cutting back in the garden

Mark and I in the summer house

Cutting back……..No, not in the financial sense….

We didn’t cut back all the old growth from our herbaceous perennials and grasses in the autumn and so have that job to do as spring approaches (albeit very slowly).  Mark has been let loose and has cut back quite a bit in the lower right border.  I worry that any new shoots, or plants that get mistaken for weeds will be destroyed/damaged, but last year the plants seemed to survive a little trampling from a pair of size ten wellies.

We have a red stemmed cornus (dogwood) which we may cut back in the early summer, in order to stimulate some stronger red stems for our winter edification.  We could leave it – not quite sure which to do. It looks so striking next to a bamboo which is bright green.  Its leaves are variegated which are also quite striking.  It is a plant that is used in municipal planting quite a lot.  There is a nice stretch of it on the Prudhoe bypass with red and green stems in blocks.  Very effective.

The new composting area is nearly  finished.  Mark is putting a front to the boxes to contain the compost.   Then it just   needs to be filled!   John our son put in a good few hours helping and advising Mark as to how to build it….

My sister Jenny took a lot of photos when she was up at Easter, so I have added some of those to the existing photos related to composting.  Jenny has found me a tool that re-sizes images with a right click which is fabulous, as it will save me a lot of time, and it does more than one photo at a time.   She has also enabled short captions to be read when the photos are hovered over or during the slide show.

It is a beautiful day – the sun is shining and although there is a bit of breeze, Mark is down to cycling vest with no sleeves – brrrrr.

I’m not ‘allowed’ to walk up the garden on my own, as I tripped and fell on one of the steps.  Therefore I am at the mercy of Mark to either accompany me up to the top of the garden, or to take photos for me.  I expect, today, I will give Mark my iphone to take photos and I’ll upload them (the easier bit).

Whether Mark will have time to do any cutting back today is questionable….we’ll have to see how tired he is.  He informs me not!

I will post a link when I have more photos uploaded.   Here it is https://pygardens.co.uk/garden-projects/compost-heaps/136-2/