What have you done in the garden today Part 4 Spring 2024.

[MereDintofPandiculation]

What have you done in the garden today? What went well? What surprises have you had? What could have gone better?

I managed to strim part 2 of the grass, move some pots and a table. Also a very large pot of bay that had rooted through the pot, now against the wall to start screening as we had to clear a load of stuff as was so overgrown.

There’s so many things in pots still from old garden but have to clear out some space as borders are full of crocosmia, Japanese anenomes and ivy. The greenhouse which was here when we came needs mending and sorting still and there’s loads of cutting back to be done which I think will take all year at this rate.

Hello, after 3 years I have finally got my gardening mojo back and have started wresting the garden in earnest.
Today I have:
cut back the buddleia,
trimmed the willow and woven it into 3 small trees,
finally potted the agapanthus I split 2 days ago
potted some cuttings from the coralburst crab apple (no idea if this will work)

shattered

Planted some crocosmia bulbs. Took two lavenders out of their pots and put them in the ground. Topped up the soil on the olive and bay tree pots. Built half of the new raised bed. Bit of weeding and picking up dead leaves.

So much industry! I’m hoping to get outside tomorrow to do the jobs I couldn’t do today. I may have bought a dahlia I don’t need today, because I couldn’t resist going for a rummage in Poundland.

Tidied up my polytunnel which has become a dumping ground (side eyes DH). Sown lots of seeds both in the garden and in the polytunnel.

Tomatoes are ready to pot on but they can wait as tomorrow I'm having a day off and going to RHS Bridgewater as a treat. The sun may even shine!

It's been siling it down all day so I've been indoors looking at packets of seeds.

I have not been gardening the last two days but DD has, her first paid gardening work! To be clear, not my garden rather a paying client, laying a hedge. Seemed very happy despite the wind and the rain.

Good for your daughter, Doug, I hope she enjoys it all and doesn't get punctured too much.

I've laid a few hedges and it's good work, if a bit stabby here and there.

Ooooh, didn't realise it was a stabby job. But yes, good for her, to be paid to do something she enjoys.

There's usually a lot of hawthorn and blackthorn in the hedgerows. Working around the thorns can become almost meditative. Zen via hedgelaying. Who knew?

A few hedges have recently been laid where we are, one by a young man, and it's great to see it being taken up again, especially given the dire state of so many hedgerows that have been flailed into submission and are full of gaps. Once you notice that you see it everywhere.

It's very sad seeing a flail-cut hedgerow. They look awful!

One of my favourite things is selling bare-root hedging when someone wants to plant a native hedge. It is such a lovely thing to do.

I have not got into my own garden today, but I did buy a lovely Judas tree (circus siliquastrum), which brings back such good memories - my grandparents had a mature tree, and I remember being amazed by the way the pink flowers blossomed against the black trunk, while the leaves were tiny or not yet out. I grew this particular tree from a four-inch plug, and bought it when it was five feet tall, so it also feels nice to know it's really mine.

Finished the tiered part of the new raised bed, but ran out of topsoil to fill it with.
Ordered a Sunset apple tree and a New Dawn climbing rose to put in the long part of it.
Also ordered a pack of mixed heucherellas to go under the mature trees on the other side, and three sea hollies to go in one of the sunny beds with jasmine, nasturtiums, lavender and crocosmia.
And bought two trays of sweet peas in case the ones I planted don’t work.

There's nothing quite as satisfying as laying a hedge, especially binding the pleachers and making all the posts level. I miss it a lot! You're daughter will keep very fit and strong doing that kind of work @DougAndTheSlugs

Today I have:

• made a no nails, stacking potato box
• made a small dead hedge and put the buddleia, willow and christmas twigs there as well as all the moss that's fallen off the roof all winter

It's so windy and keeps raining but I've just finished and feel glad to have done those two jobs before it got too dark. I thought they were going to be big tasks but actually didn't take long at all. Now off for pizza and wine

It's a beautiful morning here, just had a walk round with my coffee. Honesty and forget-me-nots are starting to flower. The 'bog garden' now has quite a lot of surface water...the irises will be happy but I need to get some more marginal type plants for it I think. And the soggy bit of lawn is still soggy...I'm inclined to take off the grass/moss and plant something else that doesn't mind damp feet, MrDragon is proposing excavation and some sort of DIY drainage

Given the amount of rain we've had in recent months, any thoughts on this being a blight year?

