Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Japanese Anemone "White Swan" is another well behaved one for me. I also have the Spanish Bluebells but by far the biggest nuisance is the wild garlic. A long neglected garden when I bought it and they are literally everywhere. Impossible to remove them entirely.

 

Jealous @Philippa. I had some wild garlic given by a Belgian friend and was, finally, getting it established here only to find the undergardener had gone out and weeded it! I made him pay for 3 pots of it at a plant fair - not cheap - but it has not thrived.

 

Please, @Obelix-Vendée, come over here and take as much wild garlic as you want. They seem to like the same conditions as the bluebells in our garden. Huge drift of them under the trees, and despite my best efforts, seem impossible to control.
Ive done an hour and a half pulling out ivy and overgrown heather, managed to clear the ground round a couple of dwarf acers by the path. As usual, forgot to take a before picture, it doesn’t look any different from the house, despite me filling three very big bags with stuff. I think my eye is automatically drawn to the bit I didn’t get to!

 

Wild garlic grows like crazy in the woods where I walk.
I don't think it likes the same sunny position that the garlic we grow for veg.

 

No. My firend in Belgium had it in a shaded, woodland spot with damp soil. Even the sahdiest spot of our veg plot is too dry so I planted mine in our shadiest spot with Japanese maples. The trees love it but not the wild garlic. I have 3 cornered leeks spreading well not too far away but they don't have the same flavour or texture and will need controlling soon.

 

Oh dear @Obelix-Vendée I'm sorry I moaned about it...........Sod's law ??

@pete agree it prefers shade from woodland (which my garden basically is ) but it doesn't object to the sun either !!

 

I'd happily have a garden full of bluebells. It possibly my favourite time of year when the bluebells, forget me knots and cow parsley are all out in the local woods but unfortunately someone has, I think, added in non wild bulbs. I know that natural variation can occur but there is probably 20-25% non blue, bluebells. We have plenty of white and a number in pinky/purple shades, yet in our other nearby woods they are all blue.

 

I've just put a load of weedy allium/wild garlic in the green bin (and some bluebells). Both are pests here.

 

I've had bluebell in the garden for as long as I can remember and they dont really move from the clump that is planted, maybe most of the garden doesn't really have ideal conditions for them.
Are they spreading by seed I wonder.
Or are the smaller bulbs getting moved via cultivation.

 

Seed here! All over the place. Unstoppable!

 

I cut the flowers off before they seed, but they also develop naturally by bulb division. They seem to be adept at going deeper every year .

 

In my case there were a lot (a very lot) of spanish bluebells when we moved here so they had probably been left to seed as they liked as well as the bulbs dividing..

 

One of my school friends recently had to call the fire service because someone set fire to his front hedge. This was 1 in the morning and when they were putting it out they were called to another call out, just around the corner. He later found out that he was one of 4 properties that were targeted, all needing the fire engine, and it was done by four 14 year olds. The mind boggles really.

 

I saw some cctv pictures of four girls probably around 10 to 14 yrs old, stealing items from people's front gardens and dragging it all round into the cemetery, which was just round the corner, and setting fire to it all.

This was not far away from me.