Hello everyone, rehabilitated lurkersanonymous user finally saying hello

Glad to hear that you are going to plan around your dog
I have tried to observe the obvious routes that my dogs take through the garden, and to plan around them. (Remember, even if you can teach your dogs not to walk over the beds, a lot of the walkways are based on local wildlife tracks, eg foxes). After a few months in this new place, I can now try to make these low tunnels under the shrubbery into a "feature"!

 

Hi and welcome from another newbie

 

Hi and welcome Tracey from another Essex bod. I used to live in Sutton Road, Rochford in a cottage just before the bad bend to Wakering. I loved that garden and still miss it very much. Had great neighbours there too! Hope you can weave your way around the nutters on here but they are a great lot AND do know a lot about gardening!

 

Cool, I live a bit further down the Thames, nearer to dreary Basildon. It's always nice to have a few more Essex people on this forum.

 

Tracey, Moyra and Jane.

I'm an Essex girl too originally. Born in Pitsea many moons ago, reared in Benfleet and moved to the island from Colchester.

 

Sheal, I actually live just a couple of miles north of Pitsea now. My late ex husbands people who owned a Nursery in Ramsden Heath used to have the Gardening Stall in Pitsea market right from after the war years up to recently.

 

It's a small world Moyra. I'm trying to picture the stall at the original area for Pitsea market but it's a long time ago and of course it's now behind the shops there. Hillside Chase used to be there and that's where my mum and dad spent their early years and met, having evacuated during the Blitz. My grandparents and uncle lived on the same road.

 

Hi Tracey, welcome!
All I've got which could interest you is an enormous sweet-shoot bamboo, phyllostachys dulcis.
I bought it more than ten years ago, because I fancied eating home-grown bamboo shoots.
However, keeping the weeds down around it, and forage for the new tips just at the right time before they get too big, is beyond me. But it's a very good screenplant and the neighbour (it doesn't know its proper home, apparently) likes it too.
So you won't find me in the ornamental section here, for we only grow what we can eat, at least in principle!
I hope you'll enjoy your gardener's corner.