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Gardening Tips by Glorious Confusion

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About garden plants - how to grow plants and flowers in the right position for them to flourish

Gardening is my passion and I want to share my knowledge with you. I can reveal to you the secret of which plants grow best in the shade, and which plants are so healthy that they can become invasive if you don't keep them under control.

I am an amateur and can't tell you how to design a garden like Capability Brown, or even Alan Titmarsh, but as a gardening enthusiast for over fifty years, I can tell you about slugs, and designing a small front garden, and how I built my small vegetable plot. I have even written a web page about gardening disasters - I'm not proud!

The purpose of this web page is to point you to the various web pages I have written about gardening, including several about poisonous plants.

Think Carefully About Colours and Shapes in your Garden

The results of choosing the right plants can be stunning

Mixed flowers in front garden

Colour and shape are important in a garden, and choosing the right colours and shapes in your garden will help you to create a beautiful environment, which is individual to you, using your favorite colours.

Grow Plants Which Flower at Different Times

This will ensure a constant display of colour

icepla nt in October - late autumn flowering plantThinking about which season the flowers bloom in is also important. It can be a bit disappointing to have a blaze of colour from spring bulbs, and then nothing much for a few months.

With a bit of planning, you can ensure that you have flowers or berries and colour in your garden all year round.

The picture on the right shows a profusion of iceplants with witch hazel's red leaves in Autumn.

By the way, did you know that the old spelling "wych" means "branch" and not "witch" as you might expect. So although witch hazel (or wych hazel) is said to have magical powers, it seems that the modern name was probably just a corruption of the original "hazel branch"......think about that, all you followers of Wikka!

Think About Where You Will Put Your Garden Plants

Are they tall or short?

plants of varying heights in summerYou need to get the height right. It's no good having ground-hugging periwinkle, which flowers in late spring and early summer, hiding behind taller daffodils, which flower in spring and which need to be left intact for a month or two after flowering, to give the bulbs a chance to strengthen.

Some flowers are not very pretty after they have flowered, so it's quite a good idea to plant them towards the back of the border, with later-flowering plants growing in front of them, to conceal the dying leaves.

In the photograph on the right, you can see that lower plants are in front, and taller plants at the back.

Weed Your Garden and Keep it Free From Pests

Your plants will thrive better if they don't have competition

DandelionsWe don't want grass, dandelions, buttercups and nettles growing in the flower beds, and we don't want slugs, snails, squirrels, caterpillars and birds guzzling our produce, no matter how attractive these pests look. Pests tney are and pests they will remain.

My web pages about Plants

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My Web Pages about Poisonous Plants

Here you can learn how to identify poisonous plants

Some plants are poisonous if you eat the berries or seeds, others have poisonous sap like hellebores. A few plants are deadly poisonous, others will merely make you ill, or react painfully with your skin.

I personally have been very seriously poisoned by coming into prolonged contact with the sap of hellebores, whilst collecting the unripe seed heads which exuded sap onto my fingers. My fingers started tingling and throbbing, and after a few hours, my skin turned hard and black. I thought I was getting gangrene and that they might drop off, but with painkillers and cream, they recovered without lasting ill effects. But it did take several weeks before the skin was properly healed, and, until then, they were quite painful whenever I touched anything. And all this was because I didn't realize that the plants were poisonous.

So, pay attention, and learn what you can, before you fiddle around with plants, not afterwards like I did!
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If in Doubt, Don't Eat It or Lick Your Fingers

You may live to regret it!
Or you may not live to regret it!

Gardening Disasters and Garden Pests

Not everything in the garden is rosy!

I've made some awful mistakes in the garden - you might like to read about them in the web page below.

And no garden is complete without a few pests. My garden is plagued by slugs. They even venture into my house through the air bricks sometimes. My cat will eat most other creepy crawlies, but she shows no interest in slugs.....and who can blame her?
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Building your Garden

When landscape gardeners quoted £2,000 (about $3,000) to make over my front garden, which is just slightly larger than a postage stamp, I decided to go it alone. I wanted a cottage garden style, and was quite proud of the results.

