Plant identification and pest help

Davesnave

I just picked things up, from books mainly, because there was no Internet. The rest was just experience of growing, and failing to grow things.

Most popular plants are easy enough and look after themselves, which is what makes them popular. If you know what you have and what their basic requirements are, that's a good start. You can add to that knowledge as and when you acquire more.

The main mistakes people make are trying to grow plants which don't suit their environment or soil, like acid lovers on limestone, or shade plants in full sun.

The other problem people have is impatience, so they look for easy ways to do things and instant results, either with plants or hard landscaping. You see people looking for 'easy ways' all the time on this board. My experience is that there is no easy fix that lasts, but anyway, a garden takes time to develop and ideas likewise. I have a relatively new garden (been here under two years) and I'm still unclear how some parts of it will go.

Fay

Hi everyone, well the garden is really coming to life now-so many of the plants you have already kindly identified for me are growing well. However, later spring is bringing many new plants with it, it's such a mature garden that I think we will be finding plants all season and I will be reporting back here looking for help.
We have also had green thumbs round about the lawn and they are going to come and treat it for us, for a really good price, which is one less job as it's quite a sizeable garden and we both work full time. However, the guy identified that we have groud elder-and alot of it, so I will be starting a thread about that to try and gain some advice, eek.

I agree Dave that as a new garden I would love to have quick fixes and know what everything is and how it will grow and I would love instant knowledge. But I think most of the fun of gardening is discovering new knowledge and finding out about new plants, I'm really enjoying it and it's been great to have people visit and say what a difference they can see. We have had one quick fix though-we had 5 large leylandi removed from one bed and it's opened up a massive area where we have been able to site our plants we moved from our last house!

Anyway, new plants are these...as always, all help is very very gratefully received.



The one below it's the large grass like plant I need identifying mainly, we have 3 clumps of these. All growing in semi shade under trees.


Not a great picture sorry. I find this strange as there is just the two stems of it!


We have large clumps of this one but I noticed a small yellow flower coming on one clump




Again a few clumps of this and it's really bugging me as the leaves are very familiar!


Thank you to everyone who is helping with this. I am making a notebook of all these plants and finding out about them and how to care for them!

Davesnave

1 Lysimachia 'Firecracker'
2 ?
3 Horse Chestnut.
4 Might be Helenium, or one of the Perennial sunflowers Helianthus.
5 Honeysuckle
6 Alchemilla mollis (might be a bit of bindweed there too!)

RAS

Think the second one may be bluebells?

Fay

Thanks again guys.

Dave-if that is a horse chesnut I don't want it growing where it is. It's at the front of a border-there are lots of trees at the back of it that aren't on our land, do you think it could have self seeded from one of those?

If I do have bindweed is that another horrid weed-I suspect it is. Oh dear, this garden has been somewhat neglected in terms of weeding and pruning etc.

Edit-the plants that look like honeysuckle-again I have a few clumps of these. There was nothing there at all until a few weeks ago, then they began to grow. Does this happen with honeysuckle, I thought there would be some old woody growth there?

splodger_seedswapper

certainly looks like a bit of bindweed at the front of the last pic

second pic does look like bluebell foliage

Fay

How do I tell the bindweed-I've looked at pics on the net but I can't detect it from the plant?!?!

splodger_seedswapper

sorry - it's in the 2nd last pic (not the last one)

the bindweed is the log thin stem - with a slightly pointed leaf - it is right in front of the other plant (which might be honeysuckle)

it looks like hedge bindweed - so will climb up fence of other plants and will have a white trumpet like flower (if it gets to that stage)

Fay

I've just been out and inspected and yep, it's bindweed from what I have seen on the internet (had it in our old garden too but could never identify what it was)...and there is loads of it. Argh. It's also in the middle bed that I didn't want the ground elder to spread to! This garden is going to bring us a lot of pleasure but also an awful lot of hard work!

gardenroute

The second picture has a bluebell at the front and could be irises behind, growing weak and pale under the shady conditions. I'm not sure though.
The 'one with a yellow flower' could be a few things but I would guess at solidago, mainly because the size. The yellow flower is probably Ranunculus ficaria; another nightmare weed I'm afraid:eek:.
That is some kind of bindweed growing up with the honeysuckle. Spraying is the best option for that one.