Cosmos taking over

Hi to Debby H for sending us pictures of the state of play in her garden when it comes to continuing cosmos flowers at the moment and it is really crazy stuff. All the garden borders have the plants in them and the volunteer/self seeded one in the north bed has the most amazing colour (above).

“I have borders on 3 sides of my lawn, and there are cosmos flowers in all of them, including the northern border where I didn’t even plant any!” said Debby. They really are brilliant and as we said a few posts ago we ask our readers to send us some cosmos pictures next year, wherever you are in the world. Cheers Debby, you’ve started off a growing cosmos trend hopefully!

Redistribution of gardening wealth

One of the best things about this gardening lark is when people pass on things and we’ve picked up all sort of stuff from out in the street or left on garden walls with a “Take me” note on it. We’ve found gardening tools, a very strange coatstand that works as support for climbing plants (here) and even our silver birch that is growing so tall now (here).

In the last week we’ve kindly been given some seeds (Cheers Debby H!) and the other night we happily received a couple of bags (pic above) of Russet Apples (Cheers Adrienne!) which we’ve never tasted before and were very pleasantly suprised when we had them with some frozen berries (found at the bottom of the freezer) with a sponge top.

So keep that circle-a-turning and if you’ve got something that you don’t need, pass it/them on!

Custodians of the cosmos

Cheers to Debby H for influencing us here at Weeds to grow that plant with a lovely flower called cosmos. We’ve only got one flower on ours at the moment (above) but we’re not complaining, as it is November.

We had a daft idea here, to make 2025 “The year of the cosmos”. So next year we’d love to see lots of cosmos pictures and we could even do a cosmos from around the world feature. Spread the word to “Make the cosmos come alive in 2025” (and boy do we love a cliche here!)

And here are 3 great cosmos tracks:

 

 

A journey through the cosmos

Big thanks to Debby H in north London who has sent us another great photograph of her cosmos patch that is looking brilliant even at the end of October. As Debby wrote “My cosmos plants are still producing an unbelievable amount of flowers for the time of year, and there’s more buds still coming! This is very similar to one that I sent to you previously but I have attached it just to show you the amount of flowers that are still blooming.” They certainly are blooming. Cheers Debby.

More from a north London garden (and France)

We’ve just received some pictures from Debby H now we’re into the autumn season. She took a photo of the red robin bush (above) in the south of France just before she left to come back to London. “I took a photo of the red robin bush in the garden there. It has grown new red leaves which I have never seen before at this time of year. It usually happens in spring and sometimes in autumn. It just goes to show that this September has been much cooler and wetter than usual in that part of the world.” She’s got a point.

Back in north London things are still looking great, with the cosmos (above) still thriving. “Not quite so many flowers but pretty good for late September” and she’s right. There’s even some volunteer/self seeded ones growing alongside the path (below). The one we bought at B&Q after being influenced by Debby’s cosmos still has flowers and some new buds.

The sedum which we’re partial to are flowering and the golden rod is looking brilliant too (below).

Excellent stuff Debby. Hope the garden continues to look great even in the next few weeks as we approach the end of the year. Cheers again Debby!

Even more from north London

Just before we go away for a few days at the south coast, here’s some great gardening pictures from our friend in north London, Debby H. The cosmos patch is still going strong (above) and bright and colourful. The next is the cana lilly, now flowering for the first time this year (below).

“Then there’s the wonderful Ornithogalum (below) with four flowers now clearly visible.” it does look wonderful Debby!

Then there’s the sedum (above) and the great Zephyranthes Lilly flowers (below).
“And just up the road from here is a great front garden with a wonderful array of tomatoes all along the front border. There’s also sun flowers and other plants I don’t recognise.” That front garden is crazy! Love those climbing tomatoes! Cheers for sending those Debby.

More from north London

Cheers to Debby H again for sending us an update on her garden. It’s looking great by the way! These two pictures of the ornithogalum are brilliant. You can see on the picture below that four flowers are now clearly visible. They are something else.

Also the cosmos (below) are still going strong and the flowers are still well colourful.

As Debby wrote “Finally, the zephyranthes bulbs are blooming. We have never managed to get more than one or two flowers in a year. Now we have four coming at once! Amazing what a change of compost will do!” That plant is great. We’ve never grown those before but probably will now as there’s all sort of varieties out there. We were influenced with the cosmos and will look into these bulbs too. That’s what gardening is all about, being inspired by what other people grow in their garden. Cheers Debby!

North London garden news

A big thanks to Debby H for sending us some pictures of what’s going on at the moment in the plant pots and flower beds in her north London garden. The ornithogalum above and below has started to produce more flowers and looks great.

The pictures of the cosmos (below) in her last post here influenced us to run out and get a plant for ourselves. It’s now in a pot  and with its great flowers they’re a new favourite of ours here at Weeds.

The phlox and the sedum (below) are looking healthy too, unlike some of the plants in our garden. We’ve been doing a fair bit of watering here but there’s only so many times you can go up and down the garden with a watering can.

We stopped the hose a good few years ago after Gerry Hectic recommended a great episode of Gardeners’ World which was about conserving water which shamed us from using said hosepipe. What was funny we were going to get the hose out yesterday and when we unravelled the thing we noticed that the outside tap was stuck in the “Stop” position. Someone somewhere was making sure we didn’t use that hose!

The golden rod looks gigantic and the flowers are starting to open and the tomatoes are looking healthy too.

Cheers for the pictures Debby as they are appreciated here.

More guest gardens

Cheers to Debby H for sending us some great pictures of her garden again. We’re loving the ornithogalum which has just started to flower. As she said “Hopefully this is the first of several” and we hope so too!
“The golden rod is amazing. It’s about 6 foot tall. The flowers are nearly ready now.” They are looking good. She’s been away in France for a few weeks and is just managing to get on top of the weeding. That’s it what with the weather we’ve been having, rain then sun, sun then rain. The weeds love that sort of weather they really do. “The slugs got all my rudbeckia that I planted out just before we left, the dahlia disappeared too.” Those slugs eh?
“On the other hand, the cosmos are doing well. The flowers seem larger than last year, perhaps it’s all the rain!” The cosmos do look nice, they’re an attractive flower. We’ve only grown the annual version a few years ago and they came up great and then we forgot to sow them the year after. Sadly they didn’t self seed.
“We planted phlox last spring. It didn’t do much last year but it’s starting to flower now.”
All things in garden are sadly not all rosey as the pear tree (above) is not very happy though and there doesn’t look like there’s any fruit coming on it this year sadly. As well as little black eggs on the tree, which she’s sprayed a few times, she also had to treat it for rust. We wonder what is up with the pear? The strawberry patch looks very healthy though!
Thanks again Debby and do keep sending us these updates as the garden is looking great.