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

I've just deadheaded the first flush on Golden Showers. Will feed it and off it will go again.

Another lovely rose is Olivia its a pink shrub. In its second year and absolutely laden with a lovely strong fragrance

I have Golden Showers, but it does tend to need dead heading a lot. I love Pauls Scarlett as a climbing rose.
My favourites are always geraniums. They come in so many colours, are easily divided, and fill gaps. The slugs leave them alone, and they smile their little faces off for very little tending. Johnstones Blue is my pick, flowering into September.

mango tree

Golden Showers is a lovely, fragrant repeat flowering rose. I had it at the front door of my last house. My neighbour across the road also planted one at her front door, so that we could both see the Rose when indoors!

x

Your garden sounds gorgeous!

whitewave I had a Golden Showers! Planted it years ago before I knew anything about anything. I had this idea of letting it sort of 'lie down' on a grassy bank. It was never happy there and had to come out eventually. Another climber I planted in the same area was perfectly happy and is still flowering forty odd years later. It didn't grow along the ground to the plan though. More like a confused skinny bush rose.

Wish I still had the Golde n Showers.

Thanks greyduster but it's actually growing in my garden border not in a pot. I've sprinkled the soil and inside the Hosta with slug pellets and will have to hope for the best.

Put some adhesive copper slug tape around the pot. It's the only thing that saved my hostas in our last garden. They won't go cross it. Just make sure they can't migrate across from the leaves of other plants. That's a beauty, Linsco. I have one similar but the edges are cream.

I bought this Hosta as a tiny plant 5 years ago and every year it comes up bigger and bigger and will have lovely purple flowers July/Aug. It only cost me £2 at a Boy Scout's plant sale. Just have to keep the dreaded slugs/snails from munching it!

IThe oldest plant in my garden is the climbing yellow rose "Golden Showers" It is full of flowers from early June to often November every year. No problem at all. The flowers are lose with a small amount of fragrance. Grows to about 8ft.

Geranium Roseanne. Very well behaved with masses of blue flowers lasting six months of the year. Comes up every year and the slugs and snails leave them alone. Also phlox easy to grow. The best are the vivid blue and red ones.

Unfortunately the snails got the salvias this year and the helenium haven't shown their faces at all. I have a large yellow aquilegia that a friend gave me (a piece of his). He died soon after but I remember him every summer when the flowers come out.

Oh yes, the weeds.

I'm wondering if twitch grass can be reclassified as 'decorative'

The weeds, which give me plenty of exercise on a regular basis.

Mildred - yes the evil weevil did get one of my potted heucheras, a lovely trailing one that I can't remember the name of. I now drench poor "Southern Comfort" with weevil-killer on a regular basis!

Has anyone else had that odd thing with heucheras where they sort of send up a thick central stalk with tiny little leaves? I've had to remove several of those recently; they were fairly old plants but it hasn't happened to others of the same age. I wonder whether they are "variants" which have reverted?

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

nelliemoser brilliant thank you.

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.

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.

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 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!

Feelthefear that's lovely picture.

Bags your garden is like fairyland.

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.

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.

Gorgeous bags

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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.