End of Month Review – June 2011

Another month over and time for another End of Month Review post and another shot at the gravel path border.  The border is quite colourful at the moment but not necessarily how I envisaged it.  It is meant to be a confection of blues, white and pink highlights.  However when I moved the plants around in the Spring I knew there were a couple of plants in the border that probably wouldn’t work in this plan but I thought I would wait and see how it turned out. The border has a orangey highlight to it at the moment from the Penstemon barbatus coccineus. Having bought it in flower in 2009 last year there were no flowers at all so this plant was heading towards last chance saloon until about two weeks ago when numerous flower stalks appeared.  At first I thought I would move it but I think it works.  What does need to happen in this area is some more substantial foliage; it’s all a little airy fairy at the moment.

The back of the border needs to be planted up properly.  This has always been difficult due to the mess of shrub and tree branches from my neighbour’s garden casting shade and the plants sucking the moisture out of the soil.  However, surprise surprise the other day my privacy mad neighbour chopped all the shrubs down to the ground and the space has been filled with light.  I don’t know whether he will be digging the roots out but at least the canopy has been removed which will allow rain to get to the border.  I have some Japanese Anemones planted in at the back of the border but they are quite small at the moment though hopefully by this time next year they will have filled out and provide some ground cover.

The slope border is really filling out now.  I think in the Autumn it will need a little editing and moving things around a bit and maybe removing the sedums which just don’t work with the rest of the planting.  Once the bamboos at the very top fill out and mask the fence and I have planted the raised border along the fence up I think it will start to look alright.

I said last month that we were leaving a bit of the lawn uncut to see how  it went.  You can’t really tell from the photo above but there is now after a month a bit of a distinction between the cut and uncut areas.  I think my eldest, the lawn cutter, is hoping for wild orchids to appear overnight.  I have had to try to convince him that it will take a few years before anything that exciting happens.  I am thinking of planting bulbs in this area for the spring – maybe crocus and some miniature narcissus?

The new woodland border not that much different to last month.  I still haven’t planted out all the smaller plants and I need to move some of the stuff from the back where the original border was forward. I want to add some Disporum in here with Trilliums and Anemones and make it a real spring woodland feature.  Hopefully by next year it will have started to fill out.

There is no end of month shot of the allotment as I only wrote about it a couple of posts ago here.  Instead I  am finishing with a shot along the top of the wall border.  I am getting happier and happier with this border although there are a few areas where like the gravel path border it needs some strong foliage.  I have planted Stipa gigantica at regular intervals along the border to give it some rhyme and movement.  I’m not sure if this is the right plant for the job but the plants were divisions on a big Stipa I had so it seemed a pity to waste them.  I will give them a year or two to fill out and see what the effect is.

Please feel free to join in the End of Month Review – you can do what you like with it.  Concentrate on one area or just show us around.  If you do join in please post a link in the comments box so others can find your post.