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

@MereDintofPandiculation yes, I think I will challenge it with them.

@Bideshi 1200 bulbs!!! Every year???

Yes@user78262102928 . Tulips aren't reliable enough for a second good year here, though we do recycle them into grass. We open to the public so there are certain standards to aspire to (though we're not particularly well-known as an open garden.) I occasionally do hyacinths in the formal bit but it'll probably be tulips again this year. I do love them.

Yes@user78262102928 . Tulips aren't reliable enough for a second good year here, though we do recycle them into grass. We open to the public so there are certain standards to aspire to (though we're not particularly well-known as an open garden.) I occasionally do hyacinths in the formal bit but it'll probably be tulips again this year. I do love them.

Laughing at Bideshi’s mention of plants’ squalid nether regions. So many plants have them.

I haven’t done very much gardening as I went to the Gardeners’ World autumn fair. It was helpful to hear Adam Frost’s ideas on how to work with peat-free compost. Came home and potted up some verbascum seedlings.

A question: my sambucus nigra is too big and creating too much shade. I prune it every spring but am tempted to go much harder next year and (pretty much) reduce it to a stump, in the hope it will sprout from the base. A brilliant idea or the kiss of death?

Where I grow bulbs I also have shallow rooted spready plants like phlox, camomile and London Pride to grow them through, neither type of plant seems to mind the company and it keeps the ground covered with vertical interest.
No idea if that's a thing but it works for my garden.

That sounds good - a nice alternative to the lovely but ubiquitous forget-me-nots or wallflowers. I use London pride to cover the surface in pots containing trees. It’s an underrated plant.

London Pride was a staple in the 50s along with yellow loosestrife, Shasta daisies, pillar box red Pelargoniums as a bedding plant, Nasturtiums. None of them has come back into fashion yet.

Here in France the pillar box pelargoniums are everywhere. I'm almost tempted as they look so stunning against the lime rendered houses.

Oh indeed, MereDint. I was given pretty much all of those from my parents’ garden when I started the garden here. I quickly got rid of the London Pride (and the yellow loosestrife) because in the border it’s very meh but I had a change of heart when I saw it used in a huge pot. The setting of the rosettes of leaves in a round pot is very harmonious (to me at least). Perhaps - like dahlias and hydrangeas - it’s overdue another 10 minutes of fame?

And go for it, Alison. It was roadside plantings in France that awakened my interest in hydrangeas.

Talking of "squalid nether regions" I noticed my rambling rose is looking very dismal at the moment, with great expanses of leggy bare stems on show. Just wondering if that's how they all go (it's about five years old) or whether some drastic pruning might help. Any rose experts??

Had a lovely pootle in the garden yesterday. Did one of my favourite tasks, which is pulling all the brown leaves off my Torbay Palm tree (Cordyline Australis). Looks so pristine and neat afterwards.

I was there! I felt very unprepared amongst the folding trollies and bags for life that appeared from nowhere. Fortunately I was very restrained and just bought a couple of little things………

I did do a mushroom workshop though and am now hoping to find a friendly coffee shop with a kilo of freshly used coffee grounds to spare .

Ooh, Viques! We should devise a secret MN signal - a jaunty wave of a trowel, perhaps - for such events in future. Even though I took my folding trolley (bought in my previous hour of need at Hampton Court) I was also very restrained. I bought a hippeastrum bulb and an ice cream.

Our local coffee shop practically begs people to take away their coffee grounds. I used to get them by the trug-full to use as mulch, until I read that they deter germination, so although that was great for the weeds it was less good for the aquilegias and geraniums.

Sambucus nigra. Chop it down then feed it. It'll take any amount of pruning and be all the better for it. I am the Lizzie Borden of shrub pruning but I am right about sambucus.

Excellent! Thank you, Bideshi. The Lizzie Borden treatment is exactly what it’ll get in the spring.

Haha my apologies!

We scarified the grass, and it’s gone from lush green to dry-looking brown 😱Not sure what we’ve done wrong there.

You took out the lush green moss. What remains is grass but not green grass yet. Now it's not competing with moss it should green up next time it rains.

Not sure if it would be moss yet though. I completely agree that it normally would, but this was (genuinely good quality) turf that was only laid three months ago. I didn’t see any moss in it, but lots of short straw-like grass - shorter than what we were cutting it to.

Grass always looks a bit shit after scarifying as all the sideways grass that knits it together gets "combed" upwards, showing the gaps. Once the sun's off it, give it a good water and don't judge it too harshly for at least a week.

Thank you, I will try not to worry 😊

I have another grass related question (I’ve never had a lawn before). Can I plant bulbs like snowdrops and crocus under the lawn, or will they cause damage? I have seen it in parks, so assume it works OK?

Yes you can, bulb roots are below grass roots, but you need to not mow the bulb leaves while they're green which means the bulby bit of grass can end up quite long by the time the bulbs die back.

@user78262102928 we planted daffodils in an area of our garden where there is a group of trees and accept that the grass will just get longer and longer up until around June when we strim it all back. The grass looks very brown for about 4 weeks but soon recovers.

snowdrops and crocus likewise - we mow round them, they have normally died back by April/May before the grass really grows strongly but it looks nice to have them naturalised and a bit "messy" for a while. By May I'm fed up of the messiness and glad to get my lawn back

Last Spring I dug up a lot of the snowdrop clumps as they do get congested, and split them up and replanted them "in the green" spread them around the outside of a willow tree.

I also bought a further 300 singles and doubles to boost the coverage - they came from Parker's (online) on special offer. So it will be nice to see if they come up well in Spring, although I'm preparing myself for a big disappointment as sometimes in Year 1 after disturbing them, they don't always flourish, Year 2 can be a lot better, when they're fully settled.