's naff, I just make sure that there's something a passing bee could visit any day of the year.

The perfect strategy. (By which I mean, exactly what I do. )

I planted some potted crocus. I had planted lots of bulbs in the lawn in autumn but realised I had another patch where crocus would work.

None of the bulbs I planted in the lawn have sprouted yet, are they especially late? They were planted in November - 80 crocus (mixed) and 100 chionodoxa.

I also potted up 5 supermarket bare root plants, 2 roses, a blueberry, a deutzia and a lilac. They were £2.50 each and I'm sure won't all survive but I have a lot of space to fill (and have spent a hairy fortune so far). Even if only 2 survive/thrive I figure I'm quids in.

Absolutely desperate to get going but I'm in NE Scotland so standing on my hands/seceteurs. Although should definitely be mulching in the meantime.

It's really amazing how much is sprouting/budding already. Especially since a week ago we were a foot deep in snow.

I'm a little south of you and only a very few lawn crocus are visibly up. But if I do a hands and knees inspection there are actually loads - just at the stage where they are almost indistinguishable from the grass.

I’m about to do a very quick inspection before going out for the day. Hoping to see signs of life from the witch hazel …

I put my witch hazel in a pot yesterday and got one packet of sweet peas sown.
The former is in full bloom with small buds on the new growth beyond the flowering part which I assume is normal, it just looks a bit odd on a small plant.

Thanks all... sounds like perhaps it'll be happier in a potful of ericaceous in the sun rather than planted in a shadier location and you’ll be able to move it around to see where it’s happy.

@SarahAndQuackI know it as Guelder Rose or Wayfaring Tree (which are lovely names). They’re not the same. V opulus is Guelder Rose, Wayfaring Tree is V lantana.