What is your garden like at the moment?

**Joy** · 11-02-2007, 11:25

My spring flowers are blooming and my grass and hedges need cutting but it's too wet to do anything. My dad has already mowed his lawn and used lawn feed.

What is your garden like at the moment?

**A_B** · 11-02-2007, 12:01

Mine's still in a bit of a state to be honest. One area looks nice (flowers are blooming) - the rest looks like wasteland (bit's of weed and mud popping up all over).

**SFB** · 11-02-2007, 12:02

We have a nice display of blue/mauve Irises all around our front and side border which is about 150 metres long in total.
Apart from that it's mostly weed.

No, not that variety!

**SFB** · 11-02-2007, 12:03

Originally Posted by Autumn_Breeze

Mine's still in a bit of a state to be honest. One area looks nice (flowers are blooming) - the rest looks like wasteland (bit's of weed and mud popping up all over).

How do you grow mud?

Ck · 11-02-2007, 12:04

I haven't got grass anymore, I took the plunge a few years ago and got rid of it.

It's really hard work keeping grass/a lawn nice. I used to spend ages feeding, weeding and cutting it to get it to look nice. I had two types of lawn mower, a strimmer, edging tool, feed and weed and a sprinker pipe, all for a patch of lawn that could easily ger ruined if the Summer wasn't wet/dry enough.

Now I just have a border around the back with some bushes, some small trees and clemetis in. Come Springtime I pot up some flowers and pop them around to add colour.

The front garden has some established bushes and a huge tiger lilly thing that dominates one corner. That used to have a square of grass too but I took that up the year before last, it needs some sorting out still as some of the things I planted haven't taken off and some things have taken off a bit too well.

Where I live the air is very salty and windy so not all plants do well. I remember when I first got the house, I knew nothing about gardening or flowers and I spent a fortune in money and time getting a load of nice plants and flowers for them all the turn black and die. Since then I tend to wander around the neighbourhood looking in peoples gardens to see what's done well and what hasn't. If I see something I like, I take a picture and the lady at the local plant shop wil recognise it and get it for me.

**A_B** · 11-02-2007, 12:17

Originally Posted by SFB

How do you grow mud?

It's just there.

**A_B** · 11-02-2007, 12:26

What do you have in place of the grass now ck?

I know what you mean about grass though - it takes all your spare time to look after. In England, we had a smallish front garden (just grass, with a border - no flowers), a side garden that was all grass and a back garden the same (I've showed a pic of the back garden before). It was a nightmare to keep up with to be honest. We moved in while I was pregnant, but I had an awful pregnancy, so couldn't do the garden. My husband has terrible hayfever, so he couldn't do it either. We ended up with a forest.

It actually took me 5 years to get looking nice because of that. In the end - I stoned the back garden and spent about Â£2,000 on plants/planters for it. I was no good with them and most died. What was left - we left for the people who bought the house (huge palm tree things).

I tend to buy things - plant them - then pull them up because I can't tell the difference between weeds and flowers.

I tend to go for herbs now (so I can smell them and know not to pull them up).

**Joy** · 11-02-2007, 12:42

My garden is about 100' long and it's all grassed apart from around the edges where I have shrubs, conifers and privet. It's an enclosed garden and very private which is how I like it because I like to sunbathe

My flower pots looks terrible but I'm just waiting for the warmer weather so I can sort them out. This is what they looked like last year....

And this is my Hosta that I carefully nuture every year because of the slugs...

**SFB** · 11-02-2007, 12:48

I trust you meant nurture Joy, or is my vocabulary lacking and is nuture a slug repellant?

**A_B** · 11-02-2007, 12:51

Your flowers look stunning Joy - really professional. I never manage to achieve anything even close to that.

I'll upload a photo later (if I remeber) of the 'patch' in the garden that I've started. I daren't show the rest of the garden.

Last year, it was full of flowers - but everything's been pulled up, so it's a mud pile at the moment, with a few bricks/stones I nicked from across the street (I was doing them a favour by rescuing them

). I'm just trying to sort it before planting things for this year.

To be honest, I've more luck with planters because I tend to remember to water them.