I was interested to see when I was watching Gardeners World last Friday Carol Klein talking about planting a bank.
Living on the lower slopes of the Malvern Hills my garden certainly slopes. I suppose you could say that the garden has been terraced in the loosest possible way. The lower section has a slight incline and then there is a ‘dry stone’ wall of Malvern stone dug up from the garden. Behind this ‘wall’ there is a much steeper slope and regular readers of this blog will have seen it mentioned before and referred to as the ‘daisy border’ or ‘the slope‘. That part of the slope is the deepest section but the slope actually slopes down at one end to form a much narrower bank but equally steep. This is one of those bits of the garden that I have become practised in not seeing for years. The former pond was in front of it so it was difficult to access without the risk of ending up in the pond. However, now I have filled in the pond and put a path across the back of the new bog garden I can finally access the bank.
Last spring I moved some of my snowdrops to add to those already there. There are also primroses and hostas but I have been waiting until now to see what is where and where there are gaps. This weekend I have filled in the gaps with geraniums. These have been grown from mixed seed so I have no idea what color the flowers will be. Hopefully the geraniums and hostas will make the bank colourful this summer.
I think I need to add some scilla and some other small spring bulbs for next year.
