Busy-Lizzie

Fully Shaded Border, need help please

The Wisley plant centre stocks about 10000 plants for sale, so you should find some of them there - or others which will suit. They may have different varieties of those on the list I sent you eg pink geraniums instead of white. When you're there you can ask them what grows in shade.

Fork Handles

Sunny afternoon, but quite cold. Stacked logs with OH. He did more than me 'cos my elbow tendonitis started playing up. Had lunch. Then potted new dwarf rhododendron, 2 blueberries, Loropetalum, then re-potted 3 sorts of mint, all pot-bound, a cooking sage, a thyme (it was in the wrong pot, too big) some marjoram and a lovely golden leaved philadelphus which brightens up a dark spot on the kitchen terrace. Third time it's been re-potted, probably the last - getting too heavy.

Now back aches. May cyber-join Bjay in the Radox bath, but I'll have to wait for OH to get out of it first. Oh Bjay's finished!

Happy Birthday Inka

Gers Midi-Pyrenees

I live in Dordogne and we have lots of those lizards. You are bound to disturb them if you take the pig house down, but if there are other nearby walls they will rush off there. If it's by itself in the middle of a field it will be more of a problem for the lizards.

Fully Shaded Border, need help please

Have a look at this site http://www.rhs.org.uk/Plants/Plant-trials-and-awards/Plant-awards/10-AGM-plants/10-AGM-plants-for-dry-shade

I have most of these and I would add euphorbia robbiae, geranium phaem, aquilegia vulgaris and those great big hostas with tough leaves that the slugs are less keen on, such as Big Daddy and Frances Williams. I really like the Brunnera Jack Frost which brightens up the gloom in the shade.

Fork Handles

Got to go and stack logs, anyone care to lend a hand? Lunch will be late.

onion sets

I have planted my sets because we had a week of lovely weather and I didn't realise this week would be so horrid. But onions are pretty hardy. All I've read about them says to plant in March to mid-April and I've planted them in March before. But if it's very cold where you live perhaps it would be best to wait til it's a bit warmer.

Front garden very uninteresting

I bought Pittosporum Tom Thumb when we went to the Eden Project, loved it there, but it died in the winter. I think you have to live somewhere like Cornwall for it to survive the winter. I also had a lovely red Phormium and that didn't survive the winter either. I have lysimachia, but it may be chocolate, not firecracker (can't remember) and it hasn't been invasive although it has seeded itself in one or two places. My pennisetum died in the winter too. So it just shows what the difference in climate can do. I think Cornwall is ideal, not too cold in winter, not too hot in summer. Here it's extremes. So glad I was in Edinburgh last August when it was 36° here!

Fork Handles

Morning all.

Great news Dove!     I'm not a feminist apart from equal pay for equal work. I like a man to carry my bags (apart from the handbag!), they have more muscle after all. Men and women aren't the same, hurray!, vive la difference!

Light snow shower in the night -2°, but sunny now. Some tomatoes have germinated!

Heated Bench

What a friendly place this forum is. It would be lovely if you two could meet and discuss gardening because of the forum. I'm sure many of us have a lot in common.

Gardeners World new season

That sounds a great idea Verdun, with pictures of the plants and their problems and film of how to do things to illustrate people's questions.

Gardens we have visited 2013

no emails as well as small text

Cleaning greenhouses

Rose pruning and frost

reviews

Why did you all start gardening?

uploading photos