lf1

Mark your calendars! Gardeners World is back on Friday, 6 March @ 8.30 pm on BBC2

dunroving

Duly marked - I like Monty Don, he's great. Carol Klein is not to my tastes, though. Bit too manic for my liking.

lf1

+1. Did you know that Monty's dog, Nigel, has over 3500 humans following him on Twitter!! Here is one of his tweets:

"When Monty is filming #Gardeners World I've learnt that the more I misbehave on a take, the more biscuits I get". LOL!!!

lf1

I am just starting to plant my newly renovated garden. Along the east side of the garden I have a dry stone wall which has two trellises and my plan was to plant each with a climbing rose and a clematis. I have planted each one with a David Austin 'Gertrude Jekyll' and have purchased two 'Rooguchi' Clematis plants. I am now a bit hesitant to plant this particular clematis as it has been suggested that it might not do well if placed in an exposed spot. Does anyone have any experience with this type of clematis?

sallysimmons

My mum recently moved near to me, and she's had some changes made to her garden which meant I 'inherited' about 10 tons of soil, 2 tons of walling stone and quite a few shrubs and small trees.

We have quite a big garden that, while nicely kept, was very much as it was when the barn was renovated 12 years ago (neat but boring island beds filled with evergreens that are totally out of keeping with the landscape here). I've had a blast building dry stone walls, making new flower beds, planting the shrubs, and now I'm transforming a boring evergreen bed into a seating area surrounded by a low stone wall.

Last year I built a wildlife pond which now has frogs and stickelbacks, and we also turned a weedy corner into an area for a shed, which I seemed to spend months painting (It needed a lot of coats!)

I have always loved gardening, but never been able to carry out my more ambitious plans until we moved here. Turns out that our next door neighbour is a builder/landscape gardener/handyman who seems to know how to do everything. So now I have the ideas and, if they involve heavy lifting or digging, he comes and does those bits for me. I just hope he never moves!

trottytrue

If1.....sorry this took so long. We had a clematis for years I had it close to the house it was a vine but I managed to prune it into a tree but it never flowered so I decided to move it into a more exposed area and pruned it down before I moved it. It went into a flower bed with Ivy covering most of the ground I did not think it would do well. Unbelievable but not only did it survive but it bloomed for the first time in years and did very well.

trottytrue

Sallysimmons....nice to hear from you, glad that you have settled in so well sounds like you are very busy in your garden and how lucky to have your mum move close . Do you have a website were you have pictures of your garden, if I remember rightly you did have a place were you posted drawings or I could be mixing you up with someone else..

trottytrue

Islandwoman120....hope you solved your problem with the animals, Spring has finally arrived here and with it the cats, one family down the road from us has 5 cats, quite a few of them have found their way into my garden. I would put down my critter Ridder but you have to redo it every time it rains. Sad to say so far very few of my bulbs survived the winter and none of my bluebells, I am hoping they might just be late. I still have one patch of snow in the garden.

lf1

Thanks Trotty. I threw caution to the 'east' wind and have planted the clematis as planned.

trottytrue

If1...I was so annoyed I had my clematis for years and it never bloomed very healthy with lots of vines but no flowers, I moved it the same year we put the house up for sale and that was the year it bloomed.....

islandwoman120

Hi Trotty - your bluebells may just be late bloomers - mine are just opening a few at a time. Daffs are finished, tulips are opening as are grape hyacinths. It is chilly and damp in Devon these days - the heater is on morning and night still. Yet a mile away it is warm and peaceful - my hill sure gets the breezes. The dog turned out to be a fox, so I ended up scraping all the lovely compost into three bins, and leaving my raspberries with little cover. Still - they are all in leaf, as are the gooseberries. It is the first year for them all, and I don't expect any fruit for another year. I put dried leaves around them, and the blackbirds dug that into a pile looking for worms and bugs! At least there is a lot of wildlife, even if we are vying for the same space. The cats seem to have moved on, only leaving a treasure for me now and then. My strawberry plants overwintered in the greenhouse (!) and are still in containers but now outside. I am going to separate them into larger individual containers and some of those will hang from the newly installed trellis. The garden is so small that I have had to be creative and plant vertically. My next place will, hopefully, have a larger garden area.

trottytrue

Islandwoman120....Gooseberries are on the prohibited list in New Hampshire I think its in all the NE States.....

islandwoman120

Why are they on the prohibited list?

Perth

A lovely article from the Guardian about 10 of the best secret gardens across Britain:

10 of the best secret gardens in the UK | Travel | The Guardian

islandwoman120

Thanks for the link to the Guardian article about gardens. Lovely photos. Now if it will just stop raining long enough to enjoy the outdoors...