Hobbies and Crafts

We have one that OH uses for tomatoes when the greenhouse is too full. If it is sheltered down the side of the house/against the house wall, from the hardest frosts the plants should be ok in there Vera.

400 pots gill, I had to read that twice. It must be a fair sized garden. And need a lot of watering in summers like we have just had. Sounds lovely.

Thanks Ann. I might try to get out this afternoon and see what the local garden centre has to offer.

I think the plastic greenhouse is a good idea Vera, my mum has one. The only thing you need to be careful off is the wind as they are very light and can be blown around, some sheltered spots, especially if they are in a narrow space, can also act like a wind tunnel, so be careful where you place it.

Yes I have around 400 pots, maybe more Ann, my garden is about 90 foot long and around 40 foot wide, the longest border is 50 foot long and only has pot plants in it, the same with the bottom border which is around 30 foot long. It's more like a garden centre than a garden, luckily you can't really see the pots as I put the big ones to the back and bring them down in height to the smaller ones in the front, the same as you would if they were planted in the ground. I can change the look of the borders without having to dig, so it suits me. It does take some watering but we've got used to doing it now.

After looking at all your suggestions on here I've noticed I have a few of the plants so I may use them, Sedum being one of them. they are starting to turn pink now and will look lovely in the planters. I've also got some Ivy and one of them has grown quite tall so I was thinking of putting that in to, but like I said in my earlier post I'm not sure about the roots, especially on Ivy. I wouldn't want it to choke the roots of anything else I put in there, so a bit more research is needed I think before finally putting the plants in.

I'm in the middle of putting the plastic inside them at the moment, not as easy as I thought it was going to be though, lots of fiddling around to get the small screws in place, but with a bit of time it should be done today. Then I was thinking of putting some bamboo screening at the back of the trellis as the climbers will probably take some time to cover them, this way I'll have an instant screen and it'll look pretty. We have the same Bamboo screening all around the back garden and it sets the plants off nicely.

Well I'd better get back to it, my husband and daughter have gone to the tip with a load of rubbish and will be back soon. I'd like to have one finished before then.

Good advice Gill. Thank you. I hadn’t thought about the wind tunnel effect. We have a double width garage and there is a few feet between the back wall of that and the fence. I thought it might go there but I think I need to see if there would be some way of stabilising it.

If I remember correctly Vera (correct me if I'm wrong) but doesn't the greenhouse have a metal frame? If that's the case maybe you could buy some brackets and attach it to your fence, or maybe do as my mum does and put a couple of bricks on the bottom of the frame. I must tell you though she doesn't have her's outside, it's inside the greenhouse she already has as some of her glass got broken in a storm so it might not be as windy. I think some brackets would work though.

Well, I've finally finished putting the plastic in one of the planters, it was very awkward to do and took a lot longer than I thought it would, but at least that one is done. Now onto the second one.

I meant to ask earlier what size gardens do you all have and what plants have you got? My back garden is North facing but still gets quite a bit of sun with it being so long. I live in a bungalow so the sun comes right over the top of the roof.

Gill OH not here to ask at the moment but estimating about 60 foot long and 30 foot wide.

I do have a blog which has photos on it. If you want to see it I can PM you the blog address.

Well, I am now the proud owner of a mini greenhouse. I showed them to OH and he said he could easily get the metal frame attached to the garage wall and then said “Which one do you want?” I was flabbergasted and quickly picked out the four tier extra wide one before he could change his mind :-D. I don’t know how long it will be before he gets it attached to the garage wall but at least I have got it.

Gill, we moved here just coming up to 5 years ago and the garden seemed tiny. In our old house we had half an acre of garden surrounded by farmland. This garden is only about 50ft wide by 30ft deep, One side of the width goes round a corner so there is an extra 6 ft there. Nothing here but a scrubby lawn when we moved in and we got rid of the grass altogether. We have a couple of small trees, lots of shrubs and flowering perennials, hostas and grasses etc. We even have a tiny pond which is home to several frogs. None of it was planted till 4 years ago and now we are starting to take things out because it is so overgrown. I also have quite a few big pots.

