WAB Members' Garden Photos

[goosey]

Originally Posted by Garden Carpet

Goosey, that looks lovely and peaceful... cat looks happy to.
jaki

It is peaceful but I can't get out there at the moment as my two girls are making the most of the sunshine (29 deg) and are sunbathing and there isn't really room fo me.

Thanks everyone for your nice comments. Of course, I'd love something bigger but I do wonder if I would have put so much effort and thought into it, if space hadn't been such a premium.

[Lords and Ladies]

Originally Posted by goosey

I thought I had included everything but seeing Lords and Ladies bog garden has given me another idea to work on - thanks!

That sounds intriguing goosey..

If it's anything to do with growing sphagnum moss, I wouldn't bother too much with the hanging basket stuff. But if you find a good way of growing it please let me know!

I hoped that today I might be able to buy one or more of the three native sundews, as I went to a plant sale where a carnivourous plant guy had a stand (at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire, not far from Sheffield). He was there but didn't bring any of the natives he has...

Anyway, I've now got some pics of the opposite, sunnier side of the backyard.


The insect border is coming along now. There's a few more early flowers and some more colour. The leek-like looking thing in the top right of the border is an ornamental onion (allium aflatunense - 'purple sensation') and is now shooting up flower spikes nicely. Between the fence and the back wall of the border are lots of pots:- teasel is in there, the globe thistle is shooting up, the long green grassy mass near the centre of the picture is a pot of planted birdseed; other thistles, alliums and nettles are back there too. The thing trailed up the fence is a grapevine, just now starting to get its leaves.


This one almost looks like a flower border . Hopefully, the grape hyacinths will multiply.


Everything needs to 'grow out' a bit. I'd like to get to a point where I can't see soil, eventually..

[smartie]

Here are a couple of photos of our latest project. As we can't get an allotment at present, we thought we'd try to grow more vegetables in the garden. The reason for the raised beds is so we don't keep disturbing the roots of the fledgling cordon fruit trees along the wall.



As you can see, the cats decided to use the beds as...well, beds So the second photo shows the natty netting system we're developing to keep them and the muntjac off. Last year the muntjac nibbled all the blossom off the trees.



BTW, Lords and Ladies, that was a good plant sale at Chatsworth, I thought. We were the group who had to make 3 trips back to our car to stow away all the plants we bought Busy week in the garden, now...

[nightshade]

What compost to grow the cats

[Gill Catton]

Jennyb...
what about lots of honeysuckle? This seems to be a species of flowers that does quite well in my local woods despite the profusion of deer....


Also

Is it worth highlighting that every bog garden created using peat, interesting though it is, depleats natural bogs which in-turn affects the wildlife that rely on such habitat...... I'm not aware of any sustainable harvest being undertaken - unless someone knows differently?

[FungiJohn]

This is proving to be very popular so I've made it a 'sticky'. It's certainly gave me one or two ideas

John

[smartie]

Originally Posted by nightshade

What compost to grow the cats

And on the subject of compost, we got one of those rotary sieves that MalcolmX mentioned a couple of months ago, and it is brilliant. Much less effort than riddling the compost in the conventional way. Well worth the £45 it cost. I sieved enough compost to fill all my potato bags in about an hour (we are growing potatoes in rubble bags this year as an experiment).

[nightshade]

It should be possible to make a bog garden with Coir or any of the Peat alternatives
It will be worth looking into

[Tinkerbell]

This thread reminded me that when I was a child my Dad would 'rent' a garden for growing fruit and veg (our own was a small council patch). No money changed hands, but in return for the use of the plot, he would keep the garden tidy and supply the owner with some fresh produce. It worked well on both sides, so if you don't have a plot of your own, perhaps you could do similarly and remove some of the worries of living with a garden the owner can no longer maintain, in return for the pleasure it would give you.

Tinkerbell

[smartie]

We did wonder at one time about asking the dentist who uses the house next to ours as a set of consulting rooms - but doesn't live there - if we could do something similar with their garden. But all the gardens in our road are quite heavily shaded by trees and there are a limited number of places that get enough sun to grow vegetables successfully. We'll just have to wait for an allotment to come up, I think.