The Day Lilies are starting to bloom. I am just hoping that the Day Lily Midge is not as troublesome this year although I have already had to remove some infected buds.  

How to Attract Birds to Your Garden
If you're wondering why other's gardens have birds galore and yours is lacking residents, follow these tips and you'll have a feather filled garden in no time.

Feeding Your Garden Birds
Feeding our garden birds has become a very popular pastime. The last think we want to do is harm our birds when all we ...<< MORE >>

The garden is filled with one fragrance at the moment, that of Mock Orange. I have Philadelphus shrubs on the front and side garden and the one on the side garden fills the back garden with its gorgeous perfume. I could not be without one of these shrubs in my garden and the good news is that they come in a variety of sizes and can be pruned.

The tomatoes are really coming on now. This year I have gone back to my old favourite Harbinger. These I am training as cordons but I also am trying a new variety to me, the plum tomato Red Alert which is grown as a bush variety. Red alert is described in the seed catalogue as one of the best for flavour and very early. I will have to wait to test the flavour but they are living up to the early tag, the fruits are far more advanced than Harbinger.

The wildlife in the garden never ceases to create interest.

Firstly there is the frog mention in the previous diary entry. I walked into the kitchen to see him sitting there on the floor looking up at me. He had found his way over the porch, through the conservatory and into the kitchen. I am not sure he appreciated his little trip back to his cool home behind the garage amongst the compost bags.

Then there is the Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers. The Greater Spotted appears on the nut feeder throughout the year but we only used to have a visit from these little beauties every spring. They could be seen going round and round the Silver Birches pecking fir insects. Needless to say that once those Birches reached the end of their days the Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers stopped visiting. Or so I thought. I awoke early one morning this last week and went into the kitchen to get a drink.

Looking through the window to the bird seed feeder there was the usual queue of sparrows fighting for position but then a different shaped bird arrived. There was no doubt that it was a Lesser Spotted Woodpecker. It seemed to be eating the seed which according to my books should not be, they only eat insects. Not only that, it was accompanied by two others who took their turn. Maybe they were finding insects but it did not seem that way. I would be interested to hear from anyone else who has had a similar experience.

Lastly there is the tale of Mrs Blackbird. I have been putting out dried fruit for the blackbirds for a long time and they always meet me in the garden to tell me the pot is empty. This season a female has been collecting a beak full and disappearing into the undergrowth to feed a fledgling, a verbal youngster at that. That youngster is now appearing on the pot but is not absolutely certain what to do. His or her mother is intelligent. She sits on the pot which is outside the shed and watches me go in to collect her fruit. I also keep the seed in there and so I leave the door open while I take a scoop full of seed to the feeder. That practice is having to stop. Now when I get back she is in the shed looking to help herself to the fruit. Very cute but there is a danger of her being shut in and in the heat of summer it could do her a lot of harm and keep her away from her fledglings for a few hours.

• My Garden is My Space
  
• Garden Diary
  
• Gardening and Wildlife
  
• Worcestershire Source: Today's Sightings 13/06/2009 - Lesser Spotted Woodpecker in Throckmorton area early afternoon (Adrienne Sanders) Spotted Flycatcher in gardens adjacent to Cropthorne churchyard (Adrienne Sanders) Dipper and Lesser Spotted Woodpecker along Dowles Brook in the Wyre ...


• Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Osprey, Warblers and more....! - A trip to RSPB Ynys-hir this morning proved to be a very rewarding one. Highlights of the day were an Osprey on the nesting platform, 2 Sedge and 1 Grasshopper Warbler near the break-water hide, 2+ Redstarts and 3 Pied Flycatchers in ...

You could say gardening is like life, nothing is certain apart from the fact that there will be successes and failures.

This last week has been a bit this way. It is not so long ago that I wrote about a green shooted dogwood that has been superb for the last couple of years. I should have kept quiet. I thought it was suddenly not looking too healthy and the reason quickly became all too apparent, honey fungus. This terrible parasite has struck again. There is nothing that I can do, it was in the garden before I came and it will be here long after I have gone.

On the upside the garden has really blossomed this spring in all senses of the word. You would think that the cold winds and very wet weather would have discouraged blooms but no, some shrubs have flowered better than ever. My Pineapple Broom is the best it has been since I planted it, my Ceanothus is laden down and just a mass of blue. Last year I did a drastic pruning of my orange patio climbing rose and at the moment it is just stunning, absolutely covered in flowers and is like a beacon in the garden.

