Help with garden/plants/flowers please!

shellsuit

Hi Guys, gardening novice here so have never ventured on this board before ~ can anyone help please?

We moved into our house 12 weeks ago and this is how the garden looked back then.





This is how it looks now, but we have no idea of what half of the flowers and plants are!

















We planted the pansys and the bright pink and white with pink middles to give the middle some colour and now everything has just gone nuts!

We gave it a good tidy up today, so does anyone know what we should be doing with what we have there now and the names of what is there please?

babs2008

Sorry I can't help. I have no idea, but I think your garden looks lovely!

shellsuit

babs2008 wrote: »

Sorry I can't help. I have no idea, but I think your garden looks lovely!

Ahh thank you!

It was so bad before we tidied it up today though, there were weeds and dead flowers everywhere so we pulled them all up (well I hope they were weeds lol!)

knithryn

I can help with a few of them.
You've got a pic of a single yellow spike of flowers. I don't know what it is called, but my neighbour has it. It will spread very easily (ie it can be a thug) so be careful it doesn't take over. It comes up every year, so when it dies back, just cut it down and wait for spring.
You have little pink flowers (pale ones and shocking pink ones) which are mini-carnations - dianthus. Youu can propogate them from cuttings. I don't have much more info on them as I can't grow them in my heavy soil, but they do come back every year.
You have strawberries (but then you will know that!). Pick and eat the fruit! Watch out for the 'runners' which are like leaves with really long stems. These touch the ground and start to root into new plants. Handy if you want new plants. Strawberry plants should be replaced every 4 years or so, so it is worth keeping a few runners each year to have some new ones coming along.

In front of your pansies, you have little clumps of leaves - those look like primulas or polyanthus.They will flower in the spring.

You have a largish clump of hardy geranium - it has lots of pale pink flowers on it above the foliage, which is scented if you brush it. This will come back every year, and will also spread. When it finishes flowering you can give it a chop back to tidy it up and just leave the fresh new growth underneath, hopefully it will give you another flush of flowers later in the year.

I think the pale blue stuff you have loads of it a campanula, but I'm not sure. Again it grows back every year, and just trim it back as necessary to keep it tidy.

I have to say, whoever had your garden before has done you a favour. Lots of those 'come back again next year' plants can be divided in spring to fill other borders. If it was me, loving to grow veg, I'd use one bed for salads etc, but I must admit it looks too lovely as it is, in a truly 'English Cottage' manner to destroy what is there.
If you do dig up/divide any plants, you might want to ask the neighbours if they would like any - a good way to get to know the neighbours!

Lotus-eater

I think your garden looks lovely as well.

You should have been eating those strawberries, not taking photos of them. Interesting leaves on them, very wild strawberry ish looking.

To me, those beds in the middle of the garden, are heaven sent for growing your own vegetables and the horrible overgrown rose (?) thing growing at the back can be replaced with something useful, like raspberries, you also have loads of fence space for berries to be trained along. Grow climbing beans up the front of the shed to hide it.
But then, as my friends say, I have a one track mind.

shellsuit

knithryn wrote: »

I can help with a few of them.
You've got a pic of a single yellow spike of flowers. I don't know what it is called, but my neighbour has it. It will spread very easily (ie it can be a thug) so be careful it doesn't take over. It comes up every year, so when it dies back, just cut it down and wait for spring.
You have little pink flowers (pale ones and shocking pink ones) which are mini-carnations - dianthus. Youu can propogate them from cuttings. I don't have much more info on them as I can't grow them in my heavy soil, but they do come back every year.
You have strawberries (but then you will know that!). Pick and eat the fruit! Watch out for the 'runners' which are like leaves with really long stems. These touch the ground and start to root into new plants. Handy if you want new plants. Strawberry plants should be replaced every 4 years or so, so it is worth keeping a few runners each year to have some new ones coming along.

In front of your pansies, you have little clumps of leaves - those look like primulas or polyanthus.They will flower in the spring.

You have a largish clump of hardy geranium - it has lots of pale pink flowers on it above the foliage, which is scented if you brush it. This will come back every year, and will also spread. When it finishes flowering you can give it a chop back to tidy it up and just leave the fresh new growth underneath, hopefully it will give you another flush of flowers later in the year.

