#whatsinmywheelbarrow......

........is my enticingly named regular feature on Instagram. 

The fun thing with Instagram is that you can make almost (almost) any subject you care to aim the camera lens of your smartphone at look attractive - for example, the contents of a wheelbarrow. 

I have a notion - I think that I might be able to teach novice gardeners a little about what a gardener gets up to on a day-to-day basis by showing off (in colourful Instagram fashion) the contents of my wheelbarrow, hence - #whatsinmywheelbarrow 

During the winter months the colours and tones of the photographs tend to be more muted than those taken in the summer months - you may, however, find the occasional gem.

So please follow me on Instagram @nicolahopegardener to find out what I'm up to (usually up to my knees in mud - but that's another blog post - one that I imagine will be titled "Swamp Donkey")

So #whatsinmywheelbarrow today?

Today I spent a fine November day in a herbaceous border. As well as giving the border a post-summer tidy up I had several scruffy old roses to move. 

Moving roses is usually fairly simple as long as you reduce the stems by at least half, dig up as much of the roots as possible and replant them or pot them up immediately. Give the replanted rose plenty of water, and then loads more over the following weeks - especially if there is no significant rainfall. I always plant any rose with a liberal sprinkling of mycorrhizal fungi - there are loads of products widely available from garden centres and online - I use one that is also a multipurpose feed for roses, trees and shrubs. Wherever possible I like to kill several birds with one stone.

And here it is - my #whatsinmywheelbarrow Instagram entry for today - 19th of November 2014. Not particularly thrilling to look at but please hang in in there. Some pretty cool things end up in my wheelbarrow.