10 shocking gardening confessions!

We all make terrible mistakes in the garden every so often … you know it’s true! – and today we are going to fess up to 10 of ours.  We are writing in the spirit of ‘Cautionary Tales’, but we can’t help wondering if you’re going to recognise a few of these gaffes as ones you’ve made yourself…

1. Overdoing it. The world is full of oldies imagining that they are younger and fitter than they are, and I’m actually ALL FOR the over-seventies having the attitude of 34-olds (Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Brad Pitt……).  But here’s a surprise – they don’t usually have the supple bodies to match. I definitely don’t.  As a consequence, I’m right at this moment nursing a very sore neck and shoulder from working hard for too many hours on a major garden project. The weather was perfect, the right tools were to hand and I had a deadline……. result: several weeks of agonising pain. What an idiot.

2. Spreaders and self-seeders. Hands up who has bought a plant thinking it will fill a little blank space in the border and then found it popping up everywhere! I’m not talking about the well-known invasive tendencies of Japanese Knotweed, Rhododendron ponticum, Himalayan balsam or mint, etc. I’ve had brushes with all sorts of innocent-looking decorative garden plants – Macleaya (plume poppy), Acanthus (Bear’s Breeches), Convallaria (lily of the valley, Muscari (grape hyacinth)………. All lovely things in their own right but do they stay where they’re put? No. And then there are the self-seeders😱.  I don’t mind these so much in fact, especially if they are annuals like opium poppies or nasturtiums, but you can definitely have too many forget-me-nots or Alchemilla (lady’s mantle).

3. How careful are you with what you put on the compost heap? I always MEAN to be, but in the heat of a hard day’s clearing and weeding amongst the flower borders, all sorts of undesirable roots and seedheads like dandelions, buttercups or couch grass sometimes get flung into the mix inadvertently.  I always turn the heaps and leave them a long time before using them, but the evidence of my laziness usually becomes clear once they are spread out over the garden soil as a mulch.  Now what are my naughty little sisters going to admit to………..

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4. Buying plants without knowing where they can go. I am probably more guilty of this than either of my sisters. When I see a plant I haven’t heard of before, my one aim is to get one and experiment to see if I can get it to perform well. It won’t really have an allotted space waiting for it. This has resulted in my garden being what I fondly imagine as being interesting but my sisters describe as chaotic (ouch …!)

5. Not paying attention to a plant’s eventual size. I can’t be the only one who has planted a tree or a climber that vigorously outgrows its allotted space because we didn’t check that all important detail ‘eventual size after 5-10 years’. Screening plants are a typical example, you’ll be delighted with your clump of laurels for the first three years but after 10 you have to pay a tree surgeon to come and remove them.

Climbers that fall into this category include Campsis radicans, the trumpet vine, and Vitis coignetiae. If it’s a tree or a plant that you really like, there are solutions through some pruning techniques. This can work well for bamboo (see our video, the link is below) and for magnolias as I discovered on a visit to the wonderfully named ‘Ichi Coo’ garden park this week where extraordinarily impressive things had been achieved by creative clipping. Elaine had to do some of that too when her Magnolia sieboldii (see today’s feature pic) began to take over her cottage garden dramatically.

6. Not dealing with a pest problem quickly enough. I think we all now rely on natural predators to keep the pests under control in our outdoor gardens, but in a greenhouse or conservatory, things can quickly escalate if you don’t act quickly against white fly or mealy bug and get busy with the detergent sprays as soon as you spot a small outbreak. I have had to resort to drowning a plague of mealy bugs that got dug in to my collection of succulents this summer.

Over to Caroline who I’m sure won’t fess up to committing the cardinal sin of shipping in plants to fill gaps just before an Open Garden day. You can always spot them as they appear to be growing in completely the wrong location – reference those awful begonias she shoved in her galvanised tank for her Strathpetal opening this summer ….

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I loved reading my sisters’ description of their mistakes. Elaine sounds genuinely remorseful while Laura gives the impression it was actually the fault of some dozy under-gardener. Isn’t gardening great for revealing a person’s true colours?

Although blissfully ignorant of most of the mistakes E & L regularly point out I’ve made, any qualified therapist would probably also urge me to admit:

7. I go into a trance around May/June. I should be putting in plant supports for just about everything here in the Scottish Highlands, but instead I lovingly ‘look on’ at my tiny burgeoning plants when I should be metaphorically buying them school uniforms three sizes too big for them. I should be putting in plant supports at that stage, but instead I always seem to end up trying to anchor six foot stems to inadequate bamboo poles in August.

8. Labelling: specifically, cosmos seedlings which are as fundamental a part of my annual cycle as drinking port in winter and dealing with ticks in summer. Every year I ceremonially sow white ‘purity’, and pink ‘dazzler’ in separate trays each appropriately labelled. By the hand of some malevolent and invisible magician (ie surely not me 🙄), these get all mixed up. I’m never sure exactly when it happens but happen it does – EVERY SINGLE YEAR so at the time of planting I have no idea which is which.

9. Finally, bulb flowering management. I still suffer from mild Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following my attempt to emulate Inverewe Garden’s tulip chess board – a stunning display of white and black tulips. In my version all the white ones came up, flowered and died some considerable time before the black ones stirred into life.

10. And this in turn, triggers flashbacks to my attempt at a bulb lasagne. Have you ever tried one? If not, please don’t. I’ll admit the concept is very good and the Insta diagrams compelling. I was sold. The actual result? A ghastly ragout of collapsed iris foliage peppered with war-wounded tulips struggling through in patches. I’ll invite you to share your experiences here – is incompetence to blame, or would bulb lasagne be on any of your ‘ghastly shambles’ lists?

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Here’s a wonderful perennial for the back of the border and still looking pristine in the middle of October, that’s why it’s Louise’s Great Plant this Month:

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Every week we have a scout about to see who’s offering deals on stuff. Have a look at this week’s finds and discount codes plus recommendations for garden tools.

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Here is the video about how Laura tames her bamboo:

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We have some gorgeous new wren nesting boxes in our online shop, which were wowing folk at the talk Laura and Elaine gave this week. Very reasonably priced, and beautifully made, they would make a fabulous little gift for someone keen on helping our wildlife:

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