Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Well it has rained non-stop for months now, so the odds are against you.

Hehe :)

Yeah it's going to be a while before it will fruit...working out hedging too as that will also take a few years.

Gardening is a funny combo of "look it grows by itself" and "after rigorous planning, measuring, budgeting and digging ...in 5 years I might have pears" :)

Ironically part of the reason it's in such a state is I held off putting down new seed due to the hosepipe ban thinking I'd do it when it ended (which turned out to be this week).

Gardening is a funny combo of "look it grows by itself" and "after rigorous planning, measuring, budgeting and digging ...in 5 years I might have pears" :)

It's very 'teach a man to fish' right - all the work at the beginning. If you plant your tree and keep it well watered for the first summer, you'll have pears every year for the rest of your life in return for half an hour's pruning per annum.

What do you use the lawn for? If you tripled the width of the borders, you'd be using up the muddiest patches and then you'd have enough room for some beautiful plants.

Are those leylandii? If you're not careful your whole garden will be nothing but leylandii soon!

Yep some sort of fungus that lives on both juniper and Pear. Fungus can infect plants half a mile apart according to daughter who is studying horticulture (I think that's what she said)

The dentist has juniper I only spotted that as you mentioned them. But they are over a mile away so it should be safe.

And indeed once a garden is setup, it's not too much work. Bar the eternal couch grass, weeds...but I'm not going for the "garden magazine manicured to sterility" look anyway.

Are those leylandii?

@aggi if they are, get rid. If anything it will save you or a future owner the ballache of having them removed at 100' tall (ask me how I know).

As for the grass. I don't have the perfect answer but from bodging a lawn with seed, it's a matter of persistence and finding the right seed blend.

Get rid of the leylandii and you'll get more light. Then as soon as the season allows next year go into overseeing mode. Scalp it right back, aerate, sand, seed, top dress, water, feed, rinse and repeat and it will thicken out.

But, light is going to be your friend, ultimately.

The manicured look comment made me smile, at 63 years old I've been pottering in gardens for a few decades. Including gardens that had chemical warfare unleashed upon it akin to the Americans using agent orange. !

I am happier now with just letting things grow where they spring up, stuff in the lawn that is green but certainly not grass, accepting that bugs will eat things, not having plants in rows and letting nature take care of things. Horticulturists in the family make it look nice among all the chaos :)

The back of my garden now looks like that - lack of light I reckon.
I have to reseed 1/3 of my lawn every spring :(

I’m giving up on our front lawn in favour of lots and lots of bulbs and dahlia tubers. May even sprinkle some wild flower seeds.

:)

I don't think I'll ever grow salad though, nature taking care of that here means "did you know common garden snails are edible as your salad has been recycled into them? ;)

Pretty much all fruit trees thrive in clay. I had espaliered pears around half the perimeter of my old garden and they fruited in their third year, the harder you prune the more they will fruit. If possible, buy them as bare root 'whips' (single stems) as these establish quickest, this is the right time of year to do so. No great soil prep is needed, you can literally shove them in a slit in the ground, although a little organic matter will no doubt help. Ideally, buy on a dwarfing rootstock and plant with the graft a few inches above soil surface. Pears grow tall if not on a dwarfing rootstock and you probably don't want to prune and harvest from a high ladder!

The only lettuce I can think of as being a success here was a heritage one called Speckled Trout...... Very 70's though and needs heinz salad cream, looks spectacular when it bolts too :)

After a 2 minute Google, Craigmore Trees in Co Armagh should be able to supply (if I remember rightly you're in NI). Bare root are a fraction of the garden centre ripoff prices and generally grown by people who know exactly what they are doing.

That's the one I found as well, Armagh is a bit of a drive but I will keep them in mind.

There is a Belfast garden center that does a potted pear tree for £29, haven't rang Craigmore yet.

Now to plan&source the hedges... there will not be any Leylandii involved :p

But it may be hard to get some hedges here, cannot get them from GB anymore (thanks Brexshit) so may end up with a sensible & easy to source hawthorn/alder/buckthorn/hazel/cottoneaster/holly hedge.

@aggi if they are, get rid

Iirc which is not guaranteed, this advice has been given several times previously.

I'll give it again. Get rid of those bastard things.

Yeah. I'm not one for suggesting people do things just because it's what I would do (because I know fuck all and have zero taste). But for leylandii, I see no redeeming features. Whatever purpose they are serving, there are likely many options that will be less of a pain in the dick in 5 to 10 years' time.

There were 5 in the garden at my old flat that had clearly been planted to form some sort of boundary hedge for a shared path that led to the back of neighbouring gardens. But they had not been contained and we're 100' tall, in a garden that was about 15' x 10'. I got those taken down and it made our garden and my neighbours garden way nicer places to be (dropped "needles" and lack of light were big problems). There were another braces of the fuckers in another neighbours garden that I never managed to convince them to get rid. But then I moved. I'll see if I can find the before and after.

Not sure what order these will show up. But pre-felling, it was zero life below the leylandii. Barring the labelled leaves that turned out to be JKW, but that's a different, expensive and stressful story.

4 Attachments

I would ask Craigmore about bare root hedging while you're at it, again, a huge saving on potted stuff. I have said before on this thread that young plants will always overtake most of the rubbish usually sold in cheap compost from garden centres and nurseries. I buy almost exclusively from growers who don't sell to the public, but they look a decent compromise.

Please everyone, keep planting Leylandii, you can pay me to grub them out later.

Japanese knotweed?

Ouch....

I love trees but such tall trees in a small garden don't work, your garden looks far better now.

Thanks I'll check with them on hedging.

It's an old English saying. West Country I think.

Japanese knotweed?

Yes, you can also see two little round green fences in the lawn which were the two impacted/treated places in my garden. It was also over the other side of that back fence (luckily convinced the neighbour to get the same treatment plan. Theory is some builders fly tipped contaminated waste into my garden and up the side path (there was a big growth further up the path) as it can only come about by physically transplanting as we only have the female plants in this country. Once in, it can spread tens of metres. But it's not like it can be spread by birds or anything.

Interestingly, that little growth, I kept pulling it before I knew what it was. Which if you read the horror stories, can make it worse. But, when they came to spray it, that growth seemed to be the weakest and died overnight.

Made selling the flat a pain in the dick with a couple of interested buyers running a mile, even with the management plan in place and paid for.

Interestingly, that small tree in the corner of the after photo, started life as a random thing growing out of the drain hopper half way up the wall. I pulled it out and stuck it in the corner and it thrived. Still never worked out exactly what it was. I thought some kind of apple with a seed getting stuck in the drain or something. But a couple of apps I tried said goat willow. Not really surprised it grew in the soil, it had been living semi-hydroponically in upstairs' grey waste water for a few months.

1 Attachment

Our front garden / drive is nearly done and we need to start thinking about plants.

I went on pintrest for the first time in ages. I might need practice, but it strikes me that it's turned into another shit advertising space promoting random shit. Is there anywhere else to look for ideas?

I'll post some pictures and what we have that's good that we want to keep. The main thing I'm trying to find is bedding combos with light purple flag irises.