Gardening and dogs

I mentioned previously that I hadn’t seen the wisteria that grows up the side of my office being pruned.  Well, today the ground staff were out pruning it.

May is obviously not the best time to prune wisteria (I do my major prune in January).  In other years it might just have already flowered, but this year swelling flower buds have become casualties in the groundsmen’s ongoing challenge to keep on top of the plants that grow on the estate.  This year’s weather has meant that many jobs are having to be performed with sub-optimal timing.

At least I now have the answer as to how the plants that grow up the house are pruned.  In the basket of the cherry picker, the groundsman had a petrol powered hedge clipper which he used to trim both the wisteria and the magnolia grandiflora that grow up the house.  They certainly didn’t have the time to worry about pruning to three buds as I can with my much smaller wisteria,so it will be interesting to see what next year’s flower is like.

At least we can see the wonderful views now that the wisteria is no longer growing across the windows!

As the weather starts to improve, gardeners’ thoughts turn to buying plants.  However there may be a hidden danger for your dog in that plant you buy.  To reduce slug damage to their young plants, many suppliers are putting slug pellets into plant pots.

Whilst slug pellets may be designed to be distasteful to dogs, they are certainly poisonous in reasonable quantities.  They are coloured blue to make them easy to see.

A friend of mine took some mail order plants out of their packaging and slug pellets fell to the ground.  Luckily she managed to get to them before her lively youngster could!

For the sake of your dog, please keep him at bay and check new plants for slug pellets.

We frequently travel on long journeys to dog shows.  To help pass the time on the journey, my lovely husband downloads the BBC Garden’s Question Time radio show so that we can listen as we drive. 

A couple of weeks ago there were three questions on moss which they grouped together.  The first asked how to get rid of moss, the second asked what was wrong with moss anyway, but the third was the one that caught my attention.  The questioner asked how come the area of grass nearest his house had no moss, but the further you got away from the house, the more moss was in the grass.  On further questioning, it transpired that the gentleman in question had bitches (no indication of breed or how many).   The panel came to the conclusion that the high nitrogen content in the bitches urine was killing the moss, but they (and I) were surprised that the grass near the house was doing well.

As you know, I have no grass so am not able to personally comment on this topic.  My mother’s garden had moss and family members who visited had bitches.  Maybe we didn’t visit often enough to have an impact on the moss.  So, over to you.  Do any of you have moss in your grass and have any of you noticed this phenomena?