Who says dahlias are boring

Big thanks to Mike G and Julia (Ace photos as usual by the way Julia!) for sending pictures of their wonderful dahlias that have been loving the decent weather up there near Coventry for the last two days. The black dahlia (above) is really something else!

The one above is another favourite of ours, a classic of dahlias! And as for the orange one below… We’ll be buying some tubers for the spring, we will.

And these pictures have given us an excuse to repost up an example of that rare genre called dahlia dub from Madtone called A dahlia state of mind.

And another dahlia themed track this time by Asta Hiroki.

And a final one by Jean-Michel Serres.

Hey, what gives in Crete?

Cheers to Mike and Julia for sending us some excellent horticultural snaps taken on their holiday to Crete. It was mighty hot out there they told us and it’s something else to think that plants actually survive the intense heat out there. The pomegranite tree is looking great and one we’d love in our garden.

Do enjoy these great pics.

We think they’ll be a follow up to this post as Julia has taken a good few pictures and they all look great! The above is the crimson bottlebrush that we have in the front garden and hasn’t really done all that well this year and we imagined it was to do with the heat. Thinking about it, we imagine Crete is possibly on average, a little bit hotter than Forest Hill.

Great photographs Julia and we’ll do a part two in a couple of days time as they are all great. Thanks for sending the holiday pictures as it’s great to see what grows elsewhere in the world. Do send us your worldwide plant pics to one deck pete at gee mail dot com.

More from (near) Coventry

As we mentioned in our post here here’s a few more pictures from Mike and Julia’s garden near Coventry. The first is a perennial poppy (something we also have ourselves, grown from seed a few years ago). They really are worth having in the garden that will give you a good pop of red.

The rest are a close-up of a rosemary flower (above) and lilac (below).

And finally some black tulips with a black geranium (below). Thanks to both of you again for the wonderful pictures.

Sent from (near) Coventry

Here’s some excellent pictures from Mike G and Julia’s garden near Coventry which is now really getting into the swing of things. The above are of geums and agapanthus. We’re loving the red geum photo!

And above is a great looking aquilegia. This will be a two parter of a post as there’s so much good stuff sent.

Thanks to Julia for the wonderful pictures and for adding the names of the plants too and Mike for sending them over. We at Weeds do struggle with names of flowers so a helping hand is always appreciated. And as for the Latin names…

With all the wonderful pictures we’ve been receiving of late, perhaps the Weeds version of the Countryfile calendar can now be realised. We’ll be ringing the BBC when the show’s on tomorrow and ask to be put straight through to John Craven and see if he’ll be alright with a bit of competition.

Thanks again to Mike and Julia again for their great contribution!

Spring must be here now!

Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us a couple more pictures of their garden near Coventry again this week. What we thought was a great looking brick wall is actually decking (above) and we love the raised bedding and can spy a great looking poppy getting ready to flower if we’re not wrong.

And look at their well colourful trees and bushes (below). They’re looking good Mike and Julia! Keep sending us those pics of your great garden. It really is good to see how other people garden. If you want to send us some pictures of your garden, balcony or windowsill gardening exploits drop us an email to one deck pete at gee mail dot com.

Spring must be here!

Thanks to Mike G and his partner Julia for sending us some recent pictures of their garden from just outside Coventry and great pics they are! Top image features the great flowers of bleeding heart and also grape hyacinths.

Love the picture below, look at that clematis go! The clematis in our garden is nowhere as prolific. Ours has flowered poorly over the last couple of years so we used a tip heard on Gardeners Question Time a few years ago. Within earshot of the plant we said “If we don’t see any improvement in that clematis next year, we’re pulling it and sticking it on the compost heap as it’s the best thing for it”. It’s not a nice thing to do but sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind and funnily enough the GQT tip may be working. If it flowers as half as good as their one below we’ll be more than happy!Their peas look great especially so early in the season and we look forward to see how they get on. We don’t have much luck with peas, we know the trick may be all about keeping them well watered but these below look well healthy.

We had to look this plant below up on the web and used Plant.id here which is telling us it’s a spring starflower (Ipheion uniflorum). Whatever it is, it’s a striking flower!
So cheers Mike and Julia for sending in the pictures of your great garden and do let us know how things are going later this season!