Garden idiot with a garden I can't handle!

Hi folks, I was after some general advice on where to start and what to do with our garden.

I don't really have much clue what I'm doing at all with gardens, although I have a lot of enthusiasm. We moved into our current house 3 years ago and the garden was fantastic. Well matured and very colourful. I think it was set up so that something is always colourful from spring to autumn.

Anyway, not really knowing what I'm doing, it has slipped a little. We lost a few large shrubs in the frosts the winter before last and while the garden is still nice, some of the plants are looking a bit dodgy. In particular, the roses only seem to get a couple of blooms at a time.

Can anyone suggest first steps to recovery?

I've never fed the soil and I was thinking of buying a load of compost and covering all the existing soil in it but I don't if that will help or which compost to use or how much to use or anything.

Any help of any description much appreciated!

 

can you pop up some pics and a little more detail please and i am sure we can give you a helping hand so to speak

 

Hi Kaz,

Thanks for the reply, I've re-read my first post and realised I didn't really ask much! Sorry about that. I'll try to be a little more specific, and I imagine I'll ask a lot more questions in the future.

First are some photos of the garden as it is now. We have flagged it and raised the borders in the back garden but nothing else has really been touched.

Back garden. North/North East facing




Side garden. Sun all day as open on 3 sides




Front garden. South facing



I realise that we are lucky to have a well stocked garden but I'm starting to worry that unless I learn about how to maintain it it's going to get worse and worse.

I'm not too great on plant names but the big pink things at the front are hydrangeas and we have some Azaleas and a load of roses dotted about. A couple of lavender plants but aside from that I have no clue what most of them are!

I guess the first general question would be to ask if there is anything anyone can spot in there which I need to pay special attention to in case I lose it?

 

Then there's a couple of more specific questions. I but them right back and read a bit about pruning early in the year.

This one has grown into a decent shape but has only had a few flowers on it. Rarely seems to get more than 3 at a time. I dead head them and a bit later a few more come but never more than 3-4 at once.




These have grown in a funny shape, and the tall one at the back has quite a long woody trunk like a tree at the bottom which I didn't cut into when I was pruning



Finally there is a bleeding heart which looked good for a couple of years but is now looking well rough and not flowering. A chunk of it broke off in my hand!



So, questions here are...

What can I do to make loads of flowers grow on the roses?

When pruning the tall one can I cut it right back the floor, it would basically look like nothing more than a stick in the ground if I did that?

Any way of saving in the bleeding heart?

Thanks a million!

 

Oh there's apple trees and a pear tree too. We moved these last year and expected them to die but as they have survived it would be nice to keep them alive now too!

 

Welcome to Gardeners Corner DaveS.

In picture 1, first post. The large shrub to the right of the trellis looks like a Choisya (evergreen), you could probably get away with taking a couple of feet off the top of it and just give it a tidy up every where else just to bring it back into shape.

I suspect the trellis has been put up for climbers, I can't see the plants in front of it very well, but the one to the left looks like a rose (close up pics would be good please) which could be a climber, if it is the trellis won't be strong enough to support it, you would be better nailing wires to the fence. All roses shouldn't be pruned until they're dormant, when they are leafless late autumn or winter. But it's good to cut off the dead heads as this will encourage more blooms. Meanwhile I think the best thing to do is feed them, either with blood/fish/bone or a good rose fertiliser, both of these you can buy at nurseries and instructions will be on the box. Don't feed when they are dormant.
During the winter you could dig in some well rotted horse manure around them.

The bleeding heart.....take off the dead flower spikes from the base, it's probably starting to die back now as the summer season is getting towards it's end. It will grow again next spring.

Take off the Hydrangea flower heads when they have died off.

If your Azaleas need pruning it should be done immediately after flowering as they soon start to form buds for the following season.

Anything you have growing that's deciduous (drops it's leaves for winter) you can prune if necessary once they are dormant. Evergreens are a little more difficult and depends on the type of plant.

Blood/fish/bone feed can be used to feed most shrubs if you feel they aren't performing, but only feed during the growing season ie. spring/summer.

I hope this has helped, but I'm sorry I know nothing about fruit trees. You could try posting about those in the Trees section.

 

its been a rubbish year for Roses here [it would help if you put your Location in your Profile ] - too wet, too little sun.

You sure you cut them hard back? I cut mine back to just above a bud, and there is just one bud left on each branch of the bush. I don't cut them back until end of Feb (otherwise the frost can kill the end of the "sticks") and by then I can see the buds that are swelling more easily). I cut back to a bud that faces "outwards" whenever possible (otherwise you get a tangle of branches in the middle).

