Does anyone know anything about gardening?

Hah, yeah I bet.

I have approx 10 tonnes of ash after having a 70ft tree taken down, so won't be worrying a out burning unsuitable wood for a little while...

Suggestions for dappled shade trees then?

The birch in my dads garden looks great and has lasted many storms so far..

My personal choice would be a fruit tree, probably apple, probably bramley, pruned to give an umbrella-like crown. The choices are myriad.

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What size? - if its small/mid-size after much research, I went for a Mount Fuji Cherry tree (Prunus Shirotae) which like Colins suggestion creates a nice create almost flat-topped canopy.

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Garden project for the early spring is to remove this wood store. Don’t burn wood, don’t need to store wood to burn, and the wall here is south facing so this is a nice little sun trap. Going to replace it with a raised bed, grow a nice climbing rose up the wall, will look v pretty and I’ll also keep a little nook of space to store the BBQ in. Raised bed likely made out of sleepers or similar chunky treated timber.

Question: when it comes to building the side of the raised bed adjacent to the wall do I want to
A) Build it directly against the wall
B) Build it against the wall but with a layer of something between it and the wall to stop damp getting into the brickwork (if so, what’s that layer of something?)
C) Build it slightly away from the wall?
D) Something else?

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Anybody local have a woodburner? Quite a few quids worth of wood there :)

Is it a 9" wall (double brick thickness)? What type of sleepers do you intend to use? How do you intend to fix the sleepers together (gravity is the wrong answer)? Only plan for 5 years life if softwood.

Dibs on wood, if you'll post.

My gut says C) for airflow.

Is an extra foot going to negatively impact your use of the space?

Better safe than sorry. It'll be a fucker to move or fix.

1) don’t know. It’s an outbuilding so suspect not.
2) hardwood ones, ideally. Screwed together, plus some extra battens on the inside.

Wood will likely get sold locally. Might keep some back for a little bug habitat somewhere in the garden.

Triggered by the multiple bottles of bubble liquid and sun faded plastic toys. First thing I notice when I look out the back windows.

Oh man, tell me about it. I’m getting a storage chest thing to put all that crap in so that it will be out of sight. Well, it will be out of sight if properly tidied away, that is. Which will be never.

bubble liquid

Top tip: buy consentrated Pro bubble liquid and then mix your own. Ideally with water collected from the tumble dryer.

Oh, I am not buying any of this shit. It just makes its way into our house/garden, seemingly through osmosis.

Any evergreen shade loving hedges tips?

I have hazelnuts, Camellia (found a dealer, picking up 4 this weekend), Viburnum and Holly on the list so far.

Hedges are behind a 1.8 meter fence with sun in the back so not much light for them.

Portugal laurel is fairly unfussy

Tx!

Is it bad for a tree to let native honeysuckle grow against it? Of course it would be a strong established tree not a small young tree.

Tried to find the answer online but no joy.

The pelargonium seeds (geranium) are already coming up to my surprise.

Westland compost room temp 17-18 during day, min 12 at might.

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That is a lovely looking tree!

Ditto, lovely!

i've got a line of plum trees, and there's native honeysuckle all over them. It doesn't seem to bother the trees at all, but when individual honeysuckle branches die, they stick around in huge tangled leafless snarls that look (imo) pretty fugly. I'm comfortable living with it, though. Goes with the huge tangled snarls of bramble and bindweed elsewhere(!)

Tangled snarls of stuff are great for wildlife. I could do with more.

Yeah, I agree! It's one reason (the other being bone idleness) that I've been resisting clearing it all up, the bees and whatnot love the mess.

The dead honeysuckle is too stringy and gappy to support much wildlife, so it's mostly just ugly. When it gets too unbearable I pull the dead bits off and put them onto one of my many, many fallen wood piles :-)

Tx!

Yep honeysuckle can go all bare and gnarly if it dies, but it's not a big deal as the aim is to have flowers to attract moths to get bats in at the Belfast Castle trees.

I cut mine back every year. Bramble and bindweed central here too...and sorrels and sticky willy everywhere!

But that's ok. Bar the surprise brambles in the lawn, ouch...

And so it begins.... found a bareroot hedge dealer too, going to order in tonight. Hopefully no horror show once I start digging, as some parts of the garden were laid over thick black bin plastic for some weird reason...

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Just as my Jasmine finally became established the recent frosts have pretty much killed it.
Any other suggestions for climbing flowering plants other than rambling roses that are frost tolerant for a sunny spot?