I have not got into my own garden today, but I did buy a lovely Judas tree (circus siliquastrum) That’s spellcheckers for you!

I’ve started on Operation Tidy Front Garden. It’ll be a 80/20 Rule thing. This morning was largely taking away last year’s fern fronds, and hauling them out of the pond. Found a lovely stand of Plagiomnium undulata looking almost like a filmy fern, marvelled at the Skimmia x reevesiana which is simultaneously covered with red berries and covered with white flowers, confirmed its flowers have both stamens and a style coming from an embryonic berry, in contrast to my other Skimmia which had just stamens. Found the double primroses are in bud, and the lily-of-the-valley is beginning to push shoots up.

Noted I need to fill the bird feeder for the bluetits nesting in the traffic light just outside.

This afternoon will entail serious cutting back of Juniper, holly, Pernettya (now Gaultheria). It may be the wrong time of year, but in my garden the right time is when I have the urge.

Actually got out today in the fleeting moment of sunshine, to pull some weeds and tidy up a border. My nepeta is showing no signs of recovery, nor my salvia. Is it just too early or have they had it? I've never been able to kill catmint before, this is a new low for me!

I took heart many years ago when the late, great Geoff Hamilton, asked when the best time was to do a job in the garden, said “when you remember”.

I’ve been emptying more pots of bulbs which are failing or failed and have sowed even more seeds. I must inveigle MrJekyll into going into the cellar to retrieve the propagator.

Vroomfondleswaistcoat - My salvias (slightly to my surprise) are looking very jaunty, but I think I’d give it another week or two before giving up. Here, I fear a lemon verbena and abutilon have succumbed to the wet, so they’re on probation.

I took heart many years ago when the late, great Geoff Hamilton, asked when the best time was to do a job in the garden, said “when you remember”

This is very reassuring! I'm very much a novice gardener - and keep googling things, and then doing my best! I have (dead looking) trailing petunias from last year in a hanging basket, which were beautiful. I kept deadheading them and they flowered for months all through the summer. They have sat there over the winter, but I was heartened to see some of the stems are beginning to turn green, so I've pruned them back and am hoping perhaps they might flower again this year.

If not, I've not lost anything.

Exactly! The gardening books and websites will tell you the optimal time to do things, but there’s often a lot of leeway around that. I always try to prune roses, for example, in more or less the right season but other jobs tend to be done as and when.

My surprise this spring is that the bedding lobelia I left in a window box is coming back. I know it can be a short-lived perennial, but it surprises me every time.

Weather too shit to do much. Managed to plant out a couple of bare root perennials. Nothing much germinating in greenhouse except calendula and dwarf cornflower. Pond full of frogspawn. Its just a sad muddy mess really

I must inveigle MrJekyll into going into the cellar to retrieve the propagator.

That'd sound really sinister if it wasn't in Gardening.

This afternoon will entail serious cutting back of Juniper, holly, Pernettya (now Gaultheria). It may be the wrong time of year, but in my garden the right time is when I have the urge.

Amen to that, I say, @MereDintofPandiculation and having the urge more often than not has to coincide with weather conditions that don't include lashing down with hail stones and 48mph winds.

Another day lost, 😞 but nil desperandum tomorrow looks like it should be more clement conditions.

I need to reduce the spread of 2 hydrangea, both lace cap in different places. Now's as good a time as any. They're encroaching on the edge of the border where I'm planning to plant some new dahlia. I can't believe that during COVID lockdown I remember having to continuously water the hydrangea because they were wilting in the heat and lack of moisture from months of draught, and now, they're more likely to drown!

I’ve found a Butcher’s Broom (Ruscus)!

I tied back the Pernettya (didnt have the heart to prune - too many berries!) and there was this healthy Butcher’s Broom. I remember planting it. It wasn’t doing well, so a planted a male and a female down in the “woodland”. This was at least 20 years ago. I’ll have to see whether this is male or female when it flowers.

I found a Skimmia in the same area last year. My memory of planting that is even hazier. I am in awe of plants’ sheer determination to survive