My Garden This Weekend – 4th August 2013

I don’t feel as though  I have spent much time in the garden this weekend.  Partly, as you can see it has been raining and when I say raining I mean a lot of rain.  Which is excellent as the ground has been so dry for so long.

The dahlias are really coming into their own and I am so pleased with the choices I made this year from Sarah Raven.  I would tell you which is which but that means scrambling around amongst soggy leaves.  However I can tell you they are either from the Butterfly Collection or Essential Dark Collection.

I adore these colours and I have noticed recently that I seem to be buying more and more plants in them.   Today, I went to visit Meadow Farm Nursery which I will write about another time but the owners are heavily into Echinacea breeding so needless to say I came back with 4 beautiful pinky plants.

The Big Border has seriously filled out the last couple of weeks which is amazing considering that it was only created in April/May and the plants were put in randomly due to the workshop development.  The border is  going to be unpicked in the Autumn when the annuals and dahlias are over.   I have been struggling, even before the border went in, on how to plant it and also the best way to access it.  It became obvious fairly quickly that a path of some sort was needed to get into the border rather than my heavy feet squishing unsuspecting plants. Saturday, saw a big step forward and the path started to go in.  It is going to be a simple wood bark path just wide enough for someone to walk down.  As you can see it is edged with branches as I really wanted an informal look and the intention is that the plants will grow over the edge and disguise it a little.  However, with the best laid plans it turned out that I did not have enough branches to act as edging. The answer was to mention this to my son who reminded me that we had identified some branches that needed to come down off the Willow and Prunus but we hadn’t got round to doing it.  Within 2 hours the boys had been up the trees and branches were forthcoming along with a lot of twiggy leafy stuff which I now need to sort out.

The only problem is that I cannot complete the path as there is a whole load of annual planting in the way and it would be such a pity to be digging it up just as it is coming into its own.  There has also been much debate about the exit point.  Plan A has been deemed unsuitable as it isn’t where you would want to come out and is rather steep.  Plan B has also been ruled out by the youngest son as although it is eminently sensible and practicable it is dull and straight and provides no interest or mystery – he really has been to too many gardens with me!  So Plan C it is but this involved shifting the Stipa gigantea about 3 ft so the path will be completed in a few months.  In the meantime whilst it is giving me excellent access to the border and helping me visualise how to plant it, I am reminded of those films where the car chase ends abruptly on a section of the freeway which has just stopped being made.