What have you done in the garden today? Part 6

[MereDintofPandiculation]

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

First dry & sunny day when I've been able to devote it to the garden.
I've dug up a dead DA Gertrude Jekyll rose 😭 & replaced it with a York Minster rose. Sown grass seed on the bare patches of lawn at the front. Cut back the oregano. Moved the Canary Lavender - it's not hardy, so 4 have gone in the cold frame, one in the dry south facing front garden & two in the house - we'll see which ones survive! Pulled up the evening primroses - they were still flowering but needed them out, & found four babies underneath for next year 😃 Weeded & edged one long bed, & planted in it two salvia's, two night-scented phlox & a birds foot trefoil. Pulled out the dead vipers bugsloss; dug out a rose I didn't like & replaced with a fuchsia (Hawkshead) which wasn't doing very well in a pot. Planted two geums & cut back some overly long branches on the two buddleia - won't cut them back hard until end of winter. Planted a brunnera & pulmonaria, & pulled out a snapdragon & the dying foxglove. Cut back a salvia & cut off all the long runners on the blackberry & pulled some nettles (not without injury!) & by that point the green bin was full & I decided to save the seed of the evening primroses into a paper bag & then shake them round the garden.
Still the other half of the garden to do but that'll have to wait until another day.
Very pleased with the amount I got done.

Picked two of my trees, Ashmead’s Kernel and Allington’s Pippin. I’ve got the hang of using a professional fishing net for the out of reach ones. Two more trees to go. Lost a huge number to blackbirds this year so probably will end up with only about 75lb. At least it means I won’t be trying to deal with endless windfalls and ones about to turn.

Also watered the greenhouse and did a bit of a tidy up.

Started renovating the border by the summerhouse. . It’s about 8 x 2.5 metres. I filled my green bin. I have a clematis armandii there which I love but it’s so vigorous, it’s overpowered an apple tree, a vine, a myrtle, 5 roses and half the front of the border. I’ve cut back a lot, but I should probably take it out. Then I removed a lot of dead stuff from underneath it. Advice when renovating a border is to remove everything except trees and large shrubs, even if they are going back, but that really does seem a faff. Weather forecast doesn’t look great for tomorrow, so don’t know when I can finish this. I have a lot of end of season bargains in a basket from Garden Express. Are they generally ok?

Another crate of apples picked today (using the fishing net). They're Sunset, so don't keep more than a couple of weeks - which means I'm on full time preserving duty for the foreseeable.

I made a grave mistake choosing my apples - 2 earlies, 2 mid season, 2 late. But the earlies last for September (1month), the mids will do 2 months, Oct, Nov, and the lates 4, Dec - Mar. So really I needed 1 early, 2 mid and 4 late.

One early apple tree might not fruit very well, unless there's another early bloomer nearby somewhere. Early apple blossom is often hit and miss with frost and storms disrupting both pollen and pollinators, you need to make it as easy as possible for flying insects to get between trees to cross pollinate them.

Crikey, mere, if that’s a grave mistake in your world, I’m doomed. I inherited 2 old and unproductive trees, a Bramley and a Cox’s Orange Pippin. . I got them back into health and then let them be smothered by clematis and Ivy, alive but suffering.. I bought 2 more from Aldi and 1 died. The other, a Golden Delicious seems to have an infestation. Don’t know if they are late or early, but I do know that our best apples come from a self sown? hybrid overhanging from my neighbours completely wild plot. I will do better next year.

Tydeman’s Worcester is an early fruiter (August where I am) and is a group 3, so about mid season in flowering. Although there is a correlation between flowering time and fruiting time, it’s not absolute. All my trees are 3 or 4 but span from from August to March for eating.

@Zebracat i wouldn’t buy from Garden Express, my two experiences have been very disappointing, plants sick and nearly dead on arrival or never grew once planted.
I prefer to pay more for quality, Farmer Gracy is my go to at the moment.

You got them back into health! Mine still show the state of my health over the last 30 years

You could graft your neighbour’s tree. You can buy rootstocks.

finished my border yesterday. It felt good to look at it all tidy and mulched. I’m not well today but I have been reading the Frances Tophill book, A Year in a Small Garden. I like her a lot, she explains her thought processes and admits to mistakes. But she cant always see where she’s being led by the vicissitudes of fashion. It’s funny, I feel a bit frustrated with some of the choices she’s made, but it is her garden, not mine! Has anyone else read it?

I started renovating a large area close to a pond. It is completely overgrown with brambles, nettles and unsightly shrubs. Also a surprising amount of debris from previous owners -bbq grill, concrete planters, fencing wire etc. The plan is to create a Japanese style garden around the pond. The area slopes so I will be building dry stone walls to retain the soil. I would like to create an easy to maintain area and plant with ornamental dwarf cherries and maples. A few log piles for wildlife etc. The area is already surrounded by Scot's pine. I think the Japanese style could work here but it will need to fairly simple and easy to maintain because of the steep slope. Any ideas welcome!

