Does anyone know anything about gardening?

That's lovely! My Echinacea really attracts the butterflies and bees!

Mediterranean style front garden? So far I have an olive tree and lots of lavender, looking for something

Very late but...
Salvia - probably hot lips or something in a slight pinky red. Obvs you can go with what you like tho.

Purple sage - you'll have to cut it back every so often to keep it under control, but I wouldn't call it invasive.

Hollyhocks - depends how long you'll be there as they take a few years to start.

Awesome. Cheers.

No worries.

If you want some dark pink Hollyhocks I can post you some seeds at the end of the season.

Quickly ran outside and nabbed a pic. Not the best photo, the irl colour is more like the flowers in background.

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Went to Terra Botanica in Angers while on holiday. Can throughly recommend with or without kids.

It does make me wish for a bigger garden and a big plant budget so I could build a jungle inspired section of the garden with some sort of little wooden man cave and deck.

I've finally managed to get my Dahlia Black Jack to flower. It's about 4ft high but next year I'm hoping for 6ft.
Also, after planting 6 in 6 different locations, one of my Cannas finally flowered. YES!

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How it started vs how it’s finished

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There is so much waste!!

We've got guinea pigs (stay with me here), which between them generate about 40l of spoilt bedding (sawdust, hay, newspaper, poo) a week. I'd like to make use of this.

I understand that this is 'brown' for the purposes of composting, and I can't generate enough green waste to balance it out. Is there anything else I can do with it? Try and use it for mulch?

Might attract foxes, dig it right in if using as mulch.

That's quite a large regular ammount to get rid of. Do you have any neighbours with large lawns or can you join a community garden group to get a soure of nitrogen? Coffee and brewing grain etc is nitrogen as well if I recall so any local cafes or breweries that could help you out?

Don’t use newspaper- we made that mistake for a long time. Get a bit of Lino instead- much easier to clean and far less soggy stuff to get rid of!

In the the above theme of how it started v how it's going, here's 7 months of growth in my new garden. Feb 23 v Sept 23.

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Oh no, what happened?!

;)

What are the forum approved t-artisanal secateurs?

Are there any UK makers worth having or am I looking at niwaki / okatsune?

Left handed specific preferred

Felco worth looking at.

Stihl seem to do secateurs too. Do they own Felco? They list both brands on their site: https://www.stihl.co.uk/en/c/secateurs-shears-saws-pruners-97968

Not sure they count as artisanal. Felco aren't really either but they are very good.

Felco website is not particularly transparent on that point but from a quick look it doesn't seem that they are owned by German chainsaws

https://felco.com/en_us/the-people-behind-felco

Signed some kind of agreement to co-market their products back in 2014 apparently: https://www.stihl.com/stihl-and-felco-sign-partnership-deal.aspx

Will dispose of artisanal in exchange for well made (lasting more than 12 months) and left handed.

Non secateurs.

Here you go. These last indefinitely.

https://www.sam-turner.co.uk/products/felco-pruner-n9?variant=32245991866507

Ta.

Niche :-)