The most expensive items were a lorry load of topsoil and compost - about £100.

All right, it wasn't as fancy as they contemplated, but in times of recession, my money will be better spent on increased taxes, filling my petrol tank which currently costs £63 (about $40) a go for a small car, and paying for basics (bread and tomatoes up about 20% from last year)
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Money Saving Gardening Tips

Bankers and oligarchs can skim over this bit - it would be surplus to their requirements

For most ordinary folk, there's bound to be something useful here.
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And Here's Some Web Pages About My Cat

In case you were wondering about that beautiful cat in the introductory photograph!

Just skip this bit if other people's pets bore you

Not strictly gardening, but my cat does adorn the garden, as well as revelling in it, and occasionally rolling in foxes poo - I recently gave her her first bath, as she was not her usual clean and sweet-smelling self. She didn't mind it actually, and it all came about because, yet again, she was curled up in the bathroom hand basin, stopping me from washing my hands. So I put some warm water in, and rubbed it over her. She did struggle slightly, but didn't spit or scratch, which I took to be a good sign.

I wonder whether she will be more wary of sitting in the basin in future.
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Featured Gardening web pages by other Squidoo Lensemasters

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Take This Poll About Where You Get Your Plants

See how you compare with other pollsters


Did you come to a fully cultivated garden when you moved into your home, or was yours a bit of a barren desert which needed your tender loving care to become half-way decent?

Mine was awful when I first moved in, and my Mother-in-Law was always coming in with cuttings from her garden, or pot-plants she had bought. She taught me a lot about gardening, and her enthusiasm was infectious.

Image: Hollyhocks which I grew from seeds

So, here we go, here's the question:

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This is one of my most popular lenses - 10 Plants That Will Grow in the Shade

About The Writer, Diana Grant

With Links to Some of Her Other Web Pages


Garden Enthusiast, Giant Squid, Squid Angel and Lover of All Things Squidoo

You should go to my Website:
Glorious Confusion - currently under reconstruction!
Diana's Blog at Glorious Confusion

I am a retired English solicitor. I no longer give professional advice, but I still help people to write letters, proof-read things they have written, and help to improve and pinpoint the essence of what they want to say.

I would be happy to help you if you contact me - You can go to my Bio

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My Lenses

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Please Leave Some Feedback

Anything Will Do - I love hearing from people



What's on your mind?
Naturally, if you wish to expand into more of an essay, that's fine too!

It's just nice to know who has been visiting


  • mcochs Mar 21, 2011 @ 6:44 pm | delete
    AWESOME lens! Gorgeous pics! Blessed by a Squidoo Angel on 3/21/2011. Have a great day! p.s. Love your Calico,I have cats too!
  • Cath1125 Mar 21, 2011 @ 8:22 am | delete
    This is a really great lense, with lovely pictures. I love your cat. I have only got into gardening recently, I love colour and shrubs, and I find when I am doing it, your mind just switches off and it is so relaxing. Can't wait for the weather to get a bit warmer to get out and get working in it.
  • Trendblazers Mar 21, 2011 @ 7:41 am | delete
    wow, well to be honest I have little interest in gardening, other than the fact that my Grandfather used to be the head gardenr at Alexandra park in Hastings, England. However you havea a very imformative lens, and I like the way that it serves also to link to your other sites. This is a technique that I shall try and explore with.

    My fave quote from this lens?

    "If in Doubt, Don't Eat It or Lick Your Fingers

    You may live to regret it!
    Or you may not live to regret it!"

    We have been warned.

    Thank you
  • GonnaFly Mar 19, 2011 @ 11:08 pm | delete
    Great to read your tips. I love your photos too. Lensrolled to my vegetable gardening tips. And thanks for including my lens here!
  • knit1tat2 Mar 19, 2011 @ 6:15 pm | delete
    A very enjoyable lens, thank you!
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                        White Osteosperm Note Card card
White Osteosperm Note Card by GloriousConfusion
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by

Gloriousconfusion

Hello everybody. I love gardening and used to be a Member of the Royal Horticultural Society
I retired from my work in London as a family solicitor two... more »

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