Any gardeners out there?

Gardening is also a good way to keep fit. I ma slowly taming the jungle at our old farm/vicarage up in the mountains. Lots of perenials which came from our East Leics garden and seem to have adapted well. And also my first attempt at a raised veg plot (well 4). It's been hard work so far - but this has been a fabulous year- now just need to move a few things around. Love it.

Yep, I garden.

Yes, here as well.

I have two perennial flower beds, an elaeagnus hedge, a vegetable garden, numerous fruit trees, some potted flowers, and some miscellaneous bushes and plants.

Have spent the last 3 years taking out the stuff left by prevous owners that I didn't care for, i.e. thuja hedge, woody shrubs, and numerous daffodils, etc.; and re-planting with my tastes in mind and better use of the natural terrain. Most everything is coming into form now, having had a year or so to grow. The only thing still missing is a Glycine, which I absolutely want, but haven't found a suitable spot yet. That will be next year's project. A constant overlook of things each year, with about 15% to be replanted in a given year, but this gets less and less as I get things sorted to where and how I want them.

I'm a keen gardener. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm far outweighs my talent.

Ah well - the fun is in the effort as much as in the result. The slugs and mice are fat and happy, though.

amateur gardener here most of the time doing what my mum says ....

and most of the time in the kitchen garden

I'm a keen gardener with a very willing 10 year old assistant. We will be leaving our nicely established beds, fruit trees and raised veggie beds behind in Belgium when we move in a couple of weeks time.

Not sure how much I'll be able to do in the garden of our rented house in Neuchatel so I'll probably have to make do with a few pots and stuff.

Probably shouldn't be worrying about that when I've got a million other things to be doing instead

The thing with gardening in Switzerland is that you only really need very modest results to completely impress your Swiss friends and neighbours. We have a few flower beds, a small pond, a plum tree and some fruit bushes. I must try and have some clearer ideas next year. Usually I mix everything together and some plants get swamped

Raised bed? Did I hear Raised bed??? That is what I wanted for my new garden. We recently moved into a house and that was what I planned to do. Problem: there is no resource here for building a raised bed garden. I went from nursery to nursery, do-it-yourself places (Coop hobby center, Lidl, to the local mill). NO ONE could provide me the required lumber or kit to build a raised bed. I am trying to avoid the chemical saturated wood, and at the same time get all the required hardware to put it together. After a couple months I just gave up and postponed the project to next year. What did you do??

Belgianmum, I live in the Neuchatel mountains - so hope you enjoy the area. Perhaps meet up one day?

Karl, I got my raised beds from the UK and brought them over. See

Harrod Horticultural. Not so pretty, but I chose the plastic ones as we live at altitude and get v. cold weather and much snow. I had some nice stone flower troughs brought over from our UK garden, and I've placed them in front to hide the plastic- it works really well.

Well, postponing the raised bed garden until next season allowed me to learn something: with regards to growing vegetables, success will come not with a raised bed, but with a green house.

I planted all sorts of veg in my garden, tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, etc. and unfortunately the yield was disappointing due to bugs and rot induced by the damp weather. All tomatoes failed: after an initial growth burst, they all became infected with rot. Down the street I spotted a greenhouse full of fat red tomatoes...so next season I am buying a small greenhouse instead. Squash and pumpkins seem to do fine.

did you put a bit of copper in your tomatoes ?

Thanks for the tip. Would you happen to know the product name available in Switzerland?

it's just a bit of copper from any cables with copper.... you find it in any DiY shops

you cut a bit of it and pierce the foot of the "tomato tree"

Were your tomato plants "umbrelled"? While they need lots of water, they hate it falling on their leaves. I keep mine in pots under under the balcony above, while the garden of the house in front of mine built a covered shelter, open towards the south, with a wooden frame and plastic sheeting for the roof and

sides. Apart from that, I feed then with the tomato fertilizer from the garden center. I've had great crops since doing this.

We have a problem with water too, although I don't think it's really that we get too much, but rather that when our garden was laid out initially, they didn't put much attention into how water would drain off.

In the back garden we end up having a swampland in the wintertime. In the front strip it's so bad that even my mums died off.

I think the snails love it though. Maybe rather than consider myself a gardener who plants flowers to make the house look nice, I should consider myself a food producer for our local snail population.

Not much I can do about the whole back garden, but I think I might dig up the front strip, pull out all the assorted, jumbled up bulbs, separate them and replant them somewhere else. And then lay down some gravel and a proper topsoil mix (the soil there is rubbish now, as it is everywhere in our yard).

Whew, just typing it is tiring though.

My parents had this problem in the first house they owned, they created a small well in the garden, so the water went there.

Garden is a restaurant for them.... free and open 24/24....

I tried several things from ash to egg shell. The best is beer..... they just love it.

you can also buy some stuff to kill them all...

they are also food for hedgehog....

I was just about to say we have the best snail killer going...

a resident hedgehog.

just by the way .... mrs and I met Hester MacDonald ( she has a gardening show on WRS ) at the expat expo last week and she is coming over Monday to give us a little garden evaluation.

(( ok ok.."give us" = Chf 500.-- ))

We built a raised bed using stone. Hornbach has a small but good selection: granite, limestone, porphyr, etc. You buy by the square meter, fairly inexpensive. Most garden centers will also have stone but the price will be higher. Or, go to a Naturstein company - here you will also get good prices if you are taking small off-cuts.

Also, here in SZ a Tomatohüsli is essential because of all the water we have. If I'm still here next spring we are going to expand the tomato house to make it more greenhouse-like so that we can start the tomatoes earlier, and give them a bit of protection when the temps drop in June.

Pulled up my first and most enormous PARSNIPS today - feeling very chuffed and proud! Can't wait to roast them. I reckon it is a good idea to grow veg you can't buy readily here. Hurray.

You're my new best friend, you are!

I've got a question for you. We don't have a garden of our own, but there is a shared space which is cultivated by our upstairs neighbour. She has some herbs in there, some rhubarb, a clematis and various other plants, but there's one in there that neither my wife nor I recognise.

It is about six feet tall, with a trumpet shaped flower at the top, inside which is a curled up sticky thing that seems to attract flies. It has a big bulbous root with three woody things sticking up that sometimes rattle against the plant's stem. I'm guessing it's the wind that does that, although I'm sure I've heard the noise when it has been still outside.

Anyway, the weirdest thing is that I'm convinced the plant has moved. I know it sounds bizarre, and my wife tells me that I'm imagining things, but I'm absolutely sure that it used to grow up against the fence, whereas now it is a good six feet away.

Do you know of any plants that would do that?

(It's funny... as I've been typing this, that rattling noise has just started again. It sounds really creepy... but I suppose shouldn't let my imagination get to me. )