My garden is very limited on size and also because of it being my parents house I am limited to some extent on what I can do. If it was down to me I`d turn the whole back garden into a vegetable patch leaving paths where necessary. I could buy bigger pots but Ive already spent a lot of money on containers and compost this year and the total just keps adding and I have to stop with it somewhere along the line. The majority of my plants are in grow bags and the pumpkin plant was planted into the ground at the weekend even that was hard finding space for that. I wasnt planning on keeping the tomatoes I was going to sell the ones that are in 2l pots but I ran into problems with them which I have overcome now but I have no selling point, whereas I can give away as many tomatoes as I can grow. Im not to worried about yield with the 2l pots because I have a plentiful supply for myself and my family with what is grown in the grow bags. The large brown containers have onions in them and the smaller clay pots have leeks in them. This year is really more of an experimentation for me to see what plants best suit my garden, where theyre suited etc as I havent grown veg here before. I did have a large plot of land which belonged to a relative of mine but that has been sold now. Allotments are also very difficult to get round here and the waiting list is as long as my arm. Thanks for your comments, Mike

It's still early in the season here. Pruning, otherwise known as Me vs. The Garden is still progressing. Sort of. At this point, I've done all the 'easy' roses. The ones that go snip, snip, snip. What's left are things like Queen of the Prairies and Clair Matin, the ones that need saws to cut out old canes that should have been cut out years ago, except that I never bothered to get the saw out of the garage. The early roses have started blooming. R. hugonis, R. primula and Glory of Edsel. The lilacs are in full bloom, the doublefile viburnum is turning white, and the first of the tree peonies are opening. The early iris are fading, so it's time to anxiously await the opening of the first TBs. The bloom stalks are there, the flowers are starting to show color, but are at least a couple of days away. Having drastically redone irisdom a couple of years ago, I'm refusing to mess with the bed until it starts crowding. The result is a bigger and better show every year. This is the way it's supposed to work, but doesn't always. People are starting to drop hints about garden visits. That means it's time to start taking the quarry work seriously again. Most of the beds are dug to about a foot, then amended. Since we start with heavy, rocky soil, the result is quite good rose soil and a pile of rock. The exception has always been a relatively small area with bedrock near the surface. It started off garden life as an iris bed. The small, early iris species that were placed there didn't mind the almost total lack of soil. It was close enough to their native habitat. But over time, as the garden vision changed, it was thought desirable to have a deeper bed as a more normal extension of the rest of the garden. So the rock had to go. The rock is still going, and the excavated topsoil still sits on a tarp in the middle of a garden path. I refuse to even think about how many years this has been true. Last summer, I got the hole to a point where there is deep enough soil for most things. However, the hole produces about the best paving stone I've dug here. Paving stone has uses, and if I don't dig it out of that hole, I'll have to *horrors* BUY it.

The wood is just decoration and doesn't stop the grass. I respectfully disagree, based on many years of experience in different states, with different grasses. When I lived in OH, I had "nice" grass, non-rhizomatous, mostly, like it looks like bgaviator has. Bricks or timbers laying on the ground will stop about 95% of the grass permanently, especially when the bed is well mulched such as this. Wherever there's a low spot, or seam between pieces, the grass may creep under/through. Easy to fix in a few minutes about every-other month. As the timber settles, it will sink a bit and then it's even less of a problem, something to check maybe once in the spring, once in the fall. Even here, with a yard of St. Augustine or Bermuda or whatever type of vine-grass this is in my yard in AL, with Bahia invading that, something like this timber is enough of a barrier to easily achieve control. Agree it's not a type of border that is completely certain, but certainly worth doing, especially compared to the effort and expense required for a completely reliable border. I prefer this type of border because it's easy to pick up the timber and definitely remove any invading grass by the roots. I spend very little time on out-of-bounds grass. Often grass is let to make seeds before it's mowed, then not enough care is taken to direct the outflow away from the bed, or it drops in the bed before mowing. When the seeds sprout, the border gets blamed for not doing its' job.

Lois, The nursery that is down the street from me in Aiken, it's called Cold Creek Nursery. You must have a privatly owned nursery near you, just pay them a visit, sometimes they will order one for you if you want. That is what is nice going to a privately owned place vs. a big box place. The orange is very common, but the red and yellow, now that is a real show stopper, and hummers are really attracted to it. Mine was seeding and I let the seeds scatter, I am sorry, I whould have collected some and I could send you some seed. I sure hope it comes back next year, I'm going to muclh it real good, you never know. But if it doesn't, you know I'll be buying more next spring. And collecting the seeds this time....darn.