How large is large?

Japanese would work but the log piles would be incongruous. Drystone walls are an excellent habitat for newts etc

The whole area is about 15 x15 metres. The pond is approx 5x3 metres. There are already some walls that I built a couple of years ago. Illness prevented me completing that job unfortunately because I enjoy dry stone walling! Noted about the logs, there are lots of other places I can make an environment using them. The pond borders a field and there are springs in this area so I am thinking of using some of the boulders here as it is very boggy. Lots of newts and frogs around and we have common lizards too. Our climate is cool and wet. Some areas are in sun and others deep shade. The area with the steepest slope is in full sun, but because of the gradient difficult to manage. When I have finished the walls I'm thinking of small grade lime chipping on what will essentially be three pathways type width levels down to the pond. Planting ideas for the boggy areas would be great. They are in a bit more sun. We can go down to minus 12 so must be frost hardy and I want to keep it really simple. The rest of my garden is really cottage garden like with everything that will tolerate our climate and limestone!

You'd get an instant Japanese feel with Iris - Iris sibirica and our native Iris foetidissima are the ones I'd go for (foetidissima isn't as elegant as sibirica). If you're bordering a field I'd look to natives to have a gradually boundary from formal to countryside, maybe planting mainly in the sunnier areas, gravel/lime chipping or moss or something moss-like in the shadier areas. Molinia purpurea (Purple Moor Grass) is an attractive native grass for damper ground.

Boggy natives include Caltha palustris (Marsh marigold), Cardamine pratensis (Ladysmock), Lychnis flos-cuculi (Ragged Robin) - all these have garden varieties too.

My frogs love alpine strawberries as ground cover, but whether you could fit that into the Japanese vibe is a different matter.

The lizards will love any of your boulders that are in the sun.

Whereabouts are you? Are you in the UK with that minimum temperature?

Thank you Mere Dint, appreciate your advice, I am in North East Wales but at altitude, we have been down to minus 20 so the climate is harsh! I love iris and ragged robin so I will include those although I have noticed that while there is a lot of ragged robin at slightly lower altitudes there is none in the hedgerows up here, we have harebells instead! I have managed to grow some garden variety lychnis in my cottage garden borders and it over wintered so will give it a go! I am from South East England originally so it has been difficult to adapt to such a contrasting growing environment and shorter seasons. Beautiful weather today so I am off out to do some more ground clearance with my trusty mattock!

I've done a bit today, at last - tidying up spent perennials, deadheading cosmos and dahlias which are still going strong. Didn't have time to go to the garden centre so I've not done anything about bulbs, winter pots etc.

Brought in some houseplants which have been outside for the summer - yucca, scented geraniums which have bushed out nicely, they get very leggy inside, and took some cuttings from them. Also completely repotted the umbrella plant which had been badly infested with fungus gnats after I partially repotted it with supposedly proper houseplant compost earlier in the year. Hopefully it will survive and the pests wont, but I took some cuttings from that a few weeks back - don't know if they're rooting but they haven't died.

I finished planting up my bulbs though I have a couple of spare pots and some compost so may buy a few more. Emptied out the courgette and pepper pots and the dahlias and planted out an azalea. Can’t decide whether to give the grass a final mow.

Ragged Robin likes damp meadows which are more readily found at lower altitudes. Some thoughts for higher altitudes- mossy saxifrage (limestone in the wild but many garden varieties), native marsh orchids (there used to be a good nursery in Lancashire, don’t know whether it’s still operational, Cloudberry Rubus chamaemorus (ground cover), Dryas octapetala or a Dryas species sold for gardens, Globe Flower.

I like a good mattock!

I think there are real similarities between the landscape of North East Wales and Japanese moss gardens . Spindly birch, moss, slate, boulders ferns and water. It will be lovely. I found a photo but I’m scared to upload in case it breaks copyright.

Thank you Mere Dint, you are a mine of information I will look into all your suggestions for planting. I enjoy the planning as well as the doing! And Zebracat, yes, I think it will look well in the landscape, I have plenty of rocks and boulders (and moss).
I was reading yesterday that a Japanese garden should echo the landscape around it so I will find boulders that have a shape of the mountains around us for placing on some of the gravelled areas. I have made good progress today, beautiful weather, I could hear crickets in the fields -in late October. Cleared about 5msq of brambles and nettles. I could not garden without my mattock!

It’s this .

That's lovely.

I planted my Parkers plants today and half the bulbs. Of course it wasn’t as simple as that. It included weeding two armfuls of Geranium and a similar amount of Tellima, relieving DH of a trug so I could save soil, for compost mixing, while I unburied the stone edging to the bec, emptying runner beans from a pot so the candelabra primulas could go in, and so on. Basically an afternoon’s work

I finally got around to buying bulbs and some cyclamen but didn't have time to plant them.