WHAT ARE WE DOING IN THE GARDEN TODAY - 2021

@wiseowl Your bench looks great, Woo! (and I mean that from the bottom of my heart)

Potted on Caryopteris x clandonensis 'Dark Knight' and Sedum spectabile 'Iceberg'. I think I'll love the caryopteris when it flowers so I just put it in a larger pot until I decide where to permanently plant it. The sedum is supposed to be great for butterflies so I took it out of its 9cm pot and put it in a much larger one, these bulk up so rapidly and since I want more white in my garden I'll be dividing it and using it all over the place, I think. Rescued my poor Achillea 'Colorado Mix' from next to the Aucuba japonica, the aucuba has grown so rapidly in the last couple of years that the achillea was almost dead from being overdominated by it! That achillea has not had a good life, seems unlucky, it was an incredibly pathetic-looking plant I initially rescued from a garden centre discount section! Well, it has plenty of space in a good-sized pot now, hopefully its most challenging days are behind it.

Nick

 

I'm definitely not Woo...I think it's fabulous!! If I don't like something then I wouldn't comment. I'd zip it!!

 

.......and admiring it!!

 

I decided to follow your example today, @Loofah , but there aren’t any strawberry plants here??? Well, one out of two ain’t bad!

 

I gave it a lot of water but it is still a bit limp but I watered and watered so it is starting to straighten up a bit. Poor foxglove.
and I just finished tying up the peony where it had escaped it's hoop. And watered and watered. It is now down to 93f so a little more comfortable than earlier.

 

My basket petunias have popped this morning, so that's nice.

Realised I've turned into my grandpa... walking around the garden picking up all the leaves that drop and muttering about it. He used to be very neat with his borders of petunias and would spend countless hours picking up all the leaves to make everything look neat. It's his birthday today so I called him and we chatted about the garden. He's going to come over in a few weeks and see it (we live 2hrs away from each other and he doesn't drive so it's a bit arduous to get him over here). I'm very excited for him to see the garden, as he's the real "gardener" in my life and probably where I got it from. I have very fond memories of his little garden!

Other than that I pulled up a test garlic today and pruned the tomatoes and not much else!

 

That's great, I think for most of us here there's always "that gardener" that stands out and initially enthused us about the subject somewhere in our childhood memory without most of the details even registering! For me, it was my Grandad Jack, he was very knowledgeable about native British plants and built this amazing rockery in his back garden, and although many of the original plants were gone due to him passing on by the time I was an adult I still remembered how good it looked in its prime, which I think inspires me to create something with a similar sense of beauty and harmony.

Nick

 

It's raining a bit so nothing today in the garden, but the garden needs it.
Also if I've got to do any weeding the ground needs a bit of moisture.

 

Raining here too but not continuously so I will still be able to get out into the garden and plant out some of the remaining ( if not all) plants, at least the ground will be nice and damp.

 

Yesterday I finally had it and sorted out the front garden. The main bed corner is a hopeless bit of ground that turns back into solid clay no matter how much compost, manure and sand I dig in, so I gave up and chucked in loads of Echeverias, Semprevivums, Sedums and stones. Topped up with a solar lantern it's more or less ok.

I have so far focused in the back garden so that's quite all right but the front is not really much to look at. (The story of my life ) Now it's starting to perhaps take some shape and form, hopefully.

Tied climbing roses as best I could, and pulled weeds from the cracks in the pavement. I'm not a very tidy person and thankfully one can get away with a lot by muttering something about biodiversity and shabby chick, but I must admit that crack weeding and a general sweep do improve the look. I might take it as a habit and repeat the job every year.