Good Morning .....

Day off work Yay !

So.... I'm dressed like a farmer in my lovely designer Lidl wellies with the fake fur top and I'm going to brave the elements and for the first time this year go out and look at my poor neglected garden !

Plant catalogues have been arriving and last night I lay in bed flicking through the pages and was quite excited at the thought of getting started.... again.

The front garden is on my hit list first and I will have a couple of questions later as I have a little problem out there but let me go and do some clearning first and I will let you know what I'm thinking (not always good)

 

Okay .... Initial survey shows I am a bad gardener !! Hangs head in shame at even using the term gardener !

But..... all is not lost

Looks like most plants have survived despite having me to look after them (or not as the case may be) Have a lot of dead stuff to cut back, I cant even remember what I planted

Daffodils are poking through .... I love to see them, they make me smile.

I hadnt cut back the clematis and new shoots are growing, should I just cut them back anyway even if its not the right time ?

Buddleja needs cutting back too... one has plenty of new shoots but the other one which I dont know name of as it was not what I thought it was going to be lol looks a bit sad so not sure if she is going to make it :( at her best she is a stunner with yellow globe type flowers... will cut it back and see but she may have to go.

The borders have been taken over by weeds... no surprise there !

The lawn is looking good though :D

 

Oh Heck..... this means I now have to go into the shed !!

I may be gone a while !!

 

Go for it EarthAngel, you'll feel so much better when you've made a start!

My gardens were totally neglected last year and having the builders around for some while restricted what I could do apart from mowing the lawns.

I need to get a few young shrubs planted and others moved. So I'll be joining you out there this week. :yess:

 

Still waiting for the stickyness to go off the soil before getting back out there again, doesn't help that it currently raining.

Got plenty of tidying up to do to get the garden ready to put on the market.

Ordered a Hippo Bag today, £60 odd but cheaper than a skip. Plus they recycle as much as poss instead of sending it straight to landfill.

 

Doesn't sound so bad to me. Sounds like you're doing alright. Your daffs are coming through, your buddlejas are still alive, your clematis is ok and you said your lawn looks good.

You said there's loads of dead stuff to cut back. Is that last year's flowers? All the herbaceous perennials will still be looking quite dead. You might have lost some of the tender ones but I bet most are still alive. Neglecting them so that you end up with all the dead top growth just means you left a bit more of a blanket on to keep the roots sheltered. If you'd cut it all back at the start of winter two things would have happened. You'd have been left with nothing to indicate where stuff was, and the soil would have been more exposed to the elements. I've got loads of dead stuff in my front flower bed. At the end of this month I'm going to give it all a good haircut, and anything that isn't green by april will just get pulled out and replaced.

All last year's annuals will of course be dead. But if you can't remember what's what, just give it til about mid april to show some hint of life, and sack it if it doesn't.

I think most gardens are looking a bit worse for wear at the moment. You should see mine:o

 

All plants requiring hair cut are done :D

All dead annuals removed :D

All perennials chopped back and can now see new growth :D

Weeds... the big boys are out :D

Weeds... the little guys can wait until the conditions improve !

But stood back yesterday and felt a whole lot better even though it still looks a mess out there LOL

I'm Back !! :yess:

 

A busy day then EarthAngel. It's good to stand and have a look round to see what you've achieved, then pat yourself on the back because it looks so much better.

 

Hi Earth Angel...only just read this, I have a feeling your buddleja with round yellow flowers will be Buddleja globosa. I think it might be too late now to say AARGH -Don't prune it!

Unlike your other one which you cut back quite hard the B. globosa flowers earlier in the summer...on growth made the year before. They sometimes look a bit sad at this time of year, but usually pick up just fine. It might not flower now this year, but will make growth to flower on next year. If you need to prune it in future years, try do it straight after it's flowered and that'll be fine.
Glad you've been busy enjoying your garden, I love a good tidy up at this time of year.

 

Noooooooo !!!!

Too late :(

This Buddleja is no more.... after closer inspection there was only a few new shoots growing from one stem, last year it didnt do so good but I think what has happened is the severe low temps of the previous 2 winters had taken its toll on it. I cut into some of the branches and they were dead so .... got husband to cut it down and dig it out... RIP my beauty

 

I was dead proud of my gardening skills, with Buddleja, cut back it grew and flowered even better
took cutting they all took and I now had twenty
Then I read on here they are basically a weed that NETWORK RAIL cannot eliminate

Jack McH