The weather has gone from cool to unseasonably hot almost overnight. My annuals I have grown from seed needed to be planted out but the weather was not good enough until now. After hardening off I have managed to plant up some containers and put a few in the ground. A fresh bag of compost was required and I went to a part of the garden where I store such things, not seen by anyone else. I must get round to sorting this mess out one day! To keep the bags dry I put empty compost bags over the top of the unopened ones. I removed the first bag to find a large and healthy looking frog looking up at me. He must have been feeding well on my slugs which I thanked him for. Anyone who stores compost will know that the slimy things seem to like the cool surface of the plastic bags. How often have I got hold of a bag and wondered whet was so cold in my hand. Yuck!

I sowed various salad crops in containers when the weather was chilly which seemed a bit optimistic. However with the sudden hot spell it proved to be a good decision. It really is a treat to be able to pick fresh salad leaves and put together a good mixture for a meal. No big carbon footprint for these vegetables.

A real bonus of the sudden hot spell is that my favourite rose has burst into bloom. Gertrude Jekyll may not be the rose with the neatest habit but for me it is my all time favourite for scent. The perfume from this rose is unmistakable and just fills the air. A rose I would never want to be without.

The downside of the wet weather followed by heat is the hedges have had to be cut a month earlier than usual. Last year I bought a Gtech HT06-Nicad Cordless Telescopic Hedge Trimmer and this has made life so much easier. I can now cut the hedges without having to get out the stepladders and I do not have to think about cutting through the electric cable. Oh yes I have, many times!

This year I have tried growing strawberries from seed and this week they have been transplanted into containers. Several flowers have appeared. Now that all remains to be done is getting the flowers to turn into fruit, ripen and eat them before the birds and mice!

• My Garden is My Space
• Garden Diary

• Gardening and Wildlife

• Armillaria: A Pathogen to Admire - Well, OK, maybe that's a little much. Admire a forest pathogen? But bear with me. Armillaria is the genus name for a group of fungi that are found in forests worldwide. Some species of Armillaria are virulent tree-killers, while others ...

• Individuality, Size and Growth in Armillaria ostoyae - One problem with which we have to grapple relates to the concepts of 'size' and of 'growth' because these, in part, relate to our notion of an 'individual', the former (that of size) giving us presumed boundaries relative to other ...

• red oak decline and mortality by ecological land type in the ... - the high rates of mortality are leading to rapid changes in species composition, forest structure, and related changes in fire risk, insect populations, and colonization patterns of root diseases such as armillaria. ...

The Chelsea show has come and gone again for another year. Did you go? This year I only saw the television coverage but having said that, with the show being televised every day I probably saw more than if I had attended!

The large show gardens left me cold, did absolutely nothing for me and seemed to be for the designers circle. That is unusual as there is normally one that I find inspirational. This year seemed to revamp old ideas and there was nothing that I could take away as an idea to use in my garden. “Concept ...<< MORE >>

Is there anything that sparks off memories of spring and early summer for you?

There is for me but it is probably not what you might think. It could be bird song with our feathered friends beginning to claim their territories. Or it could be the perfume of hyacinth, the first crocus or a drift of bluebells.

But no, it is the smell of creosote or freshly opened lawn feed. Not very romantic is it when I could have chosen so many more beautiful flowers or scents. The truth is that my first garden was surrounded with fencing and ...<< MORE >>

For example one obviously well-healed celebrity who is seen every year at the private showing day at the Chelsea Flower Show spoke about the horrors of hanging baskets that should not be seen in any garden. Excuse me madam but not everyone is as fortunate as you to have a large garden, maybe there are people living in terraced houses with no garden space or maybe a flat and the only thing close to a garden that they can manage is a hanging basket.

Another garden designer poured scorn on people in the UK having water features. Apparently ...<< MORE >>

Presenters over the many years of the programme have left their mark and none more so than the late Geoff Hamilton who was a hard act to follow. Latterly the presenter was Monty Don who announced his intention to take the series back to gardening basics. Unfortunately for Monty he had health problems that necessitated him to relinquish the reins. Enter Toby Buckland who is a self confessed fan of Geoff Hamilton and this year has the daunting task of taking a field and turning it into a garden before our very eyes. A great challenge maybe but what ...<< MORE >>

Saturday cold and very windy, an excellent day to work in the greenhouse! Not a bad thing as over wintered fuchsias needed trimming back as new growth is now appearing. The same treatment was required for pelargoniums and geraniums that have survived the winter with no heat but have been protected by the bubble lining in the greenhouse. There has been three or four casualties but just late taken cuttings.

My large flowered Dahlias grown outside in summer in pots were brought in last autumn, the tops cut back and the pots laid on their side to keep ...<< MORE >>

Allotment gardening seemed to go out of fashion but is certainly back in favour. But first not so much a new flower border as a revamped garden border.

Saturday was dry but a strong cold wind did not encourage gardening. Sunday was altogether different and I got so much done as my body is telling me today!

I have been waiting for better weather to start the alterations to a border I created a few years ago that had started to look a bit tired. A large shrub had also died so this project had become a bit of a priority.

