Your gardening photos

Hi folks. Posting some photos of a boundary with two gaps that I need to fill and would appreciate any advice/opinions.

First gap is about 2ft x 3ft and second gap is about 12ft x 3ft. Our plan is eventually to take the fence down once we have gaps filled in and plants are a decent size for privacy and security. Areas are north west facing and quite shaded due to fence and trees /plants adjacent. Looking for something with decent coverage all year round that won't grow too high (6 - 8 ft max).

What would you plant here? I was thinking maybe st John's wort in smaller area but not sure if it will grow well in shaded area. For larger area, I have no idea so any recommendations appreciated 👍 (there are a couple of small plants in that larger but they haven't grown in two years and I'm not sure what they are, garden fella planted them when we got him to do some work, so thinking of digging them out for something more suited to the shady conditions)

@Mr.Wemmick thanks for the suggestions, just planted a couple of camellias and some red robins , looking forward to watching them grow.

Snowdrops grown from a gift of a clump during covid. Each of the little clumps is from a single bulb a couple of years ago! Also a considerable amount of creeping buttercup which I am waging war on, its a wild area but a little variety in the weeds would be nice. The pink in the foreground is a pink willow planted two seasons ago.

That's rather spectacular, I didn't realise they could grow that big here.

That is one healthy Camellia

Some snowy pictures..

Pink Camelia

Gooseberry bush

Peregrine Peach Blossom

Raised beds in our garden were in urgent need of overhauling. Despite being made of pre-treated timber and a lot (really - A LOT) of other stuff like decking oil etc. applied they all were rotten and started to fall apart. Lasted approx 10 years.

Went online to search more reliable material for rebuild. First idea came to use composite decking, but more googling brought cheaper and IMO easier solution - recycled plastic. Another good thing was it's made locally - there's family run business near Castlebar recycling plastic, so went there, bought what we needed and few days ago we built that:

We built two of them. First one took approx. 4 hours, second one less than 2 hours (experience matters ;-) ). I have 4 more raised beds to replace asap and 3 more probably couple of years later. Will definately use the same material.

I bet these recycled ones would last decades (if not longer) and they're maintenance free.

I got a price from them a few months ago, only getting around to starting a few projects with the tidy towns.

My springtime pots starting to bloom.

Despite the crazy weather the spring bulbs did okay this year. I really didn’t expect some of the tulips to come up because the winter had been so wet with the ground saturated for months.

Rosemary, Lamb's ear plant, thyme, sage, curry plant and Nepeta would be some that I would consider for that sort of area.

Happy gardening!

Planted lots of late flowering tulips to bridge the gap between spring and summer plants. These is the last of the tulips hanging on in this heat.

Most trees and shrubs prefer to grow in soil. Are you going to take up an area of those paving bricks? If so you will have to allow for the wall foundation which will mean an area close the wall will be occupied below ground by a block of concrete which also will be of little benefit to what you decide to plant. You will need to avoid something that wants to grow too fast to a large size as it could end up causing the wall to crack but something that is not very vigorous may just fail due to the difficult conditions in the ground dominated by paving that would surround whatever are of brick you decide to take out. If you don't mind keeping it trimmed back then Cotoneaster franchetii might be an option and if you would prefer to have something more slow growing then Osmanthus burkwoodii might be a better option.

Happy gardening!

I spend my life fighting weeds, but despite them the early summer flowers are coming out. Roses about to bloom and the yellow Geum I planted late last Summer has really done well. The smell from the dwarf lilac is heavenly. I got a bargain with two lilac trees in Lildl in March and planted them at the edge of the little woodland (swamped in buttercup at the moment).