Hello all!

Hi all! I've been looking for a gardening forum for a while and this one appears to have the most advice and lots of friendly knowledgeable chaps and chapesses. So, I thought I'd finally join in!

I'm in my first year of owning a garden, having moved from a tiddly maisonette with nothing but a few hanging baskets round the front door. I'm fortunate that my new house's previous owners were keen gardeners, so all summer long I've been met with surprising bursts of colourful flowers appearing all over the place. Following the age-old advice of "wait a year and see what appears" I've just been weeding and mowing for now.

But, it's time for me to make my mark! My plans:

1) start a vegetable garden (using the compost that's been rotting away for the last few months)
2) prune back some of the more voracious shrubs (already had a go at shaping one... my plans for a spherical shrub went a bit... erm... square and wobbly!)
3) grow some fruit. Not sure what yet.
4) install a water butt.

My lawn isn't perfect by any standard... it's got about 10 different types of grass and I've even got moss amongst it all. But, I like it that way, it's far softer to lie about on and I don't have to worry about my friendly local fauna doing their whoopsies on it (apart from when I'm lying on it!).

 

hi donkmeister
i am so glad you left your garden to see what came up,it is so enjoyable to be surprised daily by the magical appearance of blooms and shrubs,
please still be careful i know you want to get on and make your mark but you did not indicate how long you have been there
you have another wondrous season to enjoy and thats winter /spring you can get some of the most glorious spectacles in those dark and dismal days

 

Evening, Donk and welcome to the site.

 

Hi Donk,

Welcome to the forum.

 

Welcome to the board and the wonderful world of gardening.
If there is one thing I have learned it is that I have my plans but the garden has plans of its own so things don't always work out as expected. Some things die and others take over. My garden is constantly evolving and surprising me.

 

Thanks all for the greetings. Merely hours since I joined and I've already got the know-how on my budleia!

Pams - it would have been criminal to change anything... the couple who owned it before worked so hard that I felt obliged to give it at least one more year before doing anything at all. They've got an ongoing invitation to pop round for tea any time, so I must keep it tidy!

Some of the many surprises I've had so far:

1) a bunch of twigs in the lawn that decided to produce huge spheres of white flowers over the course of a weekend (turned out to be a tree hydranger!)
2) a half-rotten wooden planter that turned out to be a well-stocked herb garden
3) passion fruit... passion fruit in BEDFORDSHIRE?! Doubt it will ripen but if any of those lumps turn purple I'll be trying a bite!
4) hundreds of tiny onions that started growing around my compost bin. As I dug the soil thoroughly when I installed the bin, the only possibility is that I dropped some onion bits whilst filling the bin. Nature finds a way!
5) a hydranger that I neglected suddenly produced a second load of flowers after a week of heavy rain... I never knew some plants flower twice in a season!
6) some wonderfully delicate purple wild flowers that occasionally peek out through my lawn, and make me feel guilty about using the mower.
7) a hedgehog. Wasn't the most delightful surprise as I found it through resting my hand in a pile of it's doo-doo, but now I know (s)he's there I sometimes spot him in the flowerbeds at night, munching away on all the bugs.

 

Hi Donkmeister welcome to g c.

 

hi dk and a warm welcome to G,C...:thumb:

 

Welcome to the forum

 

Hello & welcome from sunny Milton Keynes.

 

Hey Dorkmeister, great name!