When does the gardening bug decline?

Until a few days ago I feared I was losing my enthusiasm due to my RA, and couldn't be bothered, but now the weather is warm I am feeling more excited. Having vowed to cut down on the number of plants in pots this year I have just ordered another £52 worth on top of the dozens already on their way!

As long as lavender remains popular, I will carry on planting, snipping, tidying and making little bags.

Never, I hope. At the moment we have two sizeable gardens, each completely different. I am the plants woman and DH is the heavy jobs, tree pruner and construction worker.
I really can’t sit still in the garden, but do try.

I love all the photos on here.
My garden is relatively small and manageable at the moment.
Just like Shysal I didn't want to have so many pots this year but a trip to the garden centre put paid to that idea!

petra

Love it.
At the moment I have to sheds to paint but I just want to garden ( and sew)
But hey, I’m thankful that I can still do it.

Lovely, petra
Ours is a mess compared to yours but we are trying!

The squirrel must have eaten all my tulips, so none of the colourful show I was hoping for this year.

GrannyIvy

My tree peony

That's early GrannyIvy

I thought ours was early, it's just coming into bud.

For those with camellias - ours is flowering well this year but the flowers go brown after a couple of days (as usual). Does anyone know why?

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I love gardening, and spend a lot of time in our garden. Some pics from last year….

BlueBelle

I have a wild and free garden everything comes up where it fancies and I m in awe the way the plants wander around year on year 🤣

I have one of those, too, BlueBelle. It's 30 years old now and my gardening tends to be mainly removing excess plants rather than putting in new ones 😆

I love the plants which seed around. They bring more pleasure than most things I’ve bought. ATM there’s lots of self-set honesty, forget-me-nots and bluebells in flower and also a good crop of foxgloves, opium poppies and hollyhocks to look forward to, and self-set Spanish poppies are in bud.

I'm so glad I mulched my borders well last autumn. There are far fewer weeds to deal with now, especially the dreaded hairy bittercress which seeds like mad.

I've started to put more things in large pots so that they can be moved around during the year - to get them into shade; to fill a gap etc. However I need to get some sort of trolley (like a porter's) to help move them. Can anyone recommend one that copes with heavy loads?

Have a look on QVC website Nell8 - I was flicking through the channels last night and they had a nifty barrow that might suit the job. Once the pot was loaded a sort of grabber lowered down to keep the pot secure while moving it.

I have got a sack truck with biggish wheels that copes with curbs. They are not expensive. I have just moved my agapanthus out of the greenhouse on it. A good wiggle and they settled firmly enough to balance and move. One was in a pretty big square pot.

In the sunshine the plants have grown rapidly hiding the weeds! Forget-me-nots everywhere and loads of tulips, primroses, geums and even the roses are budding. Job for tomorrow, put the sweet peas in the cold frame to harden off. I cleared the wooden frame today, what a mess, the slugs have had a field day so not many survivors but rescued a load of lupins mostly minus some leaves. You see, despite my back and shoulder really hurting I just cannot give up, gardening is what keeps me sane.

This is it …

I've been gardening since I could walk! My first job was dropping daffodil bulbs into the holes my Dad had prepared, and I put them in all upside down, apparently!

I have a photo of me watering the runner beans in our garden. We lived in Inner London until I married in my early 20s, and Dad grew lots of vegetables, goodness knows how much lead they must have had in them from the petrol fumes of the main roads near us!

I still love it, I've been out there all afternoon today, and the day before yesterday I was out there from morning till early evening, just popping in to make lunch and take a break. I do all the gardening apart from mowing the grass (boring), propogate, sow and grow annual flowers (less than I used to but just to fill the gaps,) perennials, shrubs and vegetables in my four raised beds. I also have a greenhouse for tomatoes, chillies and cucumbers.The GC have been out there with me as they have grown up and know how to sow, plant and care for veg and flowers. Littlest one is now 14 months and came out with me yesterday (being carried!) to look at what was happening and she loved it. I have a raised trough with her name on it for her to grow her own things when she is old enough.

As I've got older, I've changed the way I tackle gardening jobs. Shorter periods of work, with a sit-down in between seems to work for me, but I have no real health problems apart from the usual aches and pains, so I count myself very fortunate!

The garden brings my soul to life - I can feel my mood lift when I am out there and it gives me such a lot of satisfaction and keeps my spirit lifted.

I really wasn't interested in gardening until I moved into a house with a big garden in my late 30's and then it became a passion. Our present house has an acre of garden, it's a lot of work but we try to do something most days from Feb to Oct. We have a veg and fruit garden and a couple of greenhouses so it is pretty productive. Some of the areas are left fairly wild, we try to blitz an area every year so it doesn't get completely out of control. I just wish we weren't on heavy clay but the roses are just wonderful, the secret is to grow plants that are happy and thrive.

I don’t think it ever does - my dad is 95, and he still plants new types of bulbs and seeds every year, the thrill and challenge is in seeing what happens.

Thanks for barrow/truck suggestions. I'll put my feet up later and start googling. My dodgy back is desperate for help!

It is increasing not declining. My garden at home is pretty well weed-free now, the mass growing of ground cover sedums have made it very pleasureable. I have lots of fruit, trees and berries, with pops of colour, roses and echinaceas. 4 small raised beds plus the taller veg trugs, easily reachable while I stand upright

It is so nice now and easy that I have my name down for an allotment. I am up for a challenge and can also cycle there, up a hill. Life does not stop just because I am 76

I had a little garden on the houseboat I once lived on.
I’ve never been able to grow gypsophila since.
Amazing how those delicate little flowers held up in that exposed position.

How lovely petra. I have always fancied living on a houseboat.

That looks like just enough garden for me now, petra 🙂

Germanshepherdsmum
The boat before our last one is up for sale if your interested 😀

Thanks but I think (pardon the pun!) that ship has sailed. My husband built and raced catamarans long before we met and I know he’s ‘been there, done that’ as regards the water- I couldn’t entice him onto it again, however calm!

Mr P spent a whole day spraying moss killer on the grass. Today he scarified it and I filled black sacks with the thatch. Next he will cut it and seed it. There is a lot of grass and since we have cancelled Green Thumb the job of licking it into shape is ours his. I do the planting and plant care. We both grew up in tenement buildings and love having a garden. We haven't lost our enthusiasm yet.