I have always loved forsythia and brought cuttings from my old house to my new one. They are flowering now, beautifully. So far as the foliage is boring, my garden sparrows were very fond of its great density and cover. The bird feeders fitted in it just perfectly. Each to his own.
this poor plant cannot be but pitied, it is usually chopped into a geometric cube so the postman can get past it, it must be the most maligned plant when it comes to planting a plant in the wrong place. now what i really hate is the hebe variety supermarket car park
I have a bush of Ribes. I do not know why I still have it but I hate rubbing against it. It is really Cat Pee - Forsythia I do not have but it looks great creeping over my neighbours fence in Spring peeping through the dark conifers.
On the 16th May 2009 my husband and I took over the tenancy of small semi-detached Edwardian house in Trench,Telford. The attraction was the garden or more accurately the 134x20ft space behind where a garden should have been. In its place we found weeds in all their glorious profusion, revelling in a freedom which must have lasted for decades. There were docks vying for skylight with three very sick fruit trees and to top it all, hiding behind a drunken fence, at the bottom of this delight, was a heap of rubble eight feet square--at a guess. This had been deposited by itinerant fly-tippers who had access to the area from a redundant railway embankment.
Why didn't we run? Good question, but I enjoy creating gardens and my Husband and I could see the potential for an excellent food supply, relaxation and a wild garden orchard at the far end.
To prevent this from becoming a novel I shall list the progress.
1. Weeding. We had to poison the docks and couch grass.
2 Digging! Ha! This beautiful earth had bee used to bury anything from bricks, metal, glass and wood and not one fork or spade failed to contact some obstacle. We dug out the foundations of four walls and ended up with enough bricks to build a large extention, enough metal to construct a one man space ship sufficient glass to make a large model of the Crystal Palace and a very large quantity of wood with which to make things you make with wood.
3. We had to get a contracter to remove the rubble pile. A complete bathroom suite, fifteen half telegraph poles, tree trunks and-------!!??
The other day we watched you beginning the creation of another garden and envied you that sympathetic earth but inspite of all obstacles our garden is now planted and about venture into the world that it deserves.
4. Our lawn area was laid yesterday. (Not by us!)
5. Eventually we had to have some help from a gardener. Paul enabled us to reach our deadline of March for trees and bushes.
That as briefly as I can say it is our story and I would have sent some Photo's but although I can claim a certain tinge of Green in my fingers, I do not, unfortunately possess " Screen fingers" to send them with this letter.
By the way I don't think I mentioned that I am seventy-nine and my toy boy is seventy-seven.
We shall be following your progress with interest and look forward to learning more of this now essential art.
Ha. I saw the title of the blog and thought "oooh - that'll rattle a few cages". I don't like it and won't have it in the garden - SomeBeans calls me a plant snob. I think what makes it worse is when you see them turned into 'lollipops'. I drive past a string of these bright yellow lollipops on the way to and from work and keep meaning to stop and take photos of the horrible deformed things.
My forsythia and ribes hide an old shed, under an enormous sycamore, which really is a tree to condemn (too big and prolific), at the back of the garden. Nothing else grows under it, but these 2 shrubs light up that dark place and I know spring has arrived. Although the forsythia was under threat of removal if it didn't flower well this year - and it has, so it is saved.
I love my forsythia and I'm genuinely surprised to discover anyone who doesn't feel the same way about this pretty and delightful plant, but you are entitled to your opinion and the world would be a fairly boring and mundane place if we all liked exactly the same plants.
Dear James - as a child I used to complain that the Springtime yellow everywhere of forsythia and daffodils was really 'boring'. Older, wiser and living further north, I now celebrate the vibrancy of colour after dull, dark winter days, and the fact that they manage to thrive in our dreadful clay soil. Each to his own as they say...
I once published a poem about forsythia. I take great delight in picking bare branches in January and watching them flower in their vase ten days later. Their are many species that are not violent yellow and some are of weeping habit.
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The attraction was the garden or more accurately the 134x20ft space behind where a garden should have been.
In its place we found weeds in all their glorious profusion, revelling in a freedom which must have lasted for decades. There were docks vying for skylight with three very sick fruit trees and to top it all, hiding behind a drunken fence, at the bottom of this delight, was a heap of rubble eight feet square--at a guess.
This had been deposited by itinerant fly-tippers who had access to the area from a redundant railway embankment.
Why didn't we run? Good question, but I enjoy creating gardens and my Husband and I could see the potential for an excellent food supply, relaxation and a wild garden orchard at the far end.
To prevent this from becoming a novel I shall list the progress.
1. Weeding. We had to poison the docks and couch grass.
2 Digging! Ha! This beautiful earth had bee used to bury anything from bricks, metal, glass and wood and not one fork or spade failed to contact some obstacle. We dug out the foundations of four walls and ended up with enough bricks to build a large extention, enough metal to construct a one man space ship sufficient glass to make a large model of the Crystal Palace and a very large quantity of wood with which to make things you make with wood.
3. We had to get a contracter to remove the rubble pile. A complete bathroom suite, fifteen half telegraph poles, tree trunks and-------!!??
The other day we watched you beginning the creation of another garden and envied you that sympathetic earth but inspite of all obstacles our garden is now planted and about venture into the world that it deserves.
4. Our lawn area was laid yesterday.
(Not by us!)
5. Eventually we had to have some help from a gardener. Paul enabled us to reach our deadline of March for trees and bushes.
That as briefly as I can say it is our story and I would have sent some Photo's but although I can claim a certain tinge of Green in my fingers, I do not, unfortunately possess " Screen fingers" to send them with this letter.
By the way I don't think I mentioned that I am seventy-nine and my toy boy is seventy-seven.
We shall be following your progress with interest and look forward to learning more of this now essential art.
With very best wishes,
Joy and Peter Cox