What have you done in the garden today? Part 5

[MereDintofPandiculation]

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

We had a lovely Montana growing over a pergola ( and a shed and the fence and next doors wall) when we moved here but DH hates anything that’s overgrown and chopped it back and managed to kill it. We have an on going battle. Only this week I was looking at the euonymous in the front garden and thinking what a nice shape it is at the moment andd he walked past and said ‘That needs cutting back’.

We have a tentative agreement that he’s not allowed to touch certain things. I let him loose on the bay tree once a year and that usually keeps him satisfied.

Nice day today before the storm & rain tonight/tomorrow, so spent most of it in the garden.
Had to go to the garden centre for more compost, also picked up some reduced Harkness roses - 2 climbers & 3 shrubs.
Planted all of them out; put a deutzia in the garden that was in a pot; potted up several plants that needed more room; pruned the hellebores; moved the pots round on the patio, a bit of weeding too.

There’s a dog rose in with the lilac. I discovered it last year, at least i saw tge branch that was about 1m above my head and neatly as thick as my arm

I discovered some lovely fresh sea holly trying to struggle through a tangled mess of aquilegia and forget-me-nots.

I took drastic action and pulled up all the tangled mess, leaving the sea-holly, which now looks very healthy, even a couple of flower heads are coming through.

one of my oblong troughs is looking a complete mess overflowing with an ant nest (red ants). I've left it for now but will have a think about whether to empty it out, or leave it till the ants have flown the nest.

Deutzias are such lovely shrubs. Bees adore them as well.

I wish they were more widely used.

Went to the garden centre for more compost, also 3 dianthus to replace something ailing on the rockery, a small geum because the alpines were 4 for £10, and some pots.
The latter are for the white busy Lizzies which needed a home - I decided to try a group of pots atop the black plastic hopefully killing off the rampant vinca and whatever-else-it-is, they should be ok in a fairly shady location and brighten it up.

Removed the other half of the swathes of clematis Montana from the side fence.

Then pulled the forget-me-nots out of the narrow front border, edged it and cut right back the ...forgotten the name...Silvery grey plant sold for tubs, put in last summer but happily survived the winter, it looked rather good with the forget-me-nots though they'd swamped the wallflowers that were somewhere in there. It seemed churlish to pull that out when it's making new shoots at the bottom. Planted the 2 trays of bronze leaved bedding dahlias bought a couple of weeks ago.

Then moved the 2 tomato plants into full sized pots, and planted up another tub of sweet peas and one with the rest of the morning glories. That made room in the growhouse to move out the remainder of the pots and trays which were still indoors. One of the 6 pack trays broke ...compost all over the kitchen so some mad sweeping to get it cleared before dinner was ready!

I recently bought a hand held lawn strimmer, so I can get into the gaps between my plant pots. The area had gone very overgrown and you couldn't see my decorative pots at all. Yesterday I strimmed the grass right down, so now the pots are visible and the grass isn't hiding everything. Looks much tidier. I've a blister on my finger but it was worth it 😀. I'll keep on top of it going forward so it isn't such a big job. It's amazing the difference an hour or so can make.

I'm happy to report that the hydrangea and another plant (I forget the name - has red flowers) that I bought at Bloom (Garden Festival in Dublin) last year are flourishing. The trick seems to be to buy plants that snails/slugs don't like and use very large pots. And incessant rain

The garden centre is open at 12 today, so I'm going to pop in to pick up two or three plants. Annoyingly, my brother and his wife are calling in at 3 so I should probably offer them dinner. I'm very fond of my brother and his wife is lovely, but they very rarely call over and it's eating into my garden time. And if we have dinner, they'll probably linger afterwards for coffee etc. But I'm working from home tomorrow, so I can finish off stuff tomorrow evening. I'll have a longer evening than normal.

Off to make a fresh cuppa and then I'll read back over the last day or two. Hope everyone has a productive day in the garden.

I went with DS to help him choose some ground cover and a tree to put in a pot on his patio. We came back with 6 Glechoma, a small white Vinca, a small Dianthus, a thyme which he bought for me, and a Salix Flamingo bush. But the tree question unsolved. So he accepted an Acer rubrum which I’d grown from seed and still had sitting around. A productive morning for me - another thyme, and one less pot to water!

In the afternoon I started building a “dead hedge” to visually separate two of the paths in the “woodland” and to solve my too-many-prunings problem. I have a good supply of stakes from coppicing a hazel earlier in the year

@MereDintofPandiculation one thing to watch with hazel stakes is that they might well root and grow. My dead hedge from the spring has 6in shoots from almost all the stakes already. I'm going with it and will just weave them in and make a step over hurdle hedge.