I fertilise the Roses in the Spring (I use a proprietary Rose Fertilizer called "Toprose"), and again after the first flush of flowers finishes. I also put some well rotted manure on the beds around the plants - about 2" - 3" deep. That feeds the "soil" rather than the plant, per se, but it improves the structure of the soil so it holds moisture amnd nutrients better and then the plant can absorb them more easily.

You also need to spray yours for Black Spot (use a proprietary Rose Fungicide - usually they also include something to kill insects like Aphids).

Photo shows red arrows for leaves with black-spot, and the leaves that are turning yellow are either because of black spot, or lack of nutrients (id so they just need feeding, but its getting a bit late in the season to be doing that now, so only give a light feed - no more than half whatever the packet says, and don't use anything with a high proportion of Nitrogen in it)

The Blue lines show where you should cut back (now). You have taken the dead flower heads off, that has encouraged new shoots to form, but you should now cut back to those to encourage the side-shoots, and they will then flower in a couple of weeks time.



(The blue circles are the side shoots you should keep, and the scratched-out bit is what you should cut off)

The Hydrangeas look amazing

 

Personally I'd leave them on for the winter, as I think they still look nice [once they have gone brown] and then cut back in February-ish

But its personal choice whether you like the dry flower heads, or not

 

Thank you so much everyone, there's loads of great advice there!

Sheal:

I'll get a better picture of the Choisya so you can confirm for sure if that's OK. I'd love to know what half of these are! The leaves change colour and depending on the time of year they are wonderful reds, yellows or green.

The plants in front of the trellis are things we have planted. I think a Jasmine and a Clematis. I'll get a close up of the rose too

Kristen:

I'm in Cheshire, I'll update the profile soon, thanks.

I pruned the roses back very hard, down to almost nothing! The only one I didn't was the tall thing which I'll photo soon. I was scared of cutting the woody trunk thing at the bottom. Hopefully the photo will help more than my description.

Thanks so much for the photo you edited. I've read a fair bit about pruning roses but it's never really made as much sense once I've got out in the garden. Now I know exactly what to do on my own.

Am I right in saying that the red coloured leaves are the new growth and this is where I should prune back to after deadheading? I should just do this all year round whenever the flowers start to look rough?

Thanks for the compliment on the Hydrangeas, I have to credit the previous owner though as all I have done is watered them and dead headed at the end of the winter. I'm not massively fond of the dead flowers but someone told me that they can help protect against the frost so I left them on through winter.

Thanks again! So much appreciated!

 

Yup. I just snap the flowers off when deadheading (no tools required!) but that leaves the stalk which is a bit unsightly. When I have time I then go round with the secateurs and "lightly prune" the stems that have finished flowering back to a suitable bud - I cut off as little as possible (this is different to the Spring prune, I WANT the plant to come back quickly during the Summer) - if the bud has already "broken" there will be new "red leaves" showing, as you described/as per your photo, and I prune back to that (even if its 6" - 12" down the stem from the original flower - that's the bud that the plant wants to grow from, so I cut everything above it off so that all the plants energy goes to that newly created shoot)

In practice you will probably find that you get two crops of flowers a year, so basically they will all flower initially, over a period of a couple of weeks, you then deadhead the flowers as they finish, and then lightly prune them to encourage the next set of shoots, and then those will flower a few weeks later. You might get more than two "crops", and the timing of the "crops" will start to overlap as the summer goes on ...

 

Thanks again, off to prune them right now then!

 

Couple more images.

Tall rose. Can I saw through the woody bit at the bottom in spring? How much do I leave sticking up?




...and the colourful Choisya thing.

 

Dave, any plants you want identified you can put in GC's ID section, but pictures are a must, preferably the whole plant and a close up of flowers or leaves helps as well. The id section is helpful to all of us as we discover new plants there and test our own knowledge too.

My first guess was wrong, sorry I don't think it's Choisya, you say it changes colour, I'm wondering now whether it's a Photinia. Although they both have similar leaves, Choisya doesn't develop red colouring. I'll check it out again and get back to you tomorrow, if that's okay. You can prune it just the same though.

The 'tall' rose does look in a bad way and I don't think it's retrievable. We have a rose expert called Wiseoldowl and if you post this picture in the 'Roses' section he will give you advice on it.

 

I've just had another idea Dave, does it have white flowers? It could be a Pieris, sorry for the confusion but there are so many plants with this kind of leaf. Perhaps it would be best to put it in Id.

 

I thought it looked like a Pieris too, but it looked too tall to me ... but then I live on Alkaline soil, and the only ones I have ever seen have been folk round here struggling, and failing!, to grow them ... so maybe they grow big in the right pH?

Close up photo, as well as the overall bush, would help.