End of Month View May 2010

Late posting – though only by a day – due to weekend visitors, though at least my lovely brother-in-law helped me finish glazing my new and lovely, if very tiny, greenhouse…

Anyway, the real star of the garden at the moment is part of the overall pond area, which is where I am concentrating my efforts, but doesn’t really count as it is the irises in the pond itself. Mind you, they add so much structure, as well as keeping the bees happy and delighting me, that they do have a big effect on the overall area.

I’ve divided another astrantia – a beautiful white one this time – and am therefore having to go without the flowers, at least so far, but I think it is part of my overall move from planting in blocks to planting in ribbons, or perhaps more unkindly, dots… I’ve also planted the tulips out in the border, and have my fingers firmly crossed that they come up next year. I’m a little worried that I don’t yet have anything to disguise the dying foliage, though in time the mondardas and echinacea will do this, as will the candelabra primulas. The primulas are one of my biggest disappointments. I bought two trays of plugs last year, with a friend, and potted them on, but my planthouse blew down in a gale last autumn and I lost a lot of plants and all the labels… So now we have no idea which are candelabra and which denticulata, so can’t plant out until they have flowered. Still, the border is gradually filling out.

My main problem in the pond bed is now with the aquelegias, which have come up three different colours this year. The pale pink and the deep purple, perfectly pretty in their way, do not go with the red astrantia and knautia macedonica. So they have to be moved elsewhere. Then there is the fact that there should  be a lovely cloud of Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ tying it all together with the height from the emerging veronicastrum and foxgloves. This too was a casualty of the Great Planthouse Disaster, and I can’t afford to buy plants, so there is nothing to tie all this together. Finally, although I love the mophead of the grass, it is too heavy, visually, now that I am aiming for a lighter style. No idea if it is too late to get away with dividing it and spreading it around, but everything in me is crying out that this is what I need to do, as well as spread the Knautia macedonica around more.

I am pleased with the area I planted from scratch this year with seedlings, though as always I have planted everything too close together, even though as I laid everything out I was telling myself not to… Ah well, at least it looks healthy, and I can always move things around again in the autumn…

I think perhaps I should leave more to serendipity, as the area in the garden that has done the best is the area by the acer, providing backdrop to the whole pond bed. It was where we kept the compost bins until we cleared a better place for them, and I planted some ferns that had to move to make way for the arrival of the shed, together with a euphorbia I fell in love with when buying the shed base and a heuchera that, frankly, I have no excuse for buying other than it was gorgeous and I thought it would tie the hazel and acer together. And I love it. Probably more than any other area in the garden. The ferns are clearly delighted with their relocation, and are rewarding us with this gorgeous show of sumptuous growth.