Down one side of our house is a walkway of about 30 ft and I have nine big pots of hostas there in 3 groups of three. Down the other side of the house the walkway is about 65 ft and I have put 18 cheap plastic troughs down there some with perennials in and some with bright cheerful annuals just to perk it up a bit. I’ve also got 8 troughs with flowering plants down the side of our garage. We can’t see them but it is nice for our neighbours to see.

Our old half acre garden was a lot of hard work and I don’t miss that aspect of it at all but I do miss my two big compost heaps, my greenhouse and my lovely big vegetable patch.

I can imagine half an acre would be lots of work Vera, but I bet it looked lovely. I wouldn't mind a larger garden, half an acre would be great and to be surrounded by fields too, I'd love that, especially if I could see the sun go down, we have some lovely sunsets here but unfortunately we can't see them properly because of all the surrounding properties. Sometimes the sky turns pink which is lovely to see.
The garden you're in now sounds really nice and colourful and by the sounds of it a lot less work than your old one. Pleased to see you've got your mini greenhouse now, hope it doesn't take your OH to long to attach it to the garage for you.

I noticed today that my crocus's are starting to grow. I had a few pots of them that didn't seem to be doing anything, so I put them in the ground in the front and now they have started to show signs of growth, which I wasn't expecting until next spring. It does seem strange to see them growing this time of year. About 3 months ago we decided to change our front garden, we took almost everything out including a big hedge and started again with new fences and borders. I need to add more plants as there are lots of spaces, but hopefully it'll look good when it's all finished.

I would like the address for your blog Ann, thank you. Your garden sounds big, I'm looking forward to seeing the photo's of it.

OK Gill I'll send it to you.

I forgot to say, in the garden we have 3 buddleias, a bed full of hostas, ferns in a damp dark corner, honeysuckle, jasmine, wintr flowering jasmin, herbs in a corner near the door, lots of bedding petunias and french marigolds, in season Aquilegia. We have a lot of Clematis (OH's favourite), Dahlias ditto although you will see from photos that the dahlias have not done well this year. Lavender, several but we lost a couple in pots in the hot weather. ramblig and climbing roses on trellis. loganberrie, blackberries, i red currant bush, one gooseberry bush. 15 hanging baskets, one hydrangea, several Sedum, one peonie several hardy fuchsias and much more!!

That's a lot of plants Ann and very colourful to by the sounds of it. I noticed your PM so I'll go and take a look now.

Wow Ann, what a gorgeous garden it must of taken you years to put all those plants in. We only started our back garden last year and front garden this year so it's still very new and quite bare, although I have lots of pot plants, most of them are evergreens so there's not much colour.

I did go out today and bought over 320 bulbs, I tried to buy them to flower throughout the year and managed to find some starting in January and then ending in August, so hopefully next year my garden will look almost as pretty as yours.

I am sure it will Gill. Yes 26 years worth of digging and weeding but so worth it to look at. Good luck with yours.

I can see your garden has taken years to create Ann and it looks lovely. I'm not very good at designing gardens, I wish I was as I'd love a garden like yours. Ours has two large borders but only at the side and along the back, the rest is lawn. I do have a bit of a secret garden behind the conifers but at the moment it's just flags which were only put down last week. It's fairly dark as the neighbour at the back has a tall hedge, so weather I'll plant anything there I'm not sure yet. It's only about 7 foot wide but goes the whole width of my garden, it's handy for storing things as it can't be seen from the main garden, so up to now I've been using it for my pot plants when the plants and bulbs die back and the pots look empty, then they're not on show during the winter.

I've decided not to bother putting the bamboo at the back of the planters now as it's to fiddly and awkward to do, the planters have a curved top and the bamboo is straight and not very flexible. I found some artificial Ivy yesterday so my OH has just nipped back to the shop to buy a couple of rolls, I thought I'd use that as a backdrop then put some plants in front of it. I'm not sure what it'll look like and if it doesn't look right then I'll take it away and try something else. The planters are very pretty and have a diamond shape trellis at the back, but you can see right through them.

