end of April 2018

Japanese Knotweed. How bad is it? I saw this around the corner, an isolated shoot in the centre of a front garden. Where did it come from? (I'll go back and take a wider photo)

I am so happy to see some fox and cubs in this flowerbed and looking good. I had removed the green alkanet just from this small area but I had to repeat the exercise as some had snuck in.  There were also forget-me-nots that had invaded the cleared space so I removed those as well. That left me a bit of room to plant in the ground a meadow clary ("wildflower" from the garden centre) and an oriental poppy (had bought 3 from Peter Nyssen but the other 2 are in slug damage intensive care). And I seem to have the globe thistles back. I do love them but not in the front there blocking the sun for the other plants. I did move some but more have self-seeded there. I'm going to have to be more brutal like I was with the green alkanet (believe me it is all over the rest of the garden! just not in this small space).

While I was organising that flowerbed I potted up these 3 pincushion flowers: small scabious ("wildflower" from the garden centre, never heard of "small scabious" before) on the left; field scabious on the right (also "wildflower" from the garden centre) and a small knautia macedonica Melton Pastels which self-seeded at some point. Also one planted in the ground, top left above. Why are knautia and scabiosa two different genus?? They look so similar to me

these are the labels for those 2 plants above from the garden centre

this pot just got a selection of the small plants around my patio: ox-eye daisy, aquilegia, campanula, sea holly and knautia macedonica Melton Pastels

Another knautia macedonica Melton Pastels (one of my most successfully grown from seed flowers) I potted up for a neighbour. I'll see how this pot and the one above look and put them outside their door when they are looking promising. I've put some of the corncockle and echium Blue Bedder seedlings around the edge.

Something very strange is going on in my front garden. One of the leaves of this artichocke has been completely stripped but the rest of the plant looks fine

the upper leaves look fine

the same happened with one of the foxgloves, the one on the right is stripped but the one on the left is looking ok

Speaking of pests, these scarlet lily beetles have managed to find the few lillies in my garden: snakeshead fritillaries. I haven't done anything about them and am not going to. I think we should avoid chemicals in the garden.

one of my favourite flowers, centaurea montana, mountain cornflower, taken a while for them to get established, especially to the point of self-seeding, buds are those black balls, 4 in this photo

3 more here

4 more here in this nearby pot next to the lesser knapweed on the right