Does anyone know anything about gardening?

I have leafcutter bees taking rose leaf bits and lots of moths chomping, though they prefer wild plants.

Slug wise the blackbird is helping, ivy berries attract him and his missus to the garden. But I got SO many, I have to put my dahlia in window boxes to give them a chance.

They didn't eat the gladiola bulbs I left in the ground.

Fuck that.

I'm not up for nuking everything, but if I buy a plant and go to the effort of planting it I want it to grow.

It feels like soon we'll have gash articles posting this for inspo

Susan says many of her clients are now experimenting with enjoying their gardens from inside their house. These days you can use your air frier as a BBQ (see sponsored link), so there is even less need to physically be in your garden. She encourages them to treat it as a mental space instead.

I’m well into this idea, hopefully sheer density of plants would stop it looking threadbare

The bottle garden is looking pretty good today.

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72 bedding plugs for £20

https://www.thompson-morgan.com/p/garden-collection/WKF9076TM

😂 very good

A end of season Honeysuckle we picked up the other year has been thriving and is about to come out. I feel like they're always very short lived, but nice when they're out.

Also very excited about my first of quite a few orders on their way.

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What needs thinking about when planning a climber up the front of a house? We live in a Victorian terrace and are thinking about what to do with the front garden. One option is a nice tree (Magnolia?) that doesn't risk foundations, and another is some sort of climber like a rose or wisteria (although that takes years to flower, right?). Do you just drill holes and install eyelets to tie them to? There are already some eroded bricks so the last thing we want to do is cause more damage, but it could be a lovely thing to do.

For what you've described you'd probably want a rambling rose over a climber - but that's a preference thing so do a bit of searching to check what suits you. They should flower pretty quickly. Get a reasonable sized one now and I can't see why you wouldn't get flowers this year.

I've started switching my training(?) method:

1. Steel wire in neat parallel (or horizontal) lines attached to the wall using either eyes or screws and washer set in the wall with rawl plugs set 2-3mm too deep. This is for when you'll see the wires for longer or certain times of the year
   
2. Chicken wire in panels fixed with screws and washers - you half unwind/loosen a crossing intersection and that gives enough spave to screw a screw through the wire. This is for when you won't see the wire at all
   
   

For 1. See post above. I really like how clean and discreet this is when wires are visible.

For 2. See pic. It's hard to photograph and irl before plants grow it's much less noticeable than you think. Theoretically it should allow you to unscrew and fold back if you want to access the brick.

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Magnolia is nice, but maybe for five days.
Nice bushy stuff that birds live in that eat the insects that otherwise would eat your flowers?
I also really like the Japanese Acer we have here. And the ginko is really fun too, but no idea how suitable they are.

a lovely thing to do

100%, most beautiful decoration you can do for your house

Wisteria can be absolutely huge, pay careful attention to maximum size. And yeah, they're one for the long game

Roses quicker and possibly more charming? A bit less obvious

Assume you are South or West facing?

Vine eyes will need to be very securely attached and strong wire, well tightened. Get the little turnbuckle things to tighten the wire

Our back garden faces south, so front will be north. I've just put a climbing rose in the back garden and screwed eyelets in a big grid into the fence to slowly tie it into five horizontal lines. I think that's what made me think of roses as an option...

Dont think wisteria will work on a north facing wall.

Some roses will eg.
https://www.davidaustinroses.co.uk/collections/ideal-for-climbers-for-north-facing-walls

A climber would be nice if youre short on space in the front garden, but I guess you need to keep it under control to stop it damaging the house. Otherwise a small, pretty flowering tree like a cherry? We have a small '3 season' flowering cherry.

Last year I left a trellis against a garden fence and the bindweed covered it, and seemingly left other stuff alone (maybe). This year the trellis is gone and now there are about 30 shoots of bindweed rearing their ugly heads, wondering where the trellis has gone. What would you do?

Climbing hydrangea will like north facing and is self clinging

Move or agent orange

On GQT someone suggested stakes to let them get going on an easily identifiable object. Then pull them out once they've got going.

Iirc logic being it's less effort, easier to see them all, and uses up their energy.

Anyone grown shiso/ Perilla frutescens / beefsteak plant from seed?

So many flowers are over too quickly. Our magnolia and cherry blossom look incredible, but give it a week it’s been and gone.

I pulled a lot of that out, and it is a lot less of a problem now. But you really need to get all the root out, as much as you can.

If you can careful hand dig that part out and pick out the roots that will help, it is one of the weeds you just have to add on the to-do, along with whatever plagues your garden.

It’s actually super accessible, albeit very firm clay so will be a workout I think. Once I’ve dug a load out is there anything I can plant all over it that will do well in shade and suppress the bindweed?

This Angelica has appeared from nowhere this year! Was teeming with bees and other buzzos earlier.

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I got hellebore, sweet woodruff, hosta, brunnera and lungworths in my clay shade. The woodruff grow fast and wants to do a lot of groundcover, the rest is more chill.

I have super heavy clay too, a workout soil indeed!

Chives and creeping Jenny also do well in the shade in clay.

Creeping Jenny is great for ground cover.

Strawberries too.