With a couple of weeks of dry weather it was the ideal time to cut back the lawn to not only enlarge the border but to create a more pleasing shape. Some of the turves came in very handy to repair another area where a small tree in the lawn had been removed. Reuse and recycle where possible has been my policy for a number of years as will become evident as you read on.

Once the turf had been lifted and the earth beneath dug over it was time to loosen up the soil in the rest of the patch and relocate some of the perennial plants in the border. Plant that had been at the front of the border of course now needed bring forward to the new flower border edge.

The next job was to transplant specimens from other parts of the garden earmarked as surplus to requirements in their current location. This included a Choisya Ternata Sundance that had very kindly layered itself. This is the very same Choisya that I had to prune hard back this time last year as it had more than outgrown it allotted space. The offspring looks a bit sparse at the moment but I suspect that by this time next year it will be a great feature in its new home.

Other transplants include a large fern that had started to compete with an equally large Hosta. They will both look so much better this season given the room they require. Aquilegias (Columbines) seed themselves regularly around the garden and so it was not too difficult to find plants to import and my stock of Delphiniums has also increased and will look good in this border. My borders would not be my borders without Bowles Golden Grass lighting its companions. It seeds itself around without becoming a nuisance and gets transplanted to more needy places; this grass has to be one of my favourite spring and early summer plants.

Needless to say I had company whilst working, the blackbirds as soon as I vacated the plot for a couple of minutes and the robins regardless of whether I was present or not.

The Crab Apples are in full flower now and looking magnificent. The trouble is today (Monday) there is a gale blowing and I can see not only petals dropping but complete clusters.

The first petals have appeared on a wallflower so it should not be long now before we are enjoying the beautiful perfume.

Several articles appeared in the press last week about the demand for garden allotments. It is not surprising when modern houses are being produced with tiny gardens and people are trying to save money in these trying times by growing their own vegetables. Even though my garden does not lend itself to vegetable growing, there not being a suitable aspect, I am at least able to grow many of the salad crops we like in pots and boxes and this year I am hoping to experiment with a container vegetable garden. I do count myself as fortunate to have a large enough garden to grow small trees, large shrubs and a selection of plants, even though I have to cater for shady situations.

• Your Allotment in Life | Return To The ‘Good Life’ | Homestyle Gossip - The only real legacy from that fateful day in 1984 is the fact my own personal love affair with allotment gardening began with my father’s dream. It grew, if you will. For those that need a little background on this particular ...
• My Garden is My Space
• Garden Diary

If you are a weekend gardener what a great couple of days it has been for the UK gardener. It is a long time since I have been able to write that but thankfully both Saturday and Sunday were dry and sunny. On Saturday we had a cold wind blowing but that made it the ideal day to start attacking the lawns for the first time this year. Attack my sound a bit strong but that is what it felt like. With two wet summers on the trot the moss in both the front and back lawns has flourished, especially the front which is north facing and shaded for much of the day.

Ideally I would have applied moss killer and then raked out the dead moss but the moss had become so thick over the wet winter months that I took the decision to rake some out first to get some air to the soil. With so much moss it was permanently wet and encouraging the growth of even more moss. Running the mower over after raking helped to gather moss discarded by the raker and although it looks a mess at the moment hopefully by summer it should be back to something like its best.

The birds certainly benefitted from my activity as soon as I was out of the way a variety of species descended to feed on seeds and no doubt creepy crawlies that I had disturbed. The blackbirds also took beak fulls of loose moss left on the lawn to line their nests, none of which have yet to come into view.

It is hard to believe that only three weeks ago the garden looked a comparatively sorry and barren place. The snowdrops are still in flower, the crocus are magnificent, the daffodils are suddenly showing on mass brightening everywhere with their cheery yellow trumpets. Yellow is my favourite colour and for me the sight of these little beauties is uplifting after the dark and dismal winter months.

Also in flower are Hellebores, Mahonias, Winter Jasmine, the first few blossoms on the Crab Apples, Polyanthus, Chaenomeles (Ornamental Quince), Forsythia and Pulmonarias. Our neighbour has a Plum Tree and Forsythia in flower planted next to our dividing hedge that we gratefully “borrow” at this time of the year. Add to this the promise of things to come with the fresh green new shoots of perennials exploding onto the scene and the colourful buds of Spiraea opening.

In the greenhouse the tomatoes are pricked out and it is likely that the Busy Lizzies (Impatiens) will need the same treatment this week.

This last week I pruned the Dogwoods (Cornus) which was a hard thing to do. By that I do not mean the pruning was difficult but when the stems are still looking good it takes a lot of resolve to perform the task. But to have the same show next winter it must be done.

Add to this the first sighting of a butterfly, bumblebee and goldfinch and it has not been a bad week in the garden!

My Garden is My Space

Garden Diary