What was your best garden buy this year?

Yes, my bird feeders. They are still flourishing and will do so throughout the winter.

Some sandpaper and a tin of blue paint I used to revive /refurbish an old garden bench. It looks amazing .

We’ve been making over our new garden, it was a blank canvass so a lovely cedar greenhouse and a water fountain.
Also, lots of new plants.
I think I’ll enjoy next spring when everything’s settled in.

I have Cirsium as well. I think my best plant buys have been the heavily price reduced plants from the"search and rescue" shelves.
Four "storm battered" Penstemmons which just needing tiding up. Two much reduced price Heucheras and quite a few more such bargains.
I have a very cheap Sarah Bernhardt peony bulb from Wilko which was very dried up but it has revived and should get growing again next year.
Always have a look at these plants the biggest problem are the ones that have become really too dried out it is amazing what you can revive.

My best plant purchase was a Rudbekia (excuse spelling if incorrect) which has flowered non stop since the end of July and still looks fabulous.

The plants that are currently giving me most pleasure are schizostylis or, as they are known round here 'schizophrenia'!

I think mine has to be a Mahonia Winter Sunshine bought from Crocus that is now flowering beaufifully.
I dug up a whole lot of ivy, and redid that bed. The ivy is now regrowing so have to attack it again.
And hi there Flossieturner, how are you?
I am off to allotment.

An oscillating hoe. Absolute lifesaver for my back!

Now that's interesting. I think one of the mistakes I make gardening is not hoeing enough. I do like my swoe and am thinking of taking that to allotment.

I bought a Mahonia when we first moved here. It sort of "kept on growing" and I had planted it way too near the fence.
It took two men a long time and effort to dig it out.

I replaced it a better position with a Mahonia "winter sun". It is begining to get going. I loved mine,as did the birds when the berries came.

Yes and the bees love it in the winter. That was one of the reasons I bought it. Have an enormous Fatsia Japonica that has flowers on it . I hate the messy black berries and was going to cut the flowers off then I saw the bees.

kitty, Schizostylis are lovely aren't they? Such a long flowering period.

My salvias are still looking great so are the dahlias as we haven't yet had a frost.

I haven't bought anything for the garden this year other than plants, plants and plants although I am hoping the leaf mould sack I've ordered from eBay will arrive today. I usually just chuck leaves on the compost heap but I thought I'd have a go at making proper leaf mould.

Your gardens all sound lovely . My best buy must have been some geraniums, reduced to practically nothing. They revived and have been flowering non stop. The thing that has amused/pleased me most, has been a bit of garden faffery. Two little birds , Peter and Paul, as per the nursery rhyme, on a rotating perch.

They are cute AuntieFlo ?
DH calls this sort of thing garden naffery ( bit like faffery) and I have a couple of examples of it ? smuggled into the garden.
Besy buy for us was a cotinus ‘Grace’ as a specimen plant in the lawn, it has grown very tall ( will be cut down somewhat every year) and is now turning a lovely deep red, from it’s original pale puple.

DH bought me some solar-powered strings of lights - little stars. they cost £5 each and 3 of them complete a section of the garden. they still twinkle now, though we really ought to take them in ... They never fail to make me smile.

Best Buy was primula ooh la la, bought at the Gardeners Question Time Garden Party, it’s going great guns .

Mine was a white Marguerite daisy. It's November and it's still going strong and has turned bushy and is full of blooms. I didn't have a sunny spot for it so it's in a light but shady spot and seems to relish it! All I have to do is dead-head it regularly. Everything in the garden has faded apart from some shrubs and russet chrysanthemums. I cannot believe it's still flourishing so well.Magnificent plant! (First year I've had one.) I believe it's not fully hardy?

A leaf sucker upper. We have lots of trees and so have our neighbour's. So it is easy now to suck them up and burn them. ( our compost bins are full)

A garden shed.

And some French bean plants left over at the garden centre - 99p and gave us loads of beans.

winter pansies, 6 weeks ago.
Flowers are always grown in pots or troughs here, due to the climate and soil conditions, very fast rate of growth of perennial weeds etc. So our long troughs of pansies bring a bit of colour.
We also have a planter of some bright red or pink flowers that never seem to need watering - don't know the name. And some bushes of salvia ditto.

ps potatoes also did well, but some still to lift, very difficult in the rockhard clay soil. Probably the wireworms have got them now

Best buys were 2 marked down plants, a cucumber and a bell pepper, for 20p each, which both provided half a dozen fruit (or veg, whichever appropriate).

I picked up from Wilko a couple of packets of giant sized mixed navy and white gladioli together with a pack of pink and mauve ones in a slightly smaller size. They were slow to start off but then bloomed from mid-August until mid-October. I've now lifted them together with about 100 others from earlier years and they are all drying out on racks in the garage. I'm hoping that they'll do equally well next year.

Should I lift gladioli? We live in the SE of England.