We have a very nosey neighbour next door and I wanted something to block his view so he can't see who's coming and going, he can be a bit funny and has even put up a camera so he can see our front door. Not sure why, but as you can imagine we don't really like it, so the planters are our way of giving us some privacy back. I'm not a great lover of artificial plants and have never used them outside, but hopefully it'll solve the problem of the privacy issue and once the real plants go in front of it it'll look okay......time will tell I suppose. I'll let you know if it worked or not when I've finished. I'm hoping to do it today but the dreaded rain is around so how much I'll actual do is down to the weather.

:-) :-) We have a camera on our front door Gill that also covers part of next door's approach to their door if they stray over to our side. (we are good friends with them), The reason we have the camera is that it is geared to the TV, I wear hearing aids and if the TV is on don't always hear the door bell, if somebody comes down our path to the door the TV flicks off and the camera on so I know somebody is there. maybe his is similar.

We put trellis across the garden for the same reason, our neighbour (the other side) used to stand upstairs and look out of his window when we were sitting on the lower patio, once the plants grew up the trellis he couldn't see.

Are your planters standing against the fence or is their room behind them. You could put a bamboo in a pot. (check it is not one that spreads via its roots) behind the planters and that would soon block his view.

Not sure what will happen with artificial ivy but there are fast growing climbers you could plant in the planterers, if you found they were starting to choke the other plants you could always pull them out.

When designing the garden, we just looked at it and, it was around the time that there was a lot of talk about forming 'rooms' so that is what we did. Trellis across two thirds of the way down with an arch in the middle and trellis running down the lawn making sure that we had a view right to the end where the mirror is (you can do a lot with mirrors) through the arch. We then made a wide patch on the left and a fairly narrow one on the right. Because the garden is on two levels we were lucky that the walled garden in front of the conservatory was already in place, although with nothing in it, we also had to build another set of steps. OH then made the water feature at the end of the patio. Because we have a gate to the side of the house that is wrought iron (there when we moved in), we put trellis across the top end of the lawn to block anyone's view looking through the gate.

You can use the dark strip for a compost bin, maybe have a pile of twigs and wood in a corner for wild life. if there is any light at all maybe some ferns would grow there. What hedge is it? Conifer? Leylandi? or something like hawthorne?

Congratulations to Vera on your "addition" You're sure to enjoy filling your little house with cuttings/seeds I bet you're excited to make a start before too long.

400 pots plants Gill? You could set up your own local plant nursery! I hope it keeps fine for you to carry on sorting your planters. Nosy neighbours can't be very nice.
I can't think how long/wide our garden is but will get a tape and measure it out.

Ann your garden photos always look beautiful and are a credit to the time and the effort that you and your hubby spend working together in there.

The gardener came and cut both lawns on Tuesday. He doesn't have a scarifyer but suggested I use a garden fork and spike the near dead patches. I don't have the energy to do that as there does seem to be such a lot of them especially in the back lawn. Yesterday I sat on a stool and used a hand fork to break up the dead grass in just a few of the places and collected well over a bucketful of moss that went in bin.
I plan to continue doing this a little each day. I'm not sure whether ongoing watering will resolve the problem or whether I will need to add grass seed later on?......
watch this space??

Thank you Kandj.

I have just put a thread on the gen chat board as more people seem to read that one. Our apple tree is losing leaves. I suspect it is the weather combination this year but wanted to see if anyone else has a problem. So many down now they need raking up. And theya re a nuisance, normally they fall when the plants are finished but now the leaves are falling into the plants and water feature. :-( :-(

I think that is all you can do Kandj, unless you can find somebody who does have a scarifyer. I'm sure it will recover.

I was thinking of using a mirror in our back garden Ann to reflect some of the plants. It sounds like you have really planned your garden, we used to have a little water feature but the pump broke and we never bought another one, so took the water feature out. We took the garage down (the water feature was up against it) as it was taking up a good quarter of our garden, plus it had an asbestos roof, so we had to get a specialist in to remove it. Once the garage was removed the garden looked massive, that's when I started putting the pot plants around the garden to create borders and it just took off from there.

