Does anyone know anything about gardening?

🤣🤣 There's no way I'm doing the entire remaining lawn in a couple of hours.... but yes, point taken and advice appreciated.

Given you've got the holes already drilled, I'd burn it next.

https://thestumpers.co.uk/how-to-burn-a-tree-stump/

I think I'd take the easy option and buy some nice new turf to roll out, wouldn't cost that much for that size - keep the dog off it for a while. I re-seeded a bare bit of lawn last year and it looks shit and tufty, theres no grantee of a good result by seeding.

need to

How come?

Becuase I want to plant something else, and this is where i want to plant it....

will bushy thyme grow back if I cut away most of it?

Cool.

You need to rent a stump machine.

I don't think so, doesn't it need to grow from green wood.

you will be able to dig that out without too much bother, albeit it will be moderately hard work.

you could do it with a spade only but that will add to the challenge. Spade plus an axe or a mattock by itself will make the job easier and less likely that you'll need to buy a new spade as part of the process.

not sure but i suspect you may be right. I guess I should just buy some new plants.

It's a risk. Sometimes you cut into the woody bit of lavender, rosemary, thyme etc and it sprouts up. Sometimes not. My thinking is if you're going to replace the thing cos it's too leggy there's not much to lose by trying.

yes, this is true.

i think i'll get some new plants and cut back the old ones and see what happens.

You can always pop some of the cuttings in the ground. All of my rosemary is from one plant.

Petrol, engine oil, match....

Still trying to work out something to replace this back fence with.

It's a weird situation where the house behind us is 50% wider than ours so the fence goes across our garden and half of next door.

There's a brick pillar at one side, a couple of concrete posts and corrugated iron between them. There are a couple of poles running horizontally, I'm not sure how structural they are but seem pretty firmly attached.

Trees are no longer there. As in the paddling pool pic it's low lying plants and a few climbers that we have discovered are evergreen so don't do much to conceal the fence in winter.

The ideal would be getting rid of the screening and putting in some horizontal battens in to create a fence and cover the corrugated iron. Main issue I can see with this is there isn't a fence post on the left hand side. I guess I could maybe attach to the corrugated iron but don't know how succesful this would be (putting aside it also not being my fence so far as I can tell). There's also the horizontal poles which would need to work around.

I don't want to lose space from the beds so not keen on putting in new fence posts in front of the current fence unless that can be done in a pretty slimline way.

Anyone got any bright ideas? It's been bugging me for years.

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Top lawn.

A fan trained greengage is what I'm trying to do in a similar situation here. It would need to get some sun and it will take a few years. Current situation and inspo pic attached.

Or the obvious answer if you want evergreen coverage is an evergreen climber. I like holboellia latifolia but clematis armandii is a more common one.

This year it's not too late to sow some sweet peas and get it covered with flowers and scent for the price of a packet of seeds

Edit - ignore the even uglier wall below the greengage, that gets hidden by other plants for most of the year

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Sourdough starter slug traps deployed and they're working a treat

Isn't the issue with those that they attract slugs from a much wider radius than your garden?

Apparently so.

There's that beer time-lapse on YT that made me sceptical of all of those type of things.

I'm going to make my annual submission for spending a week going out each evening with a torch and pot and collecting them up. Afterwhich you can probably do 2 nights a week.

Then either ✂️ or 🚮, depending on your brutality.

Tbf I've seen loads of baby slugs and I don't yet have the heart to put them in the green waste.

Can highly recommend ducks for slug control. Buy them, rent them, put out adverts at the local pond... Watching them hunt around for slugs is really a joy.

Fucking cats.

One has dug up one of my recently planted Tradescantia and taken a shit.

Anyone got good suggestions for anti-cat plants. Ideally decreet. No Lavender.

1. Mixed sun shade bed in a protected area
   
2. Partially covered kids den area under some forsythia and similar woody shrubs
   
   

Cheers.

Can anyone identify either/both of these?
Plant app i just tried for free couldn’t come up with anything - the top one without blue flowers has an almost minty smell

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Bottom is Blue Alkanet I think

Green Alkanet, no? Super invasive in our garden. Bees love it, but...