The bottom is gunnera. Grows at the edges of wet areas. If it’s mature and has the right conditions then you’ll be able to stand under those leaves like umbrellas come summer time.

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

The bottom is gunnera. Grows at the edges of wet areas. If it’s mature and has the right conditions then you’ll be able to stand under those leaves like umbrellas come summer time.

That sounds about right. Last year’s leaves were already dead (and rotting!) when we moved in, but they were ENORMOUS. I used them to cover over the top of the compost heaps when it started to get frosty.

Nina wrote:

Gonna have out first week of 30C+...

Insane. No wonder Cali has so many water shortages.

O I forgot to tell about the lizard skin I found the other day.

Spoilered the images as they're a bit nasty, depending on personal squeamish-ness level.

Ants were all over it right away, and I send a picture to B (I considered walking into the office announcing this, but wasn't sure if he was in a meeting) but when he came to watch it we just saw a crow pick it up a fly off with it. Now I'm wondering how many I've missed.

Our garden is wild. Deliberately so. I'm not particularly interested in gardening and I like the idea of animals using it. We've seen a few hedgehogs and get loads of birds.

The landlord did not share my thoughts. He saw it last week for the first time in years and gave us 2 weeks to get it cleared. We contacted a gardener but he messed us around and decided today that he wasn't going to do it.

So I've been going at it for the last few days by myself. It isn't a one man job but we don't have much of a choice. I pick up a rotovator tomorrow to see what it can do to help.

I really just want to burn it, tbh.

Before:



So far:

nick_md wrote:

You should see my garden, Polish builders went through it and I picked out the word 'jungle' (dzungla) in their chat. I said "like a jungle" and one of them goes "yes, exactly that".

I've hacked some down since.

Where did you Bury them?

What's a good material for planter pots?

I planted my azaleas in the shade of the palm trees, gave the one that was the worst an umbrella, hoping that it'd become strong enough this summer to survive next year without umbrella. But the gardeners just went hard on the palm trees and cut almost all the leaves off (which I've lately learned is something you don't really do, you only cut palm tree leaves when they might become a danger by falling off unpredictably) and now the one that was just fine is showing a lot of brown, wrinkled leaves.

So it's time to move them to a pot and just be done with trying to grow them in the garden. I know stone pots will hold heat better and therefor might dry out the soil quicker than you'd want. I don't wanna go crazy expensive. I'm also not sure what a good size would be for the azaleas to get to a decent size.

Terracotta pots are pretty common in the UK. No idea if they are the best material but they seem very popular.

regmcfly wrote:

Current garden



If we weren't gearing up to sell, I would get some nice wooden garden furniture but since we are it feels like it would be an extra hassle in moving.

It’s amazing the difference a few plants can make. The whole thing looks ten times more welcoming than it did when you last posted pics.

Ok that took quite a while to get the big pots here (first order got cancelled without any notifications, and things almost always take a week or so to get here) so I'm gonna post some update shots of some plants I have that haven't completely given up yet. If anyone can spot some issues from seeing the leave colours (too much water / sun - not enough water / sun etc) that's be appreciated.

Here's my big sweat pea shrub

(yeah shrub is quite a big word there)
Undecided on this one, it does seem to have nice dark green leaves on top, but the bottom ones are often yellow-ish. I do give them extra water once a week on top of whatever the sprinklers give every day.

Small sweat pea

This one seems to produce new, greener leaves on top all the time, but otherwise looks sad and it feels a bit weak. Has fallen over the the side but I'm not sure if propping it up will help.

Lavender

This is the one that I wasn't sure if it survived the last summer. The one I planted this spring looks quite dead and colourless, but I'll leave that just in case. Not sure what to do with this either, it produced some flowers early summer but has pretty much stopped doing anything.

Scented geraniums

Not unhappy with these, they didn't look great when I planted them and a few months after they got thrown around by the wind a bit, almost pulling them out of the ground. The seem better now and I have put them a bit more upright.

The Barrel situation

Mostly ok I guess? The plumeria is doing fine, quite happy with that as it's a gift from the neighbours. Sage is looking a bit off last few days, chives are fine, lemon verbena doing better now I'm giving it more water, the two poinsettias have only been put there yesterday after pruning them a bit first time since I got them (Christmas) so not much hope for those, but also not sure if I can be bothered to mess around with boxes to keep them dark in October. Not sure what's going on with my succulents, I think the one south-west is supposed to be dormant now, but some other have some spots that look like burn spots, or leaves that dry up and fall off. I gave them water once a week but that might be too much? Doing less but will still mist them once a week.

The azaleas

There's the two trouble makers. I really hope this will be enough to have them perk up again. From going to a too sunny spot, to a fine spot under the palm tree that was then a too sunny spot again when the gardeners cut the palm tree leaves off, to this. At least now I can move them around when I think they need it. Got soil, added vermiculite and azalea food, not bark mulch yet but might get that. Will see after a few waterings if I need to add some more soil to the top. They look a bit sad now, I really hope they fill up again. The one on the left was the one that had it worse at first, had that under an umbrella all the time when I moved them underneath the palm tree and it was just doing better when I started noticing the other one getting the brown leaves and needed a change of plans.

Other thing are too dead or not very interesting to post (got a citronella which seems fine, and the red flower plant is done with the red flowers I think). I start to feel like I need to use a diary and track when I water / how the leaves look before watering, and a day or two after.

Our man came back with a telehandler to gather up all the cuttings. Big boy toys.

It’s amazing seeing things ripen differently in different parts of the garden. Really highlights how important direct sunlight is in the process.

It’s been quite different up here in Central Scotland. We’ve had a glorious summer. Blazing sunshine damn near the whole way through. If anything we’ve been short on rainfall.

Might actually be even more localised than that. Even when Edinburgh and Glasgow got flooding, we were outside in sunglasses getting tans.

Sprocket!

We have a ton of tomatoes but they’re all about the same size as yours.