Six on Saturday - Pleasing border

After a week's break I am back, the garden has moved on, and I will enjoy catching up with SOS pals' contributions which like me are all linked in to The Propagator.

I've been watching the forecasts and rain patterns, with rain falling in the north, west and east, we must now be one of the lowest rainfall areas of GB so far this year, I want to smell and feel rain, and watch the plants sigh with relief.  Overnight to this morning there was a very slight precipitation, probably the god of the snails and slugs are relieved, but this continuing dry spell is leading me to seriously rethink some of my plantings and veer towards more resilient plants.  

1. This is a view over towards the shadier side of the garden and this is about half the border. It does get some sun morning and evening during the summer and filtered light through the fence and now through the growing shrubs.  It is the coolest and therefore less dry part of the garden, but at the moment still far too dry.  With only a slight shower over the last two weeks since I last posted on matters SOS, the lack of water continues to be a problem. Watering cans of water as we run to hot from the kitchen are being walked from the back door to precious plants.

2. One of the features of the garden that brings us the greatest of pleasure is the bird bath.  Birds:  the smallest being the gold-crests and the largest at present being magpies and the odd crow and jackdaw arrive to quench their thirst or bathe.  Of course this means topping up the water sometimes twice a day or more. We found the pedestal buried deep in decaying branches and foliage as we cleared our last garden, and the top an exact match for the broken one that came with the pedestal, from FIL's garden when we cleared that.

3. I like foliage, and even Mr S noticed that the area at present is all foliage...

Green and purples and creams if you count the Pittosporum Garnettii, the dark flowers so small, but yet the scent floats on the air and mingles with that of Rose Open Arms which is just coming into flower alongside.

4. With purple and green markings,  to match the purple of Loropetalum Firedance and the green of the Fern  Crytomium fortunei, is one of my favourite plants Saxifraga stolonifera, which given a couple of weeks will be in flower.  I moved a few plants here a couple of months ago and it has turned out just as I thought:  some attractive ground cover by the fern and Loropetalum. 

Is a garden ever made?  It keeps on changing and evolving.  I have a variety of plants, but I can suddenly be inspired by different combinations, and just sometimes instead of acquiring different plants, move or re-establish different clumps elsewhere.  It is like a director moving the actors around a scene and getting them to turn their heads to the right or left, or maybe rephasing/emphasise  their lines differently. It gives me a satisfaction of changing combinations, and a little more time spent 'gardening'.

5. Some ferns which were growing a little too large have been edited, but this I mean dug out and given away mostly to friends Tim and Lee Hooker who are pots about ferns and has a growing collection. This little beauty is lurking at the feet of the Pittosporum, asoft shield fern, of which I have lost the name. Its those little silvery ends unfurling what give me the awe moment. I know also that I am still young and supple enough to creep down below the foliage to admire it.  Could it be all the gardening is keeping me young and supple!

6. For flower power in the front garden this shrub is setting out its best 'petticoats': Viburnum plicatum ‘Mariesii’.  Only two years ago it was still in its pot in the back garden.  2022 is its second season in flower in the front garden. It hasn't made much upward growth so it may need a good dollop of mulch and some fertilizer.  It gets no watering and is on very poor builders rubble soil, poor thing! It did however get a large planting hole with improved soil from the back at the time of planting. 

I waited till I had taken the picture, and then I went and removed all the bluebells which were going over and just setting seed.  These are not the native bluebells but some hybrids, which I had thought to have removed three years on the trot.  Since digging up the bulbs seemed to make little difference, I saved myself all the work, and simply removed all the above ground growth.  I didn't feel quite so young and supple after doing that job, at a faster rate than I normally work at, in order to catch the garden waste collection!

I have plants to plant this week, but with loads of bought in soil improver.  A bit too late in the season but better late than never, but the hose will have to work in order to get the ground in the right condition for planting courgettes et. al.