Which plant in your garden have you found to be the most useful?

gulligranny if you grow heuchera in pots watch out for vine weevil, the grubs eat the roots, one of my pots of heuchera was like a wig all the foliage came off, when I emptied the pot I fed the grubs to the robin.

I have some sisyrinchium striatum ( tinyurl.com/jl8qxpx ) planted in gravel. Last year it flowered from June through to the end of October. I have no idea what variety it is as it came from my sister's garden. It's not spectacular but it's very useful.

I also love my Viburnum Bodnantense Dawn. It starts flowering in late autumn and goes all the way through to April with a succession of pink, scented, flowers. Very welcome in winter. It's not a particularly shapely shrub but it survives pruning well.

I garden on awful S. Durham clay; the only way I can get some things, such as rosemary, to survive is by planting them in gravel. Plants love it; so do seeds!

Kittylester On Saturday I was dragged off screaming (not very loudly though) by my 84yr old choir mentor to look at this place. (She gave me lunch later on.)

She had found they had a post Chelsea open day and they hold the National collection of Heuchera and some similar plants.
They do a lot of mail order and are only about 4.5 miles from my home.

www.plantagogo.com/ If you are interested.

I bought this most beautiful small geranium. Geranium Sanguinea Elke. As well as some more Heuchera.

As for "useful" what I am using a lot of at the moment is London Pride which makes excellent attractive and easily dug up ground cover. It spreads fairly easily and is very good at supressing weeds.

This thread is an incitement to spend even more money on plants.

I think most people would regard my garden as wild and weedy. That's very useful for supporting wildlife and it's useful to me for the pleasure it gives me in seeing, for instance, waves of buttercups, and in having a chance to study the plants and the creatures.

I'm wishing for more space in my garden!

That viburnum sounds great!

That is such a sweet little geranium nelliem.

Bags love buttercups in the countryside. They are letting them grow more on the verges down here these days.

Crocus.com have a post Chelsea sale. I got some lovely perennial violas from there last year.

This foxglove and the red geums were all planted last year and survived the winter (in a raised bed, so the soil isn't too claggy!) which I was very pleased about.

As you can see my garden isn't colour co-ordinated, anything goes if it grows!

I do wish you hadn't shown me that Nellie I counted 16 heucheras in my quite small garden!

I love London Pride, it reminds me of gardening with my Pop.

No one has mentioned calendula

We planted some a few years ago in the "wildflower garden" we established outside our front gate on Council owned property (guerrilla gardening) and it comes back year after year showering glorious bright sunny colour everywhere. It has gifted itself all over the neighbourhood, I even saw a clump on the top of the flatroof garage a few houses down from us. I love it but husband curses it for taking over, and spends days digging out the new ones each year. The calendula wins though!

I thought we had talked about pot marigolds further up the thread? We have the opposite situation to you - DH loves it; I have had to retain some this year just to appease him!

I may owe you an apology, grannyknot; perhaps it was another gardening thread, as I can't find it now!

Don't worry greyduster

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201606/medium-955913-image.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201606/medium-291192-image.jpg

Buttercups all the way down (41m) and across (30m) my front garden. These are mostly meadow buttercups. In the back they are mainly creeping ones.

Gorgeous bags

I haven't got any pot marigolds come up this year. They are gorgeous for a splash of colour. Will have to buy some from garden centre.

My garden is really a mass of flowering weeds. At the moment it's welsh poppies and centaurea. There will be honesty and toadflax,brooms and cowslips. Green alkanet rules as do foxgloves sometimes and splashy red poppies the perennial and lily of the valley just wander about. There will also be annual poppies and nasturtiums later on. It's all in spite of us not because of us. DH loves lupins ,dahlias , sweet peas and delphiniums but they have to be nurtured. Johnsons blue and wargrave fill in gaps but there is a hardy one called Patricia that does give them a run for their money. Crocosmia s and monbretias also wander about freely. DH fights them but I acknowledge their victory.

Feelthefear that's lovely picture.

Bags your garden is like fairyland.

I treasured some Leopard's Bane for many years, it's not the most attractive plant by any means, a plainish yellow daisy type flower.
However, digging the plant up in Cardiff for me to replant in County Durham was the last thing my mum and I did together, at Easter 1991. Mum died in early September, quite unexpectedly, although she had leukaemia, she was well until a few days beforehand.

A dear and very talented professional artist friend painted the plant one year for me, and gave it to me as a birthday card. Even though the original plant died off after about 15 years despite my splitting efforts, I still have my precious watercolour to remind me.

About ten years ago I bought a very scruffy dried out oriental poppy from Wilko's and put it in my townhouse flowerbed where the leopard's bane had been. It has thrived and last year it was enormous.
My son split it, and the new plants are flowering this year. The red and black shaggy-petalled poppy flowers are absolutely stunning. One heck of a return for my 50p investment!

Useful ground cover? Oh, I'd say the following:

Brambles
Nettles
Bracken
Bindweed

All are doing really well and extremely healthy in my garden despite my efforts to gun them down.

I deadheaded my leopards bane this afternoon, mcculloch29. It's all gone over now but it has been stunning this year. It grows as a backdrop to two dark purple heucheras - Obsidian and another I can't remember the name of which has fuschias pink splashes on the leaves - and sets them off a treat. I will have to divide it soon as it is rapidly outgrowing its situation. Does anyone grow nasturtiums? I find them very useful for filling gaps on the edge of a wall garden, as well as in pots. Very tolerant of poor soil too, which I have in parts of my garden.

Kittylester and Mildred On the site with the specialist Heuchera growers, there is information about dealing with vine weevils.

However, Heucheras Are Great News
Heucheras are different than a lot of other plants when affected by Vine weevil so don’t despair read on…..
If your beloved Heuchera comes under attack and you discover that most or all of the roots have gone.

1.^Lift your plant and inspect the roots or lack of them tacking all the compost off. If they fall into pieces don’t worry, take the stumpy pieces that are left that have a basal ‘knobble’ (where the leaves or roots usually come from) and wash in clean water, vigorously.

2.Take a cocktail stick and check the bottom has no little horrors left hidding in there, pick out with cocktail stick if you find one, feel free to vent your anger on them at this point! (Very therapeutic I think) Robins and birds will love them from the bird table (best to kill them first in case they wriggle away!) or give them to your hens if you have them.

3. When all cleaned and de-vine weeviled you can then pop into a fresh pot of compost water lightly. No need to cover. Wait a few weeks and lovely new fresh roots will grow back. Do not over water at this stage as they can go rotten if you do.

The bonus is you probably had one plant before now you will have a few to give to your friends or put in other places around your garden.

I wish I had known about this way to rescue them earler.

nelliemoser brilliant thank you.

I'm tempting fate here but mine have never been attacked.........yet! So, thank you Nellie.