I have very tall Leyland Cyprus trees at the back which we love it's a nice backdrop for the border in front of it and it's hides the things we store in the secret garden so it suits us. I was thinking of putting some ferns in, although it's quite small, we cut some of the conifers back so it's let in some extra light. I'd love some evergreen ferns but don't know any of their names. I know some ferns die back in winter and I get a bit confused over which one is which. Do you know the names of evergreen ferns, I'd like some that grow to about 4 foot tall. I know you can buy fern trees but I think they are to big for the space?

Yes, I'm putting the planters up against the fence so there's no room behind them. The artificial Ivy actually looks quite good but is taking a bit of time to wire onto the trellis, OH is going to put some wood at the back of the Ivy to keep it place, we don't want the wind to blow it off in the winter.

The leaves on my apple tree seem to still be there, so I can't help you Ann, have you tried Googling it, someone else might have the same problem and have an answer as to why it's happening?

I'm sure your lawn will come back once it starts raining properly Kandj, maybe you could give it a good rake, that would get rid of all the dead grass and moss that's collected and might help encourage new growth where there are dead patches.

Garden measures 60' long and 20' wide which I had to double check as this suggests it is long and narrow but it has never seemed that narrow before I had the tape out?

I'm still managing to sit on my stool and rake the many dead patches in both lawns and watering in between the showers we have had here. Warm, dry and sunny today. Hope this continues for the Bank Holiday weekend. Have a good time everyone whatever you have planned.

Gill do you have a good garden centre near you? If so go and look at what ferns they have and the labels will hopefully tell you which won't die back. If there is a little light getting in there how about trying a couple of Hellebores.
I like to see mirrors in gardens they add interest. We had leylandi at the end of our garden but the people they belonged to took them out thank goodness as they stopped anything growing near them.

Kandj slowly slowly catchee monkey I think with the lawn. I expect the exercise is as good for you as it is the lawn. the sun is shining here now but it was chilly this morning.

Thanks Ann for the suggestion of Hellebores, I Googled them so I new what they looked like and they look lovely.

Because my borders are made up of pots I don't have any trouble with things growing in front of the Leylandi trees. I live in a bungalow and there is a massive house very close to the bottom of our garden so the trees give us privacy which we like, it also hides the bit of garden behind them so I can use that space for storage to without it being seen. I planted the trees 10 years ago and I'm so glad I did, it makes a lovely backdrop to the border we put there this year. With our garden being North facing it doesn't block any sun off the main garden to, which is a bonus.

I didn't know we had about 6 to 8 foot of garden behind the trees until I started cutting the huge hedge back, it belongs to the neighbours over the back and had grown towards the sun on our side, so once I took away the very long branches I put a fence up which gave us our secret garden, now it's all flagged it can be used. There is a bit of light, but no direct sunlight, so the Hellebores should do well down there, thank you for your advice.

Yes, we have quite a lot of garden centres around here so I'll take a look and see if any of them have some evergreen ferns as I think they would be ideal in the shady spot Kandj. Gardens can look bigger than they actually are sometimes depending on how they are laid out. I bet it was a surprise when you measured it? Keep going with your lawn I'm sure you'll get there in the end. Maybe you could feed it, that might help it grow back.

Well, I finally finished one of my planters yesterday so that's ready to be planted up once I decide what to put in it. I keep changing my mind, but with all the pot plants I've got, there's plenty to choose from. I'm hoping to start wiring in the artificial Ivy to the back of the second planter tomorrow if it's not raining, then that one will be ready to. It's pouring with rain here today so I won't be working in the garden today. Once I've finished the planters I have the lovely job of planting the 326 bulbs I bought the other day. I'm going to put some of them in the planters and some in the front garden, the rest will go into pots to dot around the two large borders I have in the back garden, so hopefully next year I'll have some colour everywhere. Most of my plants are evergreen so I haven't had a lot of colour this year.