I think the pale blue stuff you have loads of it a campanula, but I'm not sure. Again it grows back every year, and just trim it back as necessary to keep it tidy.

I have to say, whoever had your garden before has done you a favour. Lots of those 'come back again next year' plants can be divided in spring to fill other borders. If it was me, loving to grow veg, I'd use one bed for salads etc, but I must admit it looks too lovely as it is, in a truly 'English Cottage' manner to destroy what is there.
If you do dig up/divide any plants, you might want to ask the neighbours if they would like any - a good way to get to know the neighbours!

Ahh, you're a star! Thanks for giving me those names, with what you've told me and with what I can look up, I will know how to care for them!

One neighbour is great and she has most of the same of what we have in her garden as the old tenant here used to swap plants/cuttings etc.

Are the strawbs OK to wash and eat now? I didn't think so as some of them are still green and the ones that are red are tiny? Will they not get much bigger then?

The only thing with a garden like this is all the bees! Oh my word I counted about 40 of them yesterday when we were tidying it all up :rotfl:

Lotus-eater wrote: »

I think your garden looks lovely as well.

You should have been eating those strawberries, not taking photos of them. Interesting leaves on them, very wild strawberry ish looking.

To me, those beds in the middle of the garden, are heaven sent for growing your own vegetables and the horrible overgrown rose (?) thing growing at the back can be replaced with something useful, like raspberries, you also have loads of fence space for berries to be trained along. Grow climbing beans up the front of the shed to hide it.
But then, as my friends say, I have a one track mind.

I agree with you on what we could do with the different patches, but we couldn't do that yet as we've got a 13 month old baby and next year he will only trample all over everything.

It's something we would love to do in the future though, grow our own!

Lotus-eater

shellsuit wrote: »

I agree with you on what we could do with the different patches, but we couldn't do that yet as we've got a 13 month old baby and next year he will only trample all over everything.

It's something we would love to do in the future though, grow our own!

Nah, just give him the grass as somewhere to play, even if he does take a little trip on the growing area, it's not the end of the world. I've got two small kids, I agree you can't be too precious about your plants with them around, but you can still do what you want.
For a start you grow things they can eat straight out of the garden, helps immensely with what they eat inside. Mine snack on mint, fennel (leaves, seeds), chive flowers, peas of course, lettuce, various fruit. When they've got other little family round, they're like a crowd of locusts and I wouldn't change a thing

shellsuit

Lotus-eater wrote: »

Nah, just give him the grass as somewhere to play, even if he does take a little trip on the growing area, it's not the end of the world. I've got two small kids, I agree you can't be too precious about your plants with them around, but you can still do what you want.
For a start you grow things they can eat straight out of the garden, helps immensely with what they eat inside. Mine snack on mint, fennel (leaves, seeds), chive flowers, peas of course, lettuce, various fruit. When they've got other little family round, they're like a crowd of locusts and I wouldn't change a thing

But I like the colour in the garden

We could grow some right at the back, next to the shed behind that big rose thing, there's nothing there at the moment, it just needs a good tidy.

docij

'You've got a pic of a single yellow spike of flowers. I don't know what it is called, but my neighbour has it. It will spread very easily (ie it can be a thug) so be careful it doesn't take over. It comes up every year, so when it dies back, just cut it down and wait for spring.'

This plant is called yellow loosestrife and looks lovely, but spreads very quickly and is difficult to control. I would transplant it nearer to the shed so that if it gets a bit uruly, it won't matter too much. Once some of the annuals have died down, you might want to think about planting a herb garden section. You can get herbs which are both useful and beautiful. The garden looks lovely, by the way.

pookiewn

Your garden looks lovely! Huge amounts of colour

Your strawberries look like Alpine Strawberries, they don't get much bigger than that but are full of flavour.

ixwood

shellsuit wrote: »

..

The only thing with a garden like this is all the bees! Oh my word I counted about 40 of them yesterday when we were tidying it all up :rotfl:

..

That's a good thing.