We made a visit to one of our local garden centres yesterday afternoon. This particular one lives up to it’s name – Down To Earth. They sell lots of bedding plants and several small pots as multi-buys. We weren’t shopping for these, but did succumb to buying some lithodora, lavender and rosemary and one small conifer. Mark asked me if it was a dwarf – and I pointed out to him all the conifers we have in our garden that were planted as babies were also ‘dwarf’ conifers. It seems better to go by the height in 10 years on the label! Some of our conifers have given real structure to the garden, and I’m sure it could take one or two more to go in small and grow over the next ten years or so into an item of real interest…..Anyway, we looked around the shrubs and saw some lovely Ilex varieties, some Ceanothus, and some other attractive looking shrubs whose names I forget at the moment. We need to take out the existing plants from the area we are going to make-over (which is being invaded with ground elder and Euphorbia Griffithii, then do some measuring and planning. At that stage we can go back and buy what we need. I noticed that amongst the grasses that they were displaying were Carex Bronze and Carex Frosted Curls – we have pots of these which have self-seeded around our garden. We’ve already given away several pots, so it must be a very prolific plant.
Last year I insisted that we take out some of the self-seeded ferns in our ‘raised kitchen bed’ which was home to three huge ferns which were growing in the wall at the back of the bed. They were so mature that they were dominating everything there, but at the moment I am rather missing them. However, I only have myself to blame!
We have two particular plants in our garden that really have no right to be there. We have a Gunnera manicata and a Phormium. Each year the Gunnera survives the battering of the north-east weather – each year we expect to find the roots killed off by frost, but amazingly there are new shoots coming up out of the ground, under it’s own leaves which we bent over it to offer a little protection. Height wise, it isn’t a massive specimen, but that is just as well, as we have got it planted in a rather delicate position by the gravel path going up the garden. It reaches about 6 – 7 feet. Another plant in the garden which we are surprised by, is a purple-leaved phormium. It has been in the garden for a good few years. A couple of years ago, it surrendered to the cold and frost in the spring and died right back. Mark used the hedge trimmers to take it back as far as possible so that all that was left was a neat mound of strong dead leaves. Last year it made a little come back – with some shoots poking through the mound. This year it has come back as fresh as a new plant would look. It is tempting us to get another one this year. We’ll just have to see…….