Sorted the hanging baskets in the back garden yesterday, they were in dyer need of tlc, looking much better now.

Cucumbers and tomatoes are going great guns, hope they will be ok in the same pot I'm a bit of a newbie and just chucked them in.

Re-staked the sweet peas and put some wire for them to climb on too - they are another first for me.

Built an archway I bought from Amazon then dismantled it as it's way too big

I'm crap at this sort of thing.

@InMySpareTime - so it's a resurrected hedge? hallelujah!

It was a tree, and is now a coppiced tree and a pair of hedges!

As it happened, it's been raining steadily all day, so I don't mind that my brother and SIL called in. We had a nice dinner and a good chat.

ETA I stopped by the garden centre and bought some plants - a lupin triumph of optimism over experience, a scabiosa, some dahlias, an osteospernum and an aquilegia.

Have done a lot of weeding. Dug up some Spanish bluebells before admitting defeat as some of the clumps are very very old and deep with some clearly growing out from under the house.

Looked at plants I have put in and pleased to see that I've only killed 2 of them.

However now have 2 clear empty flower beds so shopping this evening.

I emptied still more pots (lilies had rotted over winter) and rushed to plant others, so that everything would get a good watering in the thunderstorm we’d been promised for mid-afternoon. The storm didn’t materialise, so we went to an open garden - gorgeous garden with an excellent plant sale and delicious tea and cake. Perfection.

Got home and sent MrJekyll up a step ladder so we could work out why one of the waterbutts wasn’t filling. Problem identified and resolved.

In between the rain, I've emptied a couple of pots and spread the compost on the borders, replanted a small one with a calibrachoa for the patio table. Emptied and replanted a hanging basket.

DP helped me to move two small roses that were looking unhappy, they're now in a sunnier and airier spot. Did some weeding where the roses were planted.

I'm hoping for some reasonable weather tomorrow to get some plants in I bought at a plant sale yesterday. I've got another couple of pots to empty, loads to out away, and summer bulbs to plant before it's too late. More weeding.

Repotted a bay tree that had become waterlogged, planted out my sunflowers and under planted with one final go at lettuces. Put my coldframe over the top of them and built up the earth round the sides, hoping a bit of a physical barrier might help keep them in one piece. Put my courgettes into the greenhouse, then got cold feet and brought them indoors again this evening I’d be SO upset if the mice got them now.

Went to the range and picked up a pack of little lavender plants, some nasturtium seeds and some wallflower to sow for next year.

Oh and DH moved the quince - some bright spark of a previous owner had planted it in a bed right up against the wall of the house so the bricks were soaking (old property, no DPC). I went to get DD down for a nap having shown him where to dig the hole, expecting him to wait until I was back to dig up the plant and do the moving, but no. And he’d not even attempted to take its roots out in one piece, just cut them off at the level he’d dug down to, I’ll be amazed if it survives.

I took out all my forget-me-nots as they have gone over. They have multiplied over the years and I love them.
The border looked very bare so I mulched it thickly with compost - we have a massive amount of home made stuff.
It's very difficult to use up our compost because of my beloved forget-me-nots, usually by the time I pull them out all next years seedlings are growing and I worry burying them in compost will kill them.
This year I pulled them up slightly earlier, before the seedlings sprouted, put them on the grass whilst I mulched, then shook the seeds on top of the mulch.
The compost was amazing, it smelt so good and had the texture of the stuff you buy in bags. I can’t believe it was kitchen waste, grass and animal bedding only 3 years ago. I still have about 3 feet deep of compost to use!

I planted three of my new plants - I'll do the other three tomorrow.

I made some nettle fertiliser, turned the compost, tidied up a bit.
It was a bit windy round these parts.

Tidied the woodshed and this left me with a trugful of bits to put on my cardboarded paths.

Weeded two of the 3m x 1m beds I put in last autumn.

yesterday I planted up some lavender for the patio which had been in the greenhouse. Been meaning to do that for ages.

Looks like there will be rain coming in tomorrow so today I'll get the rest of the dahlia planted in the border, and start organising the growbags in the greenhouse, so I can plant the tomatoes and chilli.

DH is going to drill drainage holes in the half- barrels then we'll get those in place ready for planting up. Need some inspiration for what to put in them.

How do you manage your forget-me-nots? I have lots but want to keep them. They are just going over but I don't want to pull the up by the roots. So I just let them die then today them up later in the year?

Went slightly overboard the weekend with the garden and feeling the effects of the physical exertion this morning.

Dug out loads of perennial weeds - a huge tree root and moved 1/2 tonne of bedding soil yesterday.

Excited about my plans for the tree root, it's really good shape and the perfect height to act as a bridge to my barrel pond, I'll plant some ferns and moss around it - it's all coming along.