What are we doing in the garden 2025

Sowing Meconopsis seeds which have just arrived from the Meconopsis group.

 

Oo @zenj nomocharis pardanthina! I tried many times with that but never got beyond small bulb stage.

 

wow never heard of those. amazing blue colours i see online

 

Can't grow Mecanopsis here either, London clay, very jealous of those who can.
The sun came through very late morning so I cleared leaves off the grass and used the mower to pick them up and shred them a bit. I then got the garden vac out and picked up lots more off the tops of the bulb pots and the bark chip we have down the bottom. There are just a few leaves left clinging to the old Bramley apple now. The trouble with vacuuming up wet leaves is it clogs the machine up eventually, so it takes twice as long to clean it as to do the job. The vac does mince the leaves up well though so that bag full should be ready this time next year. No space for a proper leaf bays here.

 

I have got my hands thoroughly into the dirt today. There's a corner of my back "lawn" that the foxes always dig up, so I'd be planning for a while to turn it into a shrub bed. I've dug out a patch and planted the new leptospermum I bought this week, adding a yellowy coloured small conifer that I moved from another part of the garden and a white flowering hebe that had been languishing in its pot since I bought it months ago.

The conifer was in a part of the garden that I later decided to dedicate to herbs, and spent most of its life hidden under a very enthusiastic sage.

I also put in two hellebore argutifolium (also bought this week), some white botanical tulips with a yellow centre (turkestanica), and some pale blue muscari.

The main shrubs were planted in a triangle with quite a big space in the middle, which I'm hoping they will spread and fill, but for now I have added a foxglove which was also waiting for a home. It will be taller than anything else next summer so should look good there.

It all looks a bit of a mess right now where I have been trampling around in the mud - also as I have stuck loads of canes in between the plants to try and discourage the foxes. It will be interesting to see how it develops.

 

I weeded half the long border and the end bed today. It was a lovely sunny day but the grass was sopping wet. Ended up with cold feet wet socks and wet jeans. Rubber gardening shoes are leaking. Another 2 wheelbarrow loads. Garden bin is full again. I also pruned 2 roses, Westerland and Oranges and Lemons. They are both convinced they are climbers. I've reduced them from 7 or 8 ft to 2 ft.

Last year's leaf mould hasn't rotted, bother. Not ready to mulch with.

 

I gave the front lawn its last cut for the year, starting beforehand by sweeping away all the worm casts with the back of the rake and raking up some moss. I trimmed the lawn edges and removed a few weeds from the borders. The main garden was too wet to do anything without treading mud everywhere so I just cleaned and refilled the birdbath and put out two new suet blocks for the birds, one in a hanging holder for the small birds and one on a mesh tray on the ground for the blackbirds. I then spent a couple of hours giving the car a thorough clean inside and out while observing my neighbour stringing up some Christmas lights outside, not entirely evenly placed .

 

I bought a small tray of tiny yellow violas yesterday so today potted three of them into a half size metal fence basket opposite my kitchen window to cheer me up when the weather's horrid. Potted remaining three in a grey pot to stand on the tiered metal stand which I can also see from the kitchen window.
Discovered a forgotten row of daff bulbs appearing in one of the veg beds. I presume I must have dug these up earlier from somewhere else and just shoved them in the veg bed. Will leave them there to bloom and cheer up the 'working' end of the garden.
Rather naughtily I asked OH to get the sack truck out and haul a trugfull of dug up soil containing hundreds of tiny allium seedlings up the hill so I could tip it out on the outside verge.
The soil had got very wet and was very stinky.
I tend to use this strip as an extra area for unwanted/invasive/fallen out of love with plants and shrubs. My excuse is that I'm providing extra plants for pollinators and provides the neighbours with something nice to look at other than weeds!