The bed to the right of our pond used to look like the photo on the left.
It was dominated by a gunnera growing behind it is a sort of brick trough.
I had never been totally satisfied with but hadn’t really had the time to give it much thought.
Then the very cold winter of 2010 killed off the phormium and seemed to have also put paid to the gunnera. This presented us with an ideal opportunity to rethink.
Surviving plants were moved elsewhere in the garden or in the case of the hundreds of self sown hardy cyclamen given to friends. The only plant retained for this are was Astilbe chinensis- pumila.
I them decided that as the bed is raised to almost eye level (my eye level) to one side that low growing rockery style plants would be an ideal solution.
With this in mind I started collecting suitable plants visiting the garden centres and nurseries at different times to ensure that I didn’t buy plants that would be at there best at just one time of the year.
A list of the plants that I bought can be viewed here.
At one time a conifer grew in this bed so we did try to remove the root was still embedded and had been hidden by plant growth. Even wielding a pick-axe this proved to be impossible and so it has been left in place. Hopefully eventually the plants will obscure it.
The bed had been a rockery in a previous life and so the soil was gritty. A few stones that had also had several previous ‘lives’ in the garden were used to create a small raised area to add interest
Once the soil level had been ‘topped up’ the plants were arranged and planted. Plants likely to sprawl have been planted along the back of the wall. I hope that eventually they will grow across the coping stones to